The China Comparison and Missing Productivity

⚔️ Manish Sabharwal — Why India Isn’t Creating Jobs, Regulatory Cholesterol & Fixing the Administrative State 🇮🇳📉

India doesn’t lack land.

It doesn’t lack capital.

And it certainly doesn’t lack labour.

So why isn’t it combining into prosperity the way it did in China?

In this sharp, no-nonsense conversation, Manish Sabharwal explains why India’s real bottleneck is not infrastructure or skills — but a regulatory mindset that treats innovation as “prohibited till permitted.”

We unpack why 1991 was necessary but incomplete, how regulatory cholesterol suffocates entrepreneurship, why civil-service reform is now unavoidable, and why productivity — not activism or spending — will decide India’s future.

From land, labour and capital — to licenses, inspections, criminalisation, universities, inequality and prosperity — this episode is a first-principles diagnosis of what is actually broken.

Not optimism.

Not ideology.

Just reality.

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⏱️ Chapters

00:00 – 00:55 • Introduction – India’s Growth Puzzle

00:55 – 03:45 • India Has Land, Capital & Labour — So What’s Missing?

03:45 – 06:10 • The China Comparison: Why They Could Combine Factors Faster

06:10 – 09:00 • “Prohibited Till Permitted” — The Core Indian Mindset Problem

09:00 – 12:10 • Regulatory Cholesterol: How Rules Strangle Enterprise

12:10 – 15:40 • Why Civil Service Reform Is Now the Binding Constraint

15:40 – 18:20 • Decriminalisation: Why Stupidity Shouldn’t Be a Crime

18:20 – 21:30 • Licenses, Inspections & The Culture of Fear

21:30 – 25:00 • Why 1950s Thinking Still Runs India

25:00 – 28:20 • Activism vs Productivity — Why Slogans Don’t Create Jobs

28:20 – 32:00 • Spending vs Prosperity — What Governments Get Wrong

32:00 – 35:30 • Trust-Based Regulation & India’s Digital Public Infrastructure

35:30 – 39:10 • Universities, Research & Why India Can’t Build Deep Science

39:10 – 42:40 • Lateral Entry, Performance & The Steel Cage State

42:40 – 46:30 • Why Entrepreneurs Are Treated Like Criminals

46:30 – 50:00 • State Capacity, City Productivity & Why States Compete Poorly

50:00 – 54:10 • Inequality vs Poverty — What Actually Matters

54:10 – 57:40 • Why India Still Can’t Create Enough Non-Farm Jobs

57:40 – 01:01:00 • What Must Change First — Practical Reform Priorities

01:01:00 – 01:05:30 • The Future of Work, Automation & India’s Risk Window

01:05:30 – 01:08:40 • Why 2025–2035 Will Decide India’s Trajectory

01:08:40 – 01:10:43 • Closing Thoughts — Fixing the Administrative State

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🎧 Listen & Subscribe

Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/6tqY8tbgQ6nGb4ZQwjX6NH

Apple Podcast → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bharatvaarta/id1636240449

X → https://x.com/bharatvaarta

Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/bharatvaarta/

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👤 Guest — Manish Sabharwal

Chairman, TeamLease Services | Economist & Public Policy Thinker

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👤 Host — Roshan Cariappa

Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/carygottheblues/

X → https://x.com/RoshanCariappa