New Delhi, April 14 -- For anyone scrolling through social media lately, Vietnam seems to have taken over the feed, with its cafes, coastlines and bustling streets firmly etched onto the global travel map. But the tourism buzz is only the surface of a deeper story.

Emerging from the ashes of the war with the US and from being one of the world's poorest economies in the 1980s, Vietnam is now seen as an economic miracle, delivering sustained high growth (8% in 2025) and reducing poverty to below 5% from nearly 80% in 1993. It has also become a key destination under the West's China-plus-one strategy, offering a compelling cost-productivity mix.

For India, long contending to be China's alternative, the task is to match Vietnam's integratio...