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Comment by anthropodie | Hacker News Reader

Those millions who moved to middle class are also helping the layer below them. These lifted households are spending their wealth on house helps, local grocery stores, taxis/autos and a whole lot of other local businesses. This trickle down effect then boosts development in cities where these IT hubs are located. Even more students then want to join these IT companies and enjoy the lifestyle of their seniors thus continuing the cycle.

P.s. We spend money in local shops because the stores like Walmart have still not penetrated the Indian market as they have outside India.

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I think in a few years India will find focusing on middle class is not enough. There's finite demand for domestic+outsourceable white collar jobs for 1.4B internal market + ~400M English speakers around the world. PRC has 10s of millions of white collar jobs + 100s of millions of manufacturing that pays better than trickle down housesitting, but there's still 100s of millions more stuck in informal economy while both countries are stuck with another few 100s of millions of subsistent farmers because keeping agriculture low tech is an essential jobs program. Even by PRC standards, India is hyper Deng's "let some get rich first" scheme that's going to cause long term uneven development issues.

Agree completely. We’ve tapped out our services potential. We now need large scale manufacturing. Income inequality and unemployment are very real problems, and its only getting worse. Only manufacturing can create those kind of jobs at scale.

> We’ve tapped out our services potential. We now need large scale manufacturing.

Most "first world" economies are dominated by services, so I would be surprised if India has topped out in services. Do more of the high-level stuff, like design and independent, research and development. "Grunt" work, like churning out code generates, a certain level of wealth. The high-level stuff generates even more. As a crude measure, until India is winning 1.4/7.8 = 18% of Nobel prizes it has untapped potential. (This is not intended as disparagement of India's track record but to highlight the potential for India.)

In my mind the real value of a strong manufacturing industry is that it drives the development of high-level services associated with manufacturing (robotics, materials, science, ...). I'd rather have small highly developed manufacturing sector than a large "low-tech" manufacturing sector.

Most first world economies don't have 1.4B people.

By the government's own admission, 800M people are still being given free food because they can't afford it on their own. That's more than the population of western Europe and USA combined.

Services simply don't employ people in large enough numbers. It's not rocket science - basic maths.

There are lots of reasons to think the PRC is about to hit a very rough patch as globalism shrinks.

Shrinking globalism has a lot of causes so I don't want to overstate the case here, but one big part of the drive to pull back from it is the PRC's own currency manipulation and leveraging of its manufacturing bottleneck for geostrategic aims. They have themselves to blame partly.

But really, their demographic precipice is what's going to stall them out. I hope their political system is functional enough to let it transition into something that can continue functioning after the end of a turbo-growth economy without collapsing into a Putin-esque kleptocracy or go the way of 20th century Argentina with constant coups and general political chaos.

I would say one of the reason for globalism to retreat is the west (especially US) find itself in a awkward situation: developing world and developed world has to meet somewhere in the middle, which means, the living standard in developed world has to drop.

For developing world to develop, you will have to go the extra miles, you are competing with big guys, trying to make a space for yourself in a crowded room. Every country does currency manipulation, imaging you make your good cheaper to get some papers, only because the paper can be used to buy energy.

> the living standard in developed world has to drop.

That depends on how you define "living standards." For example, the USA can probably afford to lose a LOT of consumer products spending while still raising HDI metrics by simply reallocating how resources are committed. We prioritize spending in a lot of places that don't really return much in the way of physical or spiritual well-being. Think car-dependent infrastructure which mostly just serves to raise need for spending on vehicles and infrastructure. Think fast fashion which mostly serves to accelerate trend cycles so people buy clothes more often than they did otherwise. There's a lot of consumer needs that are socially-pressured here.

What you are saying is absolutely true. The problem is that not everyone is going to think this way. Not having something is easy, but not having something after you had it is hard. The only way to keep the living standard high is actually technology, especially robotics. I am both pessimistic and optimistic on this. I can see a bright future for mankind slaving robotics, but I can also see technology will be guarded as weapons. The same reason in this world we have abundant stuffs and we also have people lacking of basic electricity.

I think a major reason might be that a precondition for globalism has been the US Navy patrolling the high seas and making shipping safe and reliable. As the US retreats from that, the reality will be that many countries cannot guarantee their supply lines. Peter Zeihan talks about this (and many other factors).

The US has been doing this for a long time, but it's gotten to the point where it isn't clear that it is in our interests, e.g., to enable China to be a major trading power.

It makes sense. If the west is worrying about things, it would make sense to build more capacity at home, and then everyone will just follow.

IMO, US's colonization of the world has been through finance, which has been ok for the world. Globalization is a good business for the US, de-globalization will actually accelerate the empires' declining.

Everyone, certainly India, need to stop population growth.

We need to thank China as the developing country that has made massive efforts on that issue over the past 45 years.

India has also hit replacement or below replacement level population in most of the country and it was done without invasively draconian policy setting. Just female literacy and access to healthcare.

India's population is still growing and in pretty bad conditions. In Africa population is still booming.

China would have hundreds of millions more people, with consequences for all of us, if it had not done what it did.

Very little efforts are made globally to control population, which makes things like COP27 rather moot.

Your ideas about population control are antiquated. It is well known that demographic change follows women's rights and economic development, particularly in access to healthcare and education. Draconian laws just lead to wide-scale oppression. India's population (and Africa's) are only growing in the regions that schooling and healthcare infrastructure haven't penetrated yet. The only controls a government can institute under conditions where it can't even run a school are genocidal.

You are not commenting on what I wrote and are using the usual emotional and defeatist rhetoric to oppose any population controls.

Yes, the Chinese approach has been draconian and even cruel. But it has also been effective and the point remains that we should thank them for having succeeded in controlling their population.

I also do think that too little is being done to stop population growth globally because that growth is actually the root cause to most of our environmental issues. Note that between "too little" and your over-the-top claim of "genocide" there a gigantic chasm.

This also applies to Western countries. Many of them have incentives to boost natality. We need to 'free ourselves' from the idea that population growth as a positive and necessary thing because it simply cannot continue and a decrease would even be a net positive for the environment and quality of life.

What part of "The desired outcome already happens in India and Africa through other, more constructive and humanistic methods without any of the ethical downsides" is defeatist? I don't understand the fetish for imposing draconian restrictions on would-be parents in light of those facts.

PRC more insulated against deglobalization than most. Despite trope, PRC is relatively less trade dependant vs OECD/G20 tier countries. It's close to US and JP where internal market is enough to generate growth and development. Meanwhile PRC exports is increasing, especially up value chain in intermediate goods, and among emerging markets. Actual risk of trade disruption with wealthy LIO block is also overstated IMO, first it's ~10% of PRC's GDP. Impact from countries who are serious (so far surprisingly little) about subtantially reducing trade, friendshoring or PRC+1 models are a fraction of that. The really rough patch are US tech blockades that inhibits PRC's ability to upgrade internally, but if overcome, huge boost to development. All of which is to say, PRC exposure to deglobalization is smaller than most think. While reality is PRC so far is inserting herself more and more into global trade despite some efforts to balkanize.

To stay on topic of India (but applies to many countries), PRC / Asian Tiger model of export driven growth model via light industries to generate surplus to upgrade capital is going to be increasingly difficult and expensive. Era of high western consumption (low interest, debt driven etc) and cheap commodities is being tapped out for short/medium term. The TLDR is PRC extracted as much benefit as it can from globalism under relatively ideal conditions while those that did not are going to have a much harder time trying to replicate similar feat. Especially India, because let's be real, west is not going to repeat the PRC "mistake" with India again, especially when India is difficult to geographically contain.

You seem to be close to the situation. Do you think Indian Walmart is a future inevitability?

Some cities have “Big Bazaar” which is similar to a Walmart (smaller though, the Indian market doesn’t have the variety of brands and products other countries do). There certainly are a lot of other similar stores. A more American thing that isn't readily available is like a Costco, bulk shopping would be pretty tough there, and people are fine to go out on a more regular basis to pick up fresh milk/veggies.

No American big box retailer will ever be built. Indian government doesn’t allow foreign companies to come in and set up shop very easily (at best they can get in with 49% ownership like Starbucks/Tata). Additionally the logistics situation is very different. Less ports, roads between cities built differently than USA, traffic across states is not a right like USA and various restrictions/inspections/fees can occur. It’s worth keeping an eye on IKEA’s expansion specifically in India. They really want to grow the marketshare, they have the right price points, and people seem to genuinely like and want them around. But lots of artificial hurdles which i suspect are caused by local traders/shops knowing how much business IKEA will take from them.

Indian Amazon is approaching the utility of American Amazon and are pretty good about taking advantage of the existing couriers and air cargo which takes care of some of the interstate logistics I mentioned. The funniest part to me is that every individual item you order comes with it’s own delivery person, there isn’t yet much work to consolidate packages. The current generation is growing up with Amazon though and I anticipate many future improvements.

I also see a dead comment in this thread saying India doesn't have malls... I've never seen more malls in an area than I have in big Indian cities. A lot of them are pretty good!

Source: many extended visits to india

> The funniest part to me is that every individual item you order comes with it’s own delivery person, there isn’t yet much work to consolidate packages.

I'm impressed how much Aliexpress currently does this: consolidates purchases from different sellers, ship 3rd party to Canada, and then use local postal service for last mile delivery.

Ebay could learn a lot from them.

Amazon India now offers weekly consolidation for many items with the occasional cashback incentive.

It’s been a while since I have stayed and didn’t realize Amazon offered this… great for them!

We actually have D-Mart and they are quite huge but not comparable to Walmart. These are present at multiple locations in tier-1 cities but are hardly present in tier-2 cities. The thing is even though these are very popular they are not shutting down local shops in the region that they are located. The sheer demand is so high that people get things from local shops instead of standing in long queues at D-mart.

To answer your question, yes Walmart can happen but it has to be ready for some serious competition because other than D-mart other big player JioMart backed by Reliance has entered this space recently.

Yes, there is a company called Dmart and they are doing really well. Recently one opened in my area and local shop owner mentioned that it is killing their business. People are flocking to Dmart for discounts.

Not op, but Walmart owns Flipkart so I think that is their play for India expansion.

This is how Walmart and other companies spread into things like India - you might even see a few Walmarts open as a "higher class American-like" store, but the vast majority will be in things like Flipkart that are directly aimed at the market.

One of the challenges is real estate and parking. Most major Indian cities are extremely crowded with little in the way of parking space or affordable commercial land. Most large stores in major population areas invariably have to pivot to the higher-end to justify the real estate costs.

Driving out 45 minutes just to buy groceries seems futile since every neighbourhood will have dozens of grocery stores that will deliver right at your doorstep (and now, half a dozen quick delivery apps too).

Trickle down

None the wiser.

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