The best bet is special economic zones look at Shenzhen the whole city was basically built from scratch in the last 30 years and was given a special economic zone status and look where is it now , rebuilding our cities now will take massive political will which will never happen just look at the metro shed issue and to do upgrades we basically need to shut the whole city down even as something as simple as the metro construction in Mumbai has led to traffic jams all over the place narrower roads and rise in pollution due to the dust .
yes...that is correct. Upgrading our old cities will be stalled by all the poverty politics leaders like the slum vote bank in Mumbai. Best is to declare a massive area near an old city as SEZ and make it into a shenzhen. Port access is a must. I would say the best is to declare a UT without local political parties like Diu or Daman SEZ and make them into massive hubs of efficient manufacturing, R&D etc. Since these UTs are under the central government, they can freely do so without much political nonsense. Goa could be turned into a top rate entertainment venue like Macao. Just compare Hong Kong and Macau versus Mumbai and Goa. Very similar situation [former British and Portuguese colonies and earmarked cities to become top global hubs]. And see how the congress royally screwed up.
The other major, major problem we have is neighborhood.
China is surrounded by Japan, S. Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, HongKong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand - all really developed or upper middle countries.
India is surrounded by Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar - all lower income or ultra poor. Occupied Tibet and Xinjiang also have very little economy to speak of. So, overall we are far away from all major economic centers with not even one advanced/developed economy in our neighborhood to take advantage of.
Neighborhood matters. Canada and Mexico would have not developed so much if they did not have the US as its neighbor. Morocco would not have developed much if it did not have Spain, Gibraltar as its neighborhood. Turkey's western part mostly developed due to proximity to EU neighborhood, Greece etc.
The only exception is Israel, which developed despite being in a pariah neighborhood like ours, thanks largely to generous US budgetary support. we do not have that luxury.
We should have really connected to ASEAN markets by and route by now through Myanmar. But look at what the fools in Myanmar are doing.
So we are in a tough, largely failed neighborhood with tiny, unsophisticated, low HDI economies that do not matter for us at all. That is why we have it much worse than China. We are really unlucky this way. That is why we need to work twice as hard to get investments, technology, and capture markets. Hope people especially politicians realize the need to work really hard to grow the country and not waste time with poverty politics.
