India's infrastructure development and the lessons from China's experences [i.e. experience]

Abstract

Infrastructure plays an important role in a country's economic development, it is also essential to recover from the financial crisis. The history of developed countries shows that infrastructure contributed a lot in economic development, and maintaining & upgrading infrastructure is also important for running economy smoothly. In developing countries, the quality of infrastructure and its service helps to reduce the production cost, increase the quality of personal life and gain the international competitiveness. India is the third largest country in Asia, it has developed rapidly in the recent years and became more attractive to foreign investment. Since its economic reforms in 1991, The Indian government has been committed to the development of infrastructure and encouraged private sector and foreign direct investment's participation, especially in the recent ten years. Recognizing that the lags of infrastructure development became the bottleneck of its economic growth, the Indian government increased the strength of infrastructure development by more policy and fiscal support. This paper briefly introduces the infrastructure development situation in India and attempts to analyze from infrastructure perspective the advantages and challenges that India has to sustain its economic growth. This research also compares China's rapid economic growth and infrastructure development contribution to it. In examining the successful experience that China has, and problems exposed in its infrastructure development the consequence by performing the massive stimulus financial package in 2008 points out that infrastructure development has positive impact on economic growth, and can directly contribute to the growth. There are limitations to the extent to which infrastructure development can contribute to long term economic stability.