India is a bad example -- it suffers from a huge, uneducated population and the fact that top minds usually leave the country (until recently) and spend their most productive years abroad. Do you have any examples where India can claim world-class innovations that weren't created elsewhere?
There's a very interesting point. Both China and India have nearely same population (1.32B and 1.12B people accordingly), and same education level as per the graph. Aslo it seems both countries are on same level of innovation, yet, China's GDP is almost 3 times higher than GDP or India ($10.12T to $4.12T). So, I won't call India an exception. The question is what makes China so productive or what India lacks ? The answer is mentality: Chinese ppl got used to work, whence Indians are not. And I think GDP does not corelate with level of edication and innovation.
Concerning this point, it is not necessarily just the mentality. It is worth noting that China has had a government imposed and subsidized industrialization program in place for some time now. India, which is a democracy, is not forcing its people to work in factories when they might be happier living in a village. This might explain the difference in GDP?
China's non-democratic system means it invests in infrastructure before other more immediately demanded things. I think it has a better education system from primary to secondary, as outside of Kerala a lot of teachers are habitually absent.
India has higher barriers to entry in damn near everything because of the "Licence Raj" and <i>insane </i> employment legislation. Its almost impossible to fire people once your enterprise has more than 100 employees.
China has been experiencing the demographic dividend (falling birthrate means the dependency ratio drops, and you get a bulgein the population pyramid in the working age population, more taxes, fewer pensions and childcare)
well maybe they did not innovate in the sense of creating something new (although we heard of stories that claim that a few British mathematical and scientific discoveries originated from Indians). But they are one of the leading countries in IT services. to me using someone else innovation to become a leader in that field, makes you as innovative as the creator. The point i am trying to make is " Education does not make one country better (economically, politically) than another".
