India vs China: Shankar Sharma flags education leadership gap behind technology divide

Ace investor Shankar Sharma has raised an uncomfortable question about India’s education system: if the country has spent heavily on education, why has its technological and scientific gap with China widened?

In an analysis comparing the education ministers of India and China, Sharma and his team created what they call a “Ministerial Quality Score”, assessing ministers on factors including academic credentials, scholarly output, language skills, professional expertise, institutional experience and exposure to technology. The exercise, he argues, offers a window into the quality of policymaking over time.

A decline in India’s scores

The India data shows a sharp contrast across decades. Several education ministers in the early post-Independence period received relatively high scores. The average score reached 86 during 1957-62 and 83 during 1998-2004. But several subsequent periods recorded much lower scores, including 16 during 1980-84, 23.5 during 1991-96, 16 during 2004-09 and 18.75 for 2014-26.

China’s scores, by comparison, remain relatively strong in the more recent period. The analysis gives its education ministers scores ranging from 13 to 93, with several ministers scoring above 60 and the current ministerial score at 90. Sharma points to the professional profiles of Chinese ministers, many of whom had backgrounds in science, engineering, academia or technical administration.

The argument is not that a minister’s qualifications alone determine a country’s educational performance. Rather, Sharma is highlighting the importance of who makes long-term decisions on universities, research, technical education and human capital.

That becomes particularly significant when education is viewed as an input into technological competitiveness. China has built considerable strength in engineering, scientific research, advanced manufacturing and emerging technologies, while India continues to grapple with gaps in research capacity, university quality and high-end technical talent.

The spending puzzle

Sharma also highlights a second puzzle: spending. His third exhibit compares education expenditure as a share of GDP in India and China across decades. The chart shows India’s spending exceeding China’s in several periods, with the two broadly comparable in the latest period. Yet, Sharma argues, India’s lag has continued to widen.

That raises a question beyond budgets: what does the money produce?

Education outcomes depend on much more than ministerial credentials. Governance, teacher quality, curriculum, university autonomy, research funding, institutional capacity and links between academia and industry all matter. China’s technological rise also reflects decades of industrial policy, infrastructure investment and strategic state support.

China’s education ministerial quality score

Still, Sharma’s central warning is clear. India cannot treat education as a secondary policy area while aspiring to compete with China in artificial intelligence, semiconductors, defence technology and advanced manufacturing.

For Sharma, the education “bear market” is therefore more consequential than a stock-market downturn. A weak equity cycle can reverse. A prolonged deterioration in human capital and research capability can take decades to repair.