I met an entrepreneur recently who was comparing doing business in Asia's two biggest countries. "When I'm in India," he said, "I spend the first 40 minutes of any meeting exchanging niceties. In the last five minutes, we get to business." What about China? "We do business for 40 minutes. Right at the end, we chit-chat for five." It's only an anecdote, but the results seem to bear it out. China gets things done; India invents ways not to. China dazzles the world by hosting an impeccable Olympics; India struggles to complete basic infrastructure for the Commonwealth Games. Perhaps that's why it's fascinating to watch the rise of India's Narendra Modi, the man many believe will be India's next Prime Minister. Modi's sales pitch is simple: he gets things done. For Indians, it's a seductive notion: Can India be like China?
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Ravi Agrawal: India's business culture could profit from being more like China's
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He says many in India hope winner of the election will introduce more efficiency
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While new leadership can focus on economy, it's not so easy to reshape a nation, he says
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Agrawal: For real change, the impetus has to come up from the bottom up
But the larger point is that this is not just about @placeholder, it's about India.