Forecasts this week by the World Bank revived a prediction often made down the years: that growth in one of the Asian emerging market behemoths, India, would outdo that in the other, China. If this comes to pass, the correct reaction would be: about time too. And while in the medium term it would mainly reflect their relative positions in the economic cycle, sustaining it over a longer period will require Narendra Modi’s government in Delhi to play as good a liberalisation game as it talks.

In truth, it is an indictment of India’s policy making over the decades that the thought of its economy outpacing China is a novelty. At a much earlier stage of development — India’s per capita gross domestic product at purchasing-power-parity levels is less than half China’s — the potential for catch-up should be enormous.

Yet India, although it has succeeded in creating world-class software and business services companies, has never achieved the broad-based take-off in manufacturing that has lifted so many Asian countries out of poverty. This can be remedied. There is so much low-hanging fruit for economic reformers to pick in areas such as infrastructure, power supply, excess regulation and corruption that the tree is practically bent down to the ground. But political stasis at the centre, and the fact that much of the reform has to be done at the state level, restricts the ability even of a genuine reformist government to effect radical change.