5 ms·

India is hardly resource rich. Especially not per-capita.

jogjayr 9y ago
And, all things considered, India's hardly done "terribly". It's a remarkable achievement to maintain a united, democratic, mostly peaceful nation for 70 years straight (and counting). Most former colonies collapsed into destructive civil war, then military rule, within decades of independence. India has so far avoided that fate. Heck, most developed European countries have barely managed to avoid it in the past century. India has as much (probably more than) linguistic, cultural, ethnic and religious variety as the European continent, far lower levels of education, absurd amounts of competition for resources, education, and jobs due to population pressure. All of those things are potential triggers for conflict and civil war. I can't comment about other countries that may or may not have lived up to their economic potential (Brazil, Argentina, Russia etc) because I know next to nothing about them. But India is doing terrifically well, considering the hand we were dealt.
- notfromhere 9y ago
  The colonies that fell apart we're ones where there wasn't much organization and what organization existed was for resource extraction. The Dominions were built for settlement, so they were sustainable states. India and other Asian colonies already had their own very established cultures and civilizations, and hence fared much better. Pretty remarkable India hasn't exploded into separatism due to resource pressure, but I don't know how sustainable that is given that the population is still increasing
- cryptonector 9y ago
  India has done very well in one sense: it's still a democracy! And it's growing quite fast nowadays. But in the time since independence it's hardly done very well at all -- certainly not in relation to its full potential!
  - jogjayr 9y ago
    It's hard to compare India to any other country except for China. No other nation is of a comparable size. It's all well and good to say "well Japan, South Korea, Singapore did great after being devastated by war and depression and famine". Just like software, scale matters for national development. Japan post-war still had the relative advantages of having been an advanced industrial nation pre-war, with all that that entails: educated population, knowledge of how to run industry and finance, culture of industrial entrepreneurship etc. Plus it got tons of help from the US getting back to its feet. Ditto for South Korea; US help to keep them from falling over to the Communists. Both nations are also relatively homogenous ethnically, religiously, and culturally. Singapore is tiny: a city-state. It's half the population of metropolitan Mumbai and has 1/3rd higher GDP. If Mumbai was an independent city-state with immigration controls, we'd likely be talking about it as an up-and-coming Asian tiger. I'm not downplaying any of these countries' achievements. They are tremendous and they've done very well for themselves. I'm just pointing out the context of their achievements and how that doesn't apply to India. I think it's impossible to say India hasn't lived up to its full potential because we can't run history backward and forward like a simulation, change a thing here (eg. make India a liberal free-market economy in the 60s instead of a closed, socialist one) and see the difference. China is doing great now but they had to go through the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution on the way there. India is doing not-as-well but at least millions didn't die.
manojlds 9y ago
And in context of parent comment, India was plundered by the British.
- cryptonector 9y ago
  Plunder is a silly excuse. Whatever plunder, it's been over for a long time. A lot of countries have managed to grow very fast from abject poverty to first-world status. Japan. South Korea. Argentina (then reverted -- what foreign power plundered them from the 50s onward, eh?!). The U.S., naturally. And others. China is the latest: from the depths of the Great Leap Forward (backward) to now. And that's even though China too was plundered. That's a huge "so what" to the plunder thing. Stop making excuses. Incidentally, Argentina is a hugely important case-study. It was never really plundered. Its history has tremendous parallels to the United States', oddly enough. It had a tremendous growth between the 1880s and the Great Depression, and grew to be one of the wealthiest countries in the world at the time of WWII. Yet somehow it has missed out on decades of growth potential, and is now full of shanty towns, with a huge proportion of the population in true poverty (not what we call poverty in the U.S.). HOW IN THE WORLD DID THAT HAPPEN?! There were no significant wars in Argentina since its peak. There has been no foreign power plunder in Argentina in that time. The make-up of the population didn't change much. So what happened?? Well, it's easy to see what happened there: bad ideas. "People, ideas, materiel. In that order!" - John Boyd, COL, USAF.
  - jogjayr 9y ago
    > Plunder is a silly excuse. It's really isn't. "Colonial plunder" isn't a horde of soldiers rampaging through your country taking your gold and women. Colonial plunder is generations upon generations of domestic industry killed by high taxes to favor imports from the ruling country, turning peasants into serfs bonded to the land to pay taxes, exploiting and inflaming pre-existing class, caste, and religious differences time and time again to keep the people from uniting against the rulers. People (at large; there are outliers) stop getting an education or starting any business larger than a shop because what's the point? The financial system doesn't grow beyond small moneylenders. People become bitter and try to keep the little they have from their grasping neighbors, everyone fighting over the few crumbs the ruling country throws you. For hundreds of years. > A lot of countries have managed to grow very fast from abject poverty to first-world status. Japan. South Korea. As I mentioned in my reply to your other comment, they are much smaller, and had plenty of help from the US. Do you have any other examples? > China is the latest: from the depths of the Great Leap Forward (backward) to now. And that's even though China too was plundered. That's a huge "so what" to the plunder thing. Incontestably true; India hasn't done as well as China. China still isn't quite a developed country yet and India is maybe 20 years behind China. I don't think it's a great shame to come second to China. Their political system has always optimized for getting things done no matter the cost. India went a different, maybe softer, way. Probably not even deliberately, I'll admit. To this day it saddens me when middle-class, educated, relatively well-off Indians say things like "I wish we had a government like China's so our roads won't have potholes anymore".

And, all things considered, India's hardly done "terribly". It's a remarkable achievement to maintain a united, democratic, mostly peaceful nation for 70 years straight (and counting). Most former colonies collapsed into destructive civil war, then military rule, within decades of independence. India has so far avoided that fate. Heck, most developed European countries have barely managed to avoid it in the past century. India has as much (probably more than) linguistic, cultural, ethnic and religious variety as the European continent, far lower levels of education, absurd amounts of competition for resources, education, and jobs due to population pressure. All of those things are potential triggers for conflict and civil war. I can't comment about other countries that may or may not have lived up to their economic potential (Brazil, Argentina, Russia etc) because I know next to nothing about them. But India is doing terrifically well, considering the hand we were dealt.

notfromhere 9y ago
The colonies that fell apart we're ones where there wasn't much organization and what organization existed was for resource extraction. The Dominions were built for settlement, so they were sustainable states. India and other Asian colonies already had their own very established cultures and civilizations, and hence fared much better. Pretty remarkable India hasn't exploded into separatism due to resource pressure, but I don't know how sustainable that is given that the population is still increasing
cryptonector 9y ago
India has done very well in one sense: it's still a democracy! And it's growing quite fast nowadays. But in the time since independence it's hardly done very well at all -- certainly not in relation to its full potential!
- jogjayr 9y ago
  It's hard to compare India to any other country except for China. No other nation is of a comparable size. It's all well and good to say "well Japan, South Korea, Singapore did great after being devastated by war and depression and famine". Just like software, scale matters for national development. Japan post-war still had the relative advantages of having been an advanced industrial nation pre-war, with all that that entails: educated population, knowledge of how to run industry and finance, culture of industrial entrepreneurship etc. Plus it got tons of help from the US getting back to its feet. Ditto for South Korea; US help to keep them from falling over to the Communists. Both nations are also relatively homogenous ethnically, religiously, and culturally. Singapore is tiny: a city-state. It's half the population of metropolitan Mumbai and has 1/3rd higher GDP. If Mumbai was an independent city-state with immigration controls, we'd likely be talking about it as an up-and-coming Asian tiger. I'm not downplaying any of these countries' achievements. They are tremendous and they've done very well for themselves. I'm just pointing out the context of their achievements and how that doesn't apply to India. I think it's impossible to say India hasn't lived up to its full potential because we can't run history backward and forward like a simulation, change a thing here (eg. make India a liberal free-market economy in the 60s instead of a closed, socialist one) and see the difference. China is doing great now but they had to go through the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution on the way there. India is doing not-as-well but at least millions didn't die.

manojlds 9y ago

And in context of parent comment, India was plundered by the British.

cryptonector 9y ago
Plunder is a silly excuse. Whatever plunder, it's been over for a long time. A lot of countries have managed to grow very fast from abject poverty to first-world status. Japan. South Korea. Argentina (then reverted -- what foreign power plundered them from the 50s onward, eh?!). The U.S., naturally. And others. China is the latest: from the depths of the Great Leap Forward (backward) to now. And that's even though China too was plundered. That's a huge "so what" to the plunder thing. Stop making excuses. Incidentally, Argentina is a hugely important case-study. It was never really plundered. Its history has tremendous parallels to the United States', oddly enough. It had a tremendous growth between the 1880s and the Great Depression, and grew to be one of the wealthiest countries in the world at the time of WWII. Yet somehow it has missed out on decades of growth potential, and is now full of shanty towns, with a huge proportion of the population in true poverty (not what we call poverty in the U.S.). HOW IN THE WORLD DID THAT HAPPEN?! There were no significant wars in Argentina since its peak. There has been no foreign power plunder in Argentina in that time. The make-up of the population didn't change much. So what happened?? Well, it's easy to see what happened there: bad ideas. "People, ideas, materiel. In that order!" - John Boyd, COL, USAF.
- jogjayr 9y ago
  > Plunder is a silly excuse. It's really isn't. "Colonial plunder" isn't a horde of soldiers rampaging through your country taking your gold and women. Colonial plunder is generations upon generations of domestic industry killed by high taxes to favor imports from the ruling country, turning peasants into serfs bonded to the land to pay taxes, exploiting and inflaming pre-existing class, caste, and religious differences time and time again to keep the people from uniting against the rulers. People (at large; there are outliers) stop getting an education or starting any business larger than a shop because what's the point? The financial system doesn't grow beyond small moneylenders. People become bitter and try to keep the little they have from their grasping neighbors, everyone fighting over the few crumbs the ruling country throws you. For hundreds of years. > A lot of countries have managed to grow very fast from abject poverty to first-world status. Japan. South Korea. As I mentioned in my reply to your other comment, they are much smaller, and had plenty of help from the US. Do you have any other examples? > China is the latest: from the depths of the Great Leap Forward (backward) to now. And that's even though China too was plundered. That's a huge "so what" to the plunder thing. Incontestably true; India hasn't done as well as China. China still isn't quite a developed country yet and India is maybe 20 years behind China. I don't think it's a great shame to come second to China. Their political system has always optimized for getting things done no matter the cost. India went a different, maybe softer, way. Probably not even deliberately, I'll admit. To this day it saddens me when middle-class, educated, relatively well-off Indians say things like "I wish we had a government like China's so our roads won't have potholes anymore".