Shankar Sharma flags education gap behind India-China tech divide

Investor Shankar Sharma has used a quantitative model to rank India and China's education ministers across decades, arguing that a sustained gap in ministerial quality helps explain India's lag in technology competitiveness. His analysis gives India's education ministers an average score of 18.75 for 2014-26, compared with a score of 90 for China's current minister, Huai Jinping. Earlier Indian periods scored higher, including 86 during 1957-62 and 83 during 1998-2004.

Sharma also notes that India's education spending as a share of GDP has at times exceeded China's, yet the performance gap has widened. He argues that the quality of long-term decisions on universities, research and technical education matters more than budgets alone. China's ministers have often had backgrounds in science, engineering or technical administration, whereas several Indian periods saw much lower scores.

Sharma warns that India cannot treat education as a secondary policy area while aspiring to compete in artificial intelligence, semiconductors and advanced manufacturing. He describes the deterioration in human capital and research capability as a 'bear market' far more consequential than a stock-market downturn, because it can take decades to repair.