India’s ports are getting super efficient. But China’s are doing better

As a journalist in Mumbai in 1988, I could see from my office window a long line of ships waiting to get into Mumbai port. The waiting time could be a shocking 28 days. The idling of the ships was matched – indeed, caused – by idling port workers backed by powerful trade unions.

A 1990 study by World Bank expert Hans Jurgen Peters found that the fastest way to unload a ship in Mumbai was to pay the unionised workers to stay at home, and hire private workers to do the job. What a travesty.