Sir, I think comparing the UK with India over time on the bases you’ve used is a misleading exercise. The politics of both places have changed so much over this period, with Britain shifting from mercantilist to capitalist to socialist. Britain, like a few other European countries, were imperialist powers with overseas possessions, which India was not. Even a unified Indian nation state on modern lines is a relatively recent phenomenon. The historical experiences of the two countries have little parallel. It would be more apt to compare India’s, or at a granular level, any of the states’ performance with other similar countries with similar histories.

The seminal event of the 20th century for much of Asia was decolonization and the formation of modern nation states. Many of the economies started from zero; those that had industrialized previously such as Japan were brought back to zero thanks to war. Most of Asia’s leading centers today such as the Asian tigers had their seminal moments in the aftermath of the Second World War.

Comparing India’s own performance as a free republic to its own past as a colony is really pointless. As you can see, it is a stagnant line until after freedom. It is like comparing the heartbeat of a baby before and after its birth - what’s the point? It would make sense to compare India’s economic performance with that of countries such as Japan, China, Thailand, Korea, Singapore etc; its contemporaries. And on that count, you don’t have to dig in much to say India has been a chronic laggard for most of its 70 years as a nation state, only beginning to be in the race now, let alone catch up. Even Pakistan had an economy galloping faster until the 1970s. You could also compare India’s performance to that of West Germany, which was also a zero economy after WW2 and became a new state only in 1949. Most of the modern wealth of nations is a product of the events after 1945.

The real divergence between even India and China started only in the 1980s, when China opened up after realizing socialism there wasn’t really doing anything. Had the Soviet Union never ended in 1991, chances are India would still have been socialist in practice. Thank God the moral argument for socialism really met an end with that. Or it hasn’t, judging by EMR’s posts. There are still some socialist geniuses like Maduro doing the rounds. Laughable.

At any rate, with a per capita GDP of less than USD 2,000 in 2017, a real exercise would be to compare India’s GDP per capita to other leading Asian countries to get a real sense of where India has got it wrong. It is convenient but pointless to blame the British, 70 whole years after they left. You don’t hear Japan lamenting about the US for their economic condition - the latter nuked them twice. The official Japanese poverty line, announced in 2011, is USD 22,000 - for a country that was nuked twice two years before India became free. You don’t hear the Koreans lamenting about the oppression of the Japanese for their economic predicament. I only hope the current and future generations of Indians look more into self-improvement rather than playing these silly blame games.

1) Most of humanity was poor until the 19th century. Most of humanity is poor today. The rapid technological innovations and medical advances, spread astonishingly rapidly thanks to modern means of transport and communication is mostly responsible for ending debilitating poverty in most parts of the world including Europe and India and must of the ROW.

You see, I don’t fault the INC too much - they were as misled as many other newly free countries were in that period, what with the Soviets painting themselves as friends of the free and what not. They inherited a British machinery of state which they were too careful not to tinker with too much lest the country fall into pieces. They were too reluctant to fundamentally alter the bureaucratic state inherited from the British. They had an ideology problem, the INC. Indian nationalism was fine, but what else. For a very long time, they considered nationalism to be on the lines of one nation, one
2) language etc. So they peddled with forcibly imposing Hindi on a majority non-Hindi population, sparking backlash from TN to Maharashtra and Bengal. They tried socialism also, as was the fashion in much of the Third World.
3) They tried forcibly shoving Muslims and Hindus together through secularism - its oddities are being laid bare today. I suspect Hindu nationalism came about as a direct rebuttal to this warped attempt at multiculturalism. There is a reason why people as different from each other as Punjab and TN wish to share a nation-state; a lack of studied animosity. I think what the INC were most engaged in was reconciliation of the various parts of India and forging a common consensus in a top-down manner. This they fundamentally failed to do in full, although they did contribute. The BJP and their allies simply built on this platform beginning in the 80s. They have reconciled themselves to the multi-lingual, multi-ethnic nature of Indians and esp. Modi has made bank on this observation. It is facile to think Indian leaders and politics grew up in vacuums; they affected one another through time.

4 )Shashi Tharoor’s exercise in oppression olympics - the Empire of Darkness - has met with great success among the gullible public who are overawed with his RP accent than with the content of his speech or prose. Most of them don’t even notice the sheer irony that a quintessential Indian Englishman is telling them about the ignominy of being under British rule. Pretentious nonsense. Don’t waste your time on him.

5) The young are not taught about British Raj? What do you think 15th of August is all about? I much prefer Republic Day than this annual exercise in chest-beating and lamenting. I even think the Dandi Salt March, the event engineered by Gandhi which crystallized imperial oppression for all to see, was more important than the British actually leaving of their own accord.

I think it it would be socially abrupt to direct, say benefit transfers, to only the poorest sections of society, identified through oppression mapping. It is true that almost all people, whether “rich” or poor in a backward area are wanting for opportunity. Not all poor are socially oppressed, or poor because of social oppression alone. It would perhaps be better to improve opportunities for the area has a whole while ensuring equal opportunity and access for everyone. For an economy its size, Indians are performing far far below their true potential.

I happen to think a shift from petroleum and plastics to traditional materials would perhaps have a significant impact on employment in traditional industries, which could improve employment and reduce poverty. Because petroleum is such an efficient resource, replacing the need for so many workers, you have the unemployment you see.
6) Maybe Mr. Lalu Yadav had a point when he imposed kulhads on Indian Rail. By no means am I a Luddite; just an observation this is.