Can India be a breakout nation? is an excellent article about the potential of a country to become a breakout nation, that is to grow at a much faster rate than its peers with similar per-capita income.

The factors that the author listed down are not the usual ones that we see in the newspapers and that makes it all the more interesting.

An obvious factor of course is the  infrastructure. Any economy which is not investing in its infrastructure enough will start overheating if it is growing too fast. We, in India are at this point now. We will not be able to grow fast and not have too high inflation without investing in, well everything. China invests 10% of its GDP, India does about 7.5% but much of it is wasted with government domination. Brazil, rather poorly, does about 2%.

There are other factors like the equality in the society, number of billionaires and having strong tier-2 cities that contribute to growth without causing social unrest. We have a mixed record here.