Yeah that is a good tradeoff (IMHO) if it gives the citizens a tradeoff of infrastructure and social services. Indian government can jump through hoops to do the same thing but somehow can never do all that when it comes to rapid infrastructure development.

> "[...] never do all that when it comes to rapid infrastructure development."

India is now building 100 km highway per day. It created 24,000+ km in the last 5 years. [0]

It has the second-largest road network in the world, second only to the US. [1]

[0]: https://pib.gov.in/PressNoteDetails.aspx?NoteId=151963&Modul...

[1]: https://www.financialexpress.com/business/roadways-indias-ro...

Yes the current government is doing some things well and that does include road development which has been extensive.

Isn't 100km per day their goal while their record is at 37km on a single day? That's impressive by itself, but it's not quite the same (and those 5 year numbers would take them less than one year at that speed).

Yes, "completely different from China's government" is really what's meant.

No, I did mean "competent"

I wouldn't consider ghost cities and wasteful expenditure on infrastructure to just prop up GDP as good governance. As the saying goes not all that glitters is gold.

Democracy is messy, but there is some kind of transparency (freedom of press) that brings up issues out in the open.

Let's not be impatient with Democracy lest we lose all that we valued without us realizing it.

Democracy needs patience and preserverence.

A lot of the ghost cities news has been debunked as of late. When the news stories were coming out, a lot of the cities were just recently built. A decade+ later, a lot of the areas have been filled in...

E.g. this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SR4EYQ6JFUI

"A lot" isn't really doing much for your argument that the existance of ghost cities is "debunked", given that it implies there are still ghost cities.