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Comment by piva00 | Hacker News Reader

Be careful with that, I saw the same happening in Brazil between 2002-2012 just to start unraveling quickly after that.

Our economies and societies are still pretty fragile, any political shock can start a downwards spiral. Stay vigilant.

I think the difference is India is a major startup hub that mostly caters to the local market so the effort to shift to more resilient income streams not completely dependent on the global market are underway, something Brazil did not do.

Entirely possible India hits a lean phase and stays stuck where it is. Truth be told, everything from infrastructure to basic law and order are far behind even a “middle income trap” country like Thailand. Too early to pat ourselves on the back.

And recent focus on manufacturing. New govt is heavily pushing local manufacturing(atmanirbhar bharat) for last 8 years. Progress is already being felt in some areas, for example in smartphone manufacturing India went from nothing to #2 in world in those years. They are now targeting more phone phone supply chains like pcb, modems etc. and other consumer electronics too.

https://tech.hindustantimes.com/tech/news/india-now-2nd-larg...

To be fair, despite all these efforts, the manufacturing sector has consistently underperformed the rest of the economy. The share of manufacturing as a % of GDP has been trending down for quite a while. Outside of the headline grabbing numbers (such as the iPhone factory), the reality is different.

But Brazil is a really rich country when you consider resources, India is not so, especially when you look at the population size. Only hope for India to maintain momentum is replicating at least 25 % of the Chinese manufacturing success.

The issue with Brazil is that only a tiny handful of elites own and benefit from all of the resources. Income inequality is through the roof.

If the commodities boom is any indicator, Brazil should be hitting a purple patch soon enough.

What's a purple patch?

Hmm I thought this was a common enough expression, but apparently its largely limited to Indian English.

A “purple patch” is a period of exceptional performance. Like an athlete being “in the zone”.

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