India, you are FULLY responsible for your performance since 1947, NOT the British who left long ago

On July 24, 2011, in Economics, India, Liberty, by

Judith Sloan FINALLY showed that the Emperor has no clothes. Instead of pussy-footing and being polite to the "developing" nations, Judith firmly wrote this:

The fact that the Chinese opted for a market-stultifying, growth-sapping path of Communist rule should [not] somehow mean that countries that pursued open, market-based strategies, when the the emitting of CO2 was not regarded as a public bad, should now be penalised. [Source]

This is the truth, the harsh truth. That the "developing" nations are pygmies in the world NOT because of the "West" (whatever that is) but because of their OWN policies. NO ONE STOPPED THEM FROM USING OPEN, MARKET BASED STRATEGIES.

We need more of this plainspeaking, and no more grovelling by the West each time it meets self-created poor people from the East who claim that the West is somehow responsible for the pathetic condition of the "East".

True, there was imperialism. True, there was a problem in the world before 1950. But that was fixed. SIXTY YEARS AGO. Two generations ago!

At that point Nehru refused to listen to Shenoy. He refused to listen to Friedman. India therefore made its RELATIVE position worse than it was before independence. The facts speak for themselves (see book chapter cited below). The SOCIALISTS OF INDIA ruined India, not the British imperialists.

Read this book chapter: "One Polity, Many Countries: Economic Growth in India, 1873-2000” by Gregory Clark, University of California, Davis and Susan Wolcott, University of Mississippi. The chapter was published in Dani Rodrik (ed.), Frontiers of Economic Growth. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003. [details] (download it here.)

This paper shows that though India started lagging behind the West from after 1700 or so – and kept losing ground till 1947 – it still had a per capita income of nearly 15 per cent of the West till 1930. After that its relative share collapsed to 10 per cent or less of Western income, and has REMAINED THERE since independence. The data in the paper only go till 2000 and the situation now is slightly better. But that is because we have started abandoning socialism. Not because the British imperialists were oppressing us till 1991! They had left long before that!

Because of NEHRUVIAN (Keynesian) socialism, India therefore did not achieve the economic dividend from independence that it should have.

It is time for India and China to grow up into adults and learn to take responsibility for themselves and their self-created plight. Let me add that it is is also very WRONG on their part to blame the current generation in the West for what some people in the West might have done long ago. Please grow up, India, China!

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5 Responses to “India, you are FULLY responsible for your performance since 1947, NOT the British who left long ago”

Sanjeev Sabhlok says:

July 24, 2011 at 1:58 am

#India, you are FULLY responsible for your performance since 1947, NOT the British who left… http://goo.gl/fb/qc01j
All Indian Blogs says:

July 24, 2011 at 4:07 am

India, you are FULLY responsible for your performance since 1947, NOT the British who left… http://goo.gl/fb/GOpF9
Sanjeev Sabhlok says:

July 25, 2011 at 7:13 am
- Rahul Rvd
  
  I'm no Austrian neither am I a Progressive, I'm a minarchist. I would find the position that the British are to be absolved of all responsibility is plain laughable. The British created the Babu system, and the colonial hangover of requiring power distance between the governed and their overlords was what resulted in the leviathan state. India-vidual responsibility is a great mantra, but to white-wash history into reductive talking points is not going to lead to any discernible solutions and only to more populism.
  
  16 hours ago ·
- Sanjeev Sabhlok Sixty four years have gone by, Rahul. When do you propose to grow up and take responsibility?
  
  14 hours ago ·
- Rahul Rvd
  
  That's an interesting response. I was in no way absolving responsibility of Indian governments or even the supposed responsibility of someone like me who has been in a different country since their teens. My point , if it was not clear, was that a distortion of history is not going to get us anywhere different than where we are now…and where we are now is a result of distortion of history from Marx on down. And the fact that I have actively tried to promote liberty grounded ideologies amongst my peers and others here , tells me at least , that I have tried to take some of the responsibility that I have owed. I don't believe in falsifying facts and "it is all the British's fault" is as much a social distortion as "there is no fault of the British".
  
  11 hours ago ·
- Sanjeev Sabhlok Sixty four years, Rahul. Let people take responsibility. Those countries that took responsibility (like Singapore, S.Korea) flourished within 10 years of opening their economy. India struggles because it INSISTS on retaining colonial policies, coupled with socialist policies. Who is to blame if the patient REFUSES to take the necessary medicine?
  
  11 hours ago ·
- Rahul Rvd
  
  I do not disagree that it s time for Indians to take responsibility for the government's historical ineptitude and individual apathy towards it. Infact I completely find myself with agreement on that, it is the rewriting of history that I find distasteful.
  
  Not to belabor the point but countries like Singapore and South Korea are not good examples to compare India to. Singapore is geographically central to several trade routes and is minuscule compared to India . South Korea is quite different than India as well because it has a homogeneous identity, the self-esteem of individuals is not as linked to their ethnic, religious or regional backgrounds, the existence of a Confuscian work-ethic, strongly collectivist mores and institutions like a compulsory draft, have made it a significantly different country than India.
  
  Since we are discussing it from the perspective of colonialism, a better example would be to setup a sliding scale of nations that have been colonized (by the British). You would end up having the African colonies on one end of the spectrum and Australia/Canada on the other, with India somewhere in between.
  
  The British left India with wonderful institutions but they also left a legacy of "desirable ethnicities" (a result of 1857 revolution), Babu-dom, centralized planning etc. The societal cache of a "British education" also furthered the mercantilist power-class. Moreover, the British also facilitated and continued the historical plunder of India's gold. Would it be a fabrication to state that a significant amount of precious metals in the coffers of the Iran, the Middle East and especially Britain, comes from Indian sources?
  
  With the reasons stated above, wouldn't it be reasonable to say that while they are in no way completely responsible for India's failure the colonialism of the British has played a detrimental role in shaping India's post-Independence history?
  
  That being said, it is indeed time to move past the blame game and work on the development of liberty, with an eye on the past and another on the future.
  
  10 hours ago ·
- Sanjeev Sabhlok
  
  Have you read the full blog post? Have you seen that the relative share of India to the West declined EVEN after independence? And remember, nothing stopped India from learning about Western science earlier. Just our own problem – of insularity. Please read BFN where I've explained this further. I ONLY blame India and Indians for their own fate – from the battle of Plassey onwards. Adults don't point fingers at others. They look within. It is rare to find adults in India.
  
  9 hours ago ·
- Rahul Rvd
  
  I did, the fact first came to my attention when I was reading Bernard Lewis about 6 years ago when he wrote a short snippet of world economies and the impact of colonialism on them. As a matter of principle I tend to accord the author the respect required by reading what they have written. I think you have still missed the central premise of my argument, and I will repeat it again…I have not absolved any "adult" Indian of any responsibility but to lose context and content of history for the sake of expediency is sheer demagoguery for the sake of populism.
  
  As a sidenote, Plassey and Buxar have little to do with excusing colonial legacy that followed and rather have to do with enhancing it because they essential cemented the British hold of the raw materials in the East.
  
  Recruiting individuals to causes by distorting history is unethical and is more befitting of populism rather than individual empowerment. I'm sorry that you seem to view my points in a different light but what I'm saying has little to do with the ends to liberation and everything to do with the means.
  
  9 hours ago ·
- Raju Choppella OMG…you guys are all so far away from the grass roots! This way we are only going to have a huge collection of books being written/read!! What about connecting to the grass roots…How many of you are ready to come back to India and work where it really matters!! "EASIER SAID THAN DONE"…as they say!!
  
  2 hours ago ·
- Rahul Rvd Im working in India this year. So thanks for the assumption :)
  
  2 hours ago ·
- Sanjeev Sabhlok Dear Rahul, history is made by people. Today, there is a chance to re-make history by working to reform India's governance. Instead of looking back and pointing fingers at DEAD people, look within and see how you can change India today. I look forward to your contributions instead of blaming others for the plight India finds itself in, today. Who is stopping you today? The British?
Pulkit mohan singla says:

November 9, 2012 at 9:00 am

India, you are FULLY responsible for your performance since 1947, NOT the British who left long ago http://t.co/HbU7b12p via @sabhlok
Sheeba Caroline says:

May 13, 2013 at 3:15 pm

This is an interesting read.

In my opinion, if we are working on reforming india's governance then we have to understand the root cause for it. I completely agree to what Rahul has pointed out, some reasons could be attributed to the British's policies which did impact the minds of Indians and some could be attributed to the so called socialists of India as well. Debating about it would not help much in a country that is so highly populated and widely separated in terms of ethnicity, religion etc. We have to educate people to think critically, set an example in whatever we do and personally not to encourage anything that deteriorates our country's development.