Would India have been a first world country if the Kashmir Conflict didn't exist?

[sandeep]

On 3/31/2019 at 6:52 PM, SecondSlip said:

Let's suppose that Kashmir was given to Pakistan by the British in 1947, do you believe that India would have been a first world country today in 2019?

In my opinion, I don't know if we would have become a first world country but we definitely would be in a much better state than we are currently. All the money that we had to spend in Kashmir for the past 70+ years would have been used for our own development instead. Our poverty rate would have been much lower currently if we didn't have this Kashmir conflict going on which eats a big chunk of our funds.  

I am not really an expert on this Kashmir issue but I really felt like asking this question here since I know some of you guys are very knowledgeable on this matter. 

Would love to here thoughts from the following @Gollum @Alam_dar @Muloghonto 

NO.

 

Pakistan would have found a different reason to maintain hostility against us.  End of discussion.  

[Tibarn]

On 4/4/2019 at 8:12 AM, Moochad said:

At first glance 

Racial diversity and Religious diversity seem to cause issues

Linguistic diversity is a mixed bag

Opinion diversity is good and keeps people honest.

Language only seems to have become an issue in Independent India. ie post 1947. It suggests to me that it is more of a wedge issue used by politicians in certain parts, rather than something people care as much about. 

 

Racial and "Religious" seem to have a more bloody history. 

On 4/4/2019 at 8:12 AM, Moochad said:

Are there also historians who write more sympathetically on the Mughal era economy? 

The other theory of the Mughal economy is that the Mughals were actually limited in presence outside of the major cities: villages were more affected by those in-charge of those administrative units rather than affected directly by overarching Mughal policies, and that the Mughals didn't really have much of a policy of economics. 

The only two groups who seemed to have calculated the GDP/capita it seems are these

 

The problem with some of this history research is that it follows the approved history of India where it sounds like the Mughals were actually rulers of all of India, when, in fact, they foreigners who were limited to specific parts of India for most of their existence. I suppose, one needs to be able to separate the data from different regions without using one region, ruled by one political unit, to make assumptions about another region ruled by a different political unit. 

 

On 4/4/2019 at 8:12 AM, Moochad said:

What was irrigation like in South India in comparison? 

Vijayanagar was supposedly similar to what I described above. They supposedly didn't get involved heavily in policy, during their era. The area of South India which was under their control supposedly was underdeveloped in terms of infrastructure. The individual infrastructure development was in the hands of local communities, so whatever was done, was done not at the level of the king necessarily. 

 

[Muloghonto]

On 4/4/2019 at 9:05 AM, mishra said:

Governance/Ruling System is not same as Chinese economic model. Don’t mix the two

The chinese economic model IS a direct facet of their government structure. Contrary to popular opinion, China is NOT a socialist economy, neither is it a capitalist economy. It resembles closely a fascist economy, with the only difference is, unlike Fascist Italy (best example of Fascist economy), where industrialists controlled the political class, its the political class that controls the industrialists. 
But the mechanism is the same - justice, law, rights, etc. are all steamrolled in favor of the big factory/industrialist's gains etc. and there is no recourse for the disputing party. Don't make the mistake that China's growth model is possible without a totalitarian government that clears opposition away when it comes to industrial acqusition of land, labor laws, pollution laws, etc.

[Muloghonto]

On 4/3/2019 at 4:08 PM, Tibarn said:

It's valid only from an Indian perspective or a "humanitarian" perspective. Neither of those two are based in what could realistically be expected.   The British had no requirement to develop India beyond what was useful to them: if that was 0% or 100% "development", that was their prerogative.

 

Again, India was Britain's slave, what else does one expect except what is convenient for them(the British), not Indians.

 

Everyone is free to criticize them on whatever grounds, I am arguing it is nonsensical because it was/is unrealistic to expect anything else.

 

I am replacing dog with slave here:

Again, the point is that whatever they fed the Slave, whether crumbs, a gourmet dinner, poison, or nothing at all was their prerogative. No one was going to make them feed this slave, if they didn't want to. They could have eaten the slave for all anyone else cared or could do about it. Such is the life of a slave. 

 

They indeed chose to feed this slave some crumbs. 

If the Slave wanted to eat like a Free-man, in this example the US or UK, the onus was on the Slave to become one(a Free-man).  

 

They had no responsibility to develop India beyond what was convenient for them. 

 

Numbers for 1750s: 

 

Once England took the technological leap, there was no possible advantage for India. 

Britain and France imported their cotton through trade with the US, even when the US was a free country and Britain was in possession of India as a colony.

 

During the American Civil War, in the 1860s, the Confederate Government, the South, engaged in   an embargo on cotton exports to Britain/France to coerce them into helping them during the war.  

Yes, but only when convenient for them. The British did invest and transfer technology into India in different fields, ie the famous railways, electricity, modern healthcare, etc. Those developments were still making India relatively more rich compared to the Mughal warlord economy, even if they were there to make looting easier. 

 

The examples Tharoor mentions in his book: textiles, ship-building, steel were mostly industries where Britain had a direct interest in keeping Indian production down. If they hadn't, it could have hurt industry in their home country. 

 

Other industries, for example automobile, had its origin during British rule. Tata Motors originates in 1945 and Hindustan Motors in 1942. These weren't a threat to British industry, so they didn't curtail it, even though they didn't actively promote it. If they did become a threat, then they would have been curtailed. 

 

I basically provided the rundown above. It's not like most of the countries in the world are developed. 

 

The last sentence is the truth, IMO. Who/what is diversity made of? Depending on what it is, then it can be good or bad. Diversity isn't good in and of itself, and likely vice-versa. 

 

However, the real question is whether the potential risks outweigh the potential benefits. 

Seriously, read this book of Tharoor's mentioned in this thread, particularly the economics section. One can easily get the gist of what he was trying to propagate. Mughals good, British bad.  Selectively quotes data to indulge in his hagiography. 

 

I saw that(or a similar stat) mentioned somewhere. I can't imagine Samrath Ramdas's writings would be digitized as of now. I wonder which library would have such writings. 

I honestly have no idea how technology transfer would've worked. The most practical way would've been for Indian engineers/scientists to have studied in Europe and learned the technology there and brought the idea itself here. We would have had to assemble the machinery here with our own materials however. 

 

I think there was a Indian woman from Tamil Nadu who studied medicine in the US sometime in the 1800s. She could have feasibly established a school based off of Allopathic medicine in India after her training was done, and the technology would've spread from there. 

 

I am guessing, the US would've been the country where we would've been able to send people to study such topics. I doubt after we would've threw out the Topikars if they would've let us into their countries to study science/engineering.  

 There is little chance way we were going to have an actual machine exported here. 

The Mughals banned anyone not aligned with them having weapons, but they weren't really able to enforce it. This is implied by the fact that the British had to enact the same policy, but, in the latter's case, they were actually able to enforce it. 

Agriculture has its own capital bottleneck. There was a lack of irrigation or water stores in India, at least North India, as Angus Maddison notes. One would need capital to invest in such stuff as well.  

 

Capital would always have been the bottleneck for India at independence, but I agree that depending on where the capital was focused, higher growth would've been attained.  

No need to be rude Bahman,  what about Dalits? Do they have the right to refuse accusations? Where is your inner humanity? How many Muslims have you forced to play Holi recently? Fanatic! I hope you don't murder me! 

 

I wonder how much western perceptive bias plays a role into this assessment. The western world, along with the middle east/mesopotamia, etc. are in the climate zone of ' spring/summer snow-melts/summer rains (in the Nile) leading to excess water/flood, requiring dams/canals to divert water for irrigation. 

India is a monsoon climatic zone, with the North being home to massive rivers that are, prior to modern concrete technology, practically impossible to dam/divert etc. As such, we have a plethora of seals and inscriptions from the Kanauj Triangle era, where the Rashtrakutas, Palas and the Gurjaras - especially the Palas- were known to've dug several reservoirs to collect monsoon rainwater and provide water through the dry seasons. They probably wouldn't count as irrigation in the western viewpoint but they serve the same purpose : providing water during the dry season by storing excess during the rainy season.

 

I don't know directly, but I'd be surprised if the Delhi Sultans and the Mughals completely ignored this simple and low cost, low tech method of providing water storage in the indian subcontinent. 

[kubrickian]

Only chance of India becoming first world country is if transitioned into industrial economy immediately after independence. It would have controlled population to a large extent and made it easier to improve quality of education, health care, education etc.

 

This is not something that can happen overnight though. India was not ready at that stage.

 

Edited April 6, 2019 by kubrickian

[JourneyMan]

On 4/1/2019 at 4:25 AM, Temujin Khaghan said:

First requirement for being a first world country is that atleast 80 percent of the people should be of one religion, one language - basically a nation state without any hurdles and barriers for social mobility and discrimination. Further, it should be a democratic set up unlike the Soviet Union or China.

 

If you look at Scandinavian countries, USA, Europe, Canada, south east nations, Japan, Australia, NZ, Canada - these requirements are met. 

 

Even if you force-feed Hindi down our southie throats and cut off Kashmir so that we are officially a 80 percent hindi-hindu nation, the problem of caste discrimination will still exist.

 

 

Switzerland says hello 

[Tibarn]

@Moochie @Mulo  just generally answering stuff from this thread as the site is being wonky for me right now. 

 

Here is the chart I was talking about, it was actually from an Economics Research Paper. 

 

Look at the rightmost column to see what I was talking about. Mughal India was the single most exploitative government in recorded human history. The British Indian government was also highly exploitative, although I remembered wrong in saying they were 2nd! 

 

I am unsure if the British had some bias against some of the Indian techniques of irrigation, as the criticism of the Mughal "development" of their territories wan't exclusively from the British, and the British criticism of Mughal irrigation techniques didn't prevent the British from stating that such developments were present in other areas of India. 

 

One of the big sources of this criticism of the Mughals is actually from a Marxist, mentioned earlier by me, in this thread, Irfan Habib. He has done some research on the agrarian economy of the Mughals, and his views are similar to those shown by the British.  

From the book: India Before Europe, here is a short summary of his views

This analysis of the Mughal-nobility's character is similar to what Maddison wrote

 

These views of their practices range from somewhat of a religious inspiration, see the last line from Maddison, to simple economic incentive. All of it suggests that they did little to develop the areas which they lorded over.  

 

 

The British noted that there was actual irrigation in other parts of India, from 

Professional Papers on Indian Engineering (These records are from the 1870s)

 

From reading that above, I don't think there was much of a factor of British bias in this regard. 

 

 

Edited April 6, 2019 by Tibarn

[jf1gp_1]

NO, we however would have been close to being a developed country if our population was a 4th of what it is today. 

[Moochad]

On 4/6/2019 at 5:37 PM, Tibarn said:

 

Here is the chart I was talking about, it was actually from an Economics Research Paper. 

 

Look at the rightmost column to see what I was talking about. Mughal India was the single most exploitative government in recorded human history. The British Indian government was also highly exploitative, although I remembered wrong in saying they were 2nd! 

looks like extraction ratio is the amount here would suggest that an average person in mughal india got poorer as the years went on. 

 

Modern economies based on industry created the relative wealth equality of people currently while in the past a lot of it seemed to be agriculture based, so unequal. 

[Muloghonto]

On 4/6/2019 at 2:37 PM, Tibarn said:

@Moochie @Mulo  just generally answering stuff from this thread as the site is being wonky for me right now. 

 

Here is the chart I was talking about, it was actually from an Economics Research Paper. 

 

Look at the rightmost column to see what I was talking about. Mughal India was the single most exploitative government in recorded human history. The British Indian government was also highly exploitative, although I remembered wrong in saying they were 2nd! 

I am not exactly understanding the columns, though i get the gist of what its trying to say. But what is the Gini1 and Gini2 ?

And how does inequality extraction ratio go over 100% in pre-modern world, where money, aka currency, was not that common ? I know most farmers even in Mughal era paid their taxes in the form of grain - so how does a farmer pay 112.8% ?

 

 

[coffee_rules]

Forget Kashmir, even in other parts, we got screwed by socialism and communism. Free market enterprise is what gets prosperity , even to the lower strata. Islamic rule followed by Britsh whose policy was to loot, economically as well as IP. Followed by Nehruvian policies in socialism and also commie foreign policy confined us to third world. Only a radical change can bring prosperity to all.

[someone]

If people think without the Kashmir problem, there would peace in country, thats very wrong. 

 

 

Edited April 10, 2019 by someone

[Tibarn]

On 4/9/2019 at 10:59 PM, Muloghonto said:

I am not exactly understanding the columns, though i get the gist of what its trying to say. But what is the Gini1 and Gini2 ?

And how does inequality extraction ratio go over 100% in pre-modern world, where money, aka currency, was not that common ? I know most farmers even in Mughal era paid their taxes in the form of grain - so how does a farmer pay 112.8% ?

 

 

Basically the extraction ratio is the amount which is taken from above the subsistence level:

 

Subsistence level is $300/capita. The estimated per capita GDP was $550 in 1500 by Maddison. So the government taking $250 from the citizenry would be 100% extraction ratio. A 113% extraction ration means taking another 13% above from the original 100%. That means that 13% comes from the $300 subsistence level dollars. 

 

This would mean that the citizenry could start starving/dying. 

On 4/8/2019 at 9:38 AM, Moochad said:

looks like extraction ratio is the amount here would suggest that an average person in mughal india got poorer as the years went on. 

 

Yes. See above. 

 

There is evidence that during that period, Indian's population overall experienced zero-to-little population growth. IIRC, some data suggests that India even had a population loss during that period, but I will have to re-check that. 

 

That is the hidden genocide that no one ever talks about. 

Quote

Modern economies based on industry created the relative wealth equality of people currently while in the past a lot of it seemed to be agriculture based, so unequal. 

Some economists suggest that pre-modern economies were more equal, just because a far greater share of the economy would be agriculture in that period.

 

On the other hand, in modern economies, ie those with major shares of the Industrial/Manufacturing sector, and now the Service sector, there is more opportunity to for income inequality.  A share of those people who would've been farmers have now become factory workers, chowkidaars, tech workers, scientists, etc