Why is India still developing?

When I was a kid (about 3rd or 4th standard), I remember asking my dad about how things are in foreign countries and if it was true that things were very good there. I don’t remember how I learnt the word foreign but I sort of had got this idea that "foreign" is like a fantasy land - maybe something like a cartoon. My recollection of dad's reply was something like - foreign is not one place ... there are many places ... some good ... some bad... etc. At a later point of time (maybe when I was in 6th or 7th), I remember we discussed how rich people in other countries are. And Dad told me that there are some countries where everyone has a car and many have more than one.  That there, a person was considered poor if he had only one car. I asked how it was that they could buy so many cars - dad had said that the amount of money people got was much more than in our country. If a person worked for a week, he could but a black and white TV (yep - in those days black and white TVs were still sold) and if he worked for a month, he could buy a colour TV.

As I worked my way through 10th, one of my cousins went to US and shortly sent back photos of a car that he had purchased. Later on when he came visiting, I talked with him about life there. The thing that struck me most was that everyone had a telephone - and calling people in the same city or town did not cost anything. Phones were a luxury at that time.

In 2006, I visited the US. There were many things that caught my interest. Firstly the number of cars - I had never seen so many cars before - the society seemed saturated with them. And then the roads, called freeways, where you had to go at about 100 km per hour! - A concept I had not encountered before. And these roads were wide - three or four lanes in one direction. And I found that there were special car pool lanes. I was very surprised to know that even just two people in a car qualified for carpool lane. That showed that most cars were carrying only one person. Some other things I noticed were that life there is dependent a lot of cars, a person not having one will find it very difficult. And I also noticed that there seemed to be far far fewer people around. For the amount of things they have built (homes, cars, roads, shops etc.), I felt that there were very few people. And they had adjusted to that - since people were few, any work that required people, was expensive - haircuts, food in restaurants (it has to be cooked by people). There are no domestic workers - so lot of machines are used- for washing clothes, dishes etc.

All along when I was growing up, I was curious about why is the place where I am not the best? Why is some other place better? And I had various ideas about it. I did consider if it was true that the people of that country were more intelligent - but it did not convince me. Then I thought it must be because of their hard working nature (work ethic). This seemed to make some sense - but was not entirely convincing. By working harder, you can be maybe twice as better and that did not explain the difference in riches. Then I thought that it had to do with the population densities. The advanced countries were cold in climate. To survive through the cold, a person had to have a minimum standard of living. So anyone living there had to come up to that standard or perish. This reason kept the population low and therefore the population density low. Because of this there was more land (and therefore natural resources) per person and that was the reason for their riches. But this idea also did not convince me. If cold climate causes richness, then there had to be many more places where this should have happened. And also there were places that were not cold - and yet this had happened.

Sometimes when you are searching for answers, you do not find it because it is in a place where you do not want to look. The answer is to be found in history. And history is a subject hated almost universally by students. Remembering all those dates and sequences of events is unrewarding at best. And also it is a rare history teacher who makes the subject interesting like a story. Also, I think that at school age, we do not have the capacity to understand it fully. Anyways, when I read a couple of books about history - especially economic history, I got an answer to my question that was convincing.

The Asian civilizations (India and China included) were equals of European’s ones (in some cases they were more prosperous) till the 17th century - thats just 300 years ago. Compare that to the fact that civilizations of Asia are much older - some about 4000 years old or more - and you will get the sense that the European societies getting richer (materialistically) is only a recent development. So what caused it? Two things - the renaissance and the industrial revolution. The early European societies around the Mediterranean had made advances in understanding the world. They knew that the earth was round, had made advances in maths etc. (So had Asian ones).  But about the 4th century AD - after Christianity came to Europe and established itself in Rome there was no progress for 1000 years. This period of European history is called the dark ages. And it was not like there was spiritual progress either - the atrocities committed in the name of piety were worse than what we hear about the Taliban doing in Afghanistan today.

The renaissance started out as a shift in in the arts of the times. The thinking till then was that there was no need for man to enquire into the world around him. God had created it for man's benefit and man's only duty was to worship God for it. Anyone who had "naturalistic" knowledge was considered a pagan and heretic. The women who had naturalistic tendencies were branded as witches and burnt alive. In short religion kept man's curiosity imprisoned and his nose to the grindstone of worship. In renaissance, the artists started giving more attention to world around them. This was soon followed by other people who rebelled against the authoritative church. Among them were some people who we today call scientists. The knowledge of the works of ancient civilization were partly with the Europeans and partly with the people of what is today Iraq and Egypt - this knowledge was available in the north of Africa and in Spain and Portugal. The people of Europe revived the rationalistic perspective and in many places it went counter to the divine. Some people (like Galileo) were punished for it. However the rationalistic perspective was used by people like Copernicus and Newton to explain the motions of planets and terrestrial objects. This gave a lot of credibility to the perspective and it began being used in a lot of other places. It was applied to making weapons, machines, medicines etc.

The industrial revolution was a successor of the renaissance. Through the renaissance, a lot of knowledge about the world was collected and studied and it was also applied to industrial tasks. The essence of the industrial revolution was the idea that work can be done by things other than humans and animals. Of course water mills etc. were present (in Europe and India as well) before the industrial revolution. But the idea that burning fuel like coal gives energy that can be made to do work in novel ways was at the heart of it. And already mastery over machines was at an advanced level - they were making watches to keep time! (If you don't appreciate what level of ingenuity and workmanship is required to make a watch out of plain metal, I encourage you to open an old style one and take a look) It is clear that machine making was at an advanced state - and the idea that machines could be powered by fuel was a combination that had a lot of opportunities. They could be made to do most of the work required. This was what the revolution was about. And it was this revolution that enabled fewer and fewer people to produce more and more industrial output. This in turn made the European nations rich. And this is the root cause of the present prosperity of the European and American nations.

So why did not India have an industrial revolution? The spread of technology happens mostly when people are in close contact. In Europe there was a quick spread of technology. This is because there was people to people contact and the engineers of a country generally knew about the advancements in other countries. And also these countries were often at war. This made it imperative that if a rival country had a technological advance that gave it an advantage in war, that had to be replicated at the earliest or there was a risk of being defeated in the next war. Indeed many of the advances were driven by the need for use in war. This process of competitive technological advancement happened over about three centuries and was in effect until recently (I am referring to world wars 1 and 2 and then the cold war). Indians being far removed from this arena where there was an urgent need for advancement and knowledge of technology was available, did not have the impetus or means to advance that rapidly. This is why India did not participate in the industrial revolution. When India later learnt about it, it was too late.

So, in summary, it is not because Indians were not intelligent, imaginative or creative, or because of India’s population density, or lack of adventurous spirit or risk taking mindset, or corrupt rulers, or "fate" that India is at present not as advanced as western nations. It is due to a quirk of history - that industrial revolution happened in Europe and India could not take advantage of it early on. In fact the historical perspective gives another insight. It is not just India that had to suffer a bitter period of colonization and exploitation because of not advancing early - every Asian and African society (Egypt, Iran, Iraq, China etc.) had to suffer it.

So now that we know what the root cause of India's low level of advancement, what should we do? I have my thoughts about it - but that is the subject of another entry.