An American scholar has written a book in which he tries to explain China’s recent rise. Dan Wang’s thesis is that China is a society of engineers and its government is the rule of engineers, in contrast to the US, which he classifies as a society of lawyers. China is good at manufacturing and building things, he says, while the US is not. Why is this the case?

The answer lies in the choices that the Chinese state has made, especially in 2015, when it laid out the ‘Made in China 2025’ plan. Sometimes these choices do not work, as Wang points out. An engineering-led mindset produced China’s brutal lockdown in Shanghai — and things like the one-child policy. But it is also why China has succeeded in industrial policy at the highest level (high-speed railways, renewable energy, electric vehicles, ship building) and has caught up in aviation, semiconductors, rocket science and artificial intelligence.

In all these areas, what the state has intended to achieve, it has delivered. This is an interesting theme, and we will keep returning to it in this column. Today, however, I wanted to ask ourselves the same question: What has the Indian state intended to achieve, and has it been successful at this?

When it comes to the economy, to (un)employment and, especially, to India’s

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