Indians living in border areas neighbouring China are beginning to envy fast-paced development brought by Beijing to the point of regretting being Indian, a senior member of India's ruling Congress party has warned.
Mani Shankar Aiyar, a former senior diplomat and cabinet minister with responsibility for India's volatile north-east region, described the development that China was bringing to its south-west and Tibet as “simply spectacular”.
He said impoverished people in India's north-east were asking themselves: “What is the mistake we have made by being Indians [rather than Chinese]?” He also warned of the consequences of families divided by the colonial-era border “beginning to hear stories about the kind of progress happening on the other [Chinese] side”.