Please read this 20 year old article on LA Times, you may have a better understanding as why India can never catch up China (provided China is not in turmoil because of "color revolution"). Taking a long view, India is between a rock and a hard place: without a revolution India will be what it has always been; with a revolution there may not have a country called India as we know of.
Uneasy reading for any Indian, but it may help to cure some insanity.
How China Beat India in Race for Success
http://articles.latimes.com/1997/aug/10/news/mn-21296
Okay...let's dig deeper, shall we?
What is the most important factor for long term success & growth of a country, is it industry, HDI, economy? None of these, it's the political system in place that decides the fate of a country in the longer run, it forms the very important foundation of a country, and we know the consequences of a weak foundation. Democracy has certain flaws, its takes time to build the system with all components in place, ours is 70 years old and still improving itself continuously, the decision making and especially implementation is slow in a democracy, it tends to avoid hard economic decision that might offend people...etc. But among all its faults, it has a basic difference with any non-democratic systems; be it a dictatorship, monarchy, religious state, or communism...that is, in a democracy the political system is separate from the ruling regime, in a democracy the ruler or regime may change, and they do change through votes, but the political system remains intact, thus ensuring long term stability with near zero risk of the whole system crashing down to dust, provided the system has matured to a reasonable degree with checks & balances to prevent any hijacking...which we have already achieved.
A non-democratic system; be it a dictatorship, monarchy, religious state, or communism has its strengths, provided the people in power are a capable lot. In this system the decision making and especially implementation is faster, it can take hard economic decision without worrying much about whether it might offend people, etc. In short, democracy's weaknesses are its strengths, but then...democracy's strengths are its weaknesses. With all its positive sides, a non-democratic system has a shelf-life, an expiry date, it is short-lived, unstable, and it ends, and when it ends, everything it has built come crushing down with it. Because, unlike a democracy, here the political system and the ruling regime are inseparable, the ruling regime itself is the political system, and it creates a large void when it ends...there can be a possibility of peaceful transfer of power, but that rarely happens, and even if it happens, a major disruption is unavoidable. And we can see examples of it all across the world.
India has built a stable democratic political system after decades of improvements & necessary modifications, and all the stake-holders have learned to respect it, we won't have to worry about a meltdown of the political system that forms the very basis, the foundation of our nation, and now we can focus more on all other important aspects of our country. The weaknesses of a democracy mitigates as it gets matured, and the results of which have started showing in our country.
But China is yet to build such a stable political system, it has built its nation on a weak foundation that is bound to go away at some point in time, CCP won't be ruling China forever, and the transition will be a major disruption...if not a complete meltdown. And then China will have to build a new political system from scratch, most likely a democratic one, and it would need to spend decades improving & perfecting it...with all the expected disruptions in its economy and social structure during the transition process that may take decades to become a stable one.
I will end this post here by quoting a paragraph from your link:
"China, which followed the Soviet model that lifted Russia from a big but backward agrarian state to a global superpower before its 1991 collapse, granted total power to the Communist Party; Beijing continues to crack down severely on any form of dissent".
And Russia is yet to become a democracy in true sense even after so many years, there will still be a void after Putin.