In college we used to have discussion about British Raj in India and few vehemently voiced their opinion that British Raj was the best thing that happened to India and we would have been uncivilized and utterly back word country had British not developed modern India. I always argued that it was bullshit; however that time did not have much information to put my point forward (of course due to my bad habit of not reading enough). Recently, I stumbled upon something rather interesting about economic history of India. Thanks go to Mr. Rahul Gandhi and his horrible habit of speaking without complete knowledge (know this is not new to him). In some of his speech he loosely used term “HINDU RATE OF GROWTH”. Mr. Gurumurthy (writes for The New Indian Express) was kind enough to show Mr. Gandhi what not to do when you speak. Some facts (you will find it in this article as well but in case you don’t want to read complete article) are – - In 1750 India’s share of world GDP was 24.5 per cent, China’s 33 per cent, but the combined share of Britain and the US was - believe it - just two per cent (2%). Yes only two per cent! - India’s share fell to 20 per cent in 1800; to 18 per cent in 1830; and finally crashed to 1.7 per cent in 1900, while China’s crashed to 6.2 per cent from 33 per cent. In these 150 years, the combined share of Britain and the US rose to from 2 per cent to over 41 per cent. - West by saying that in middle 19th century, the West had a lower standard of living than Asians - read Indians and Chinese. - India was the leading economic power of the world from the 1st year of the first millennium till 1700 - with 32 per cent share of world’s GDP in the first 1000 years and 28 per cent to 24 per cent in the second millennium till 1700. - China was second to India except in 1600 when China temporarily overtook India. India again overtook China in 1700. The global economic play was in the hands of India and China till 1830. - The Hindu rate of growth had kept India going as the most powerful economy of the world for 1850 years out of 2000 years. Some more facts about ancient India are - - Consumption during Akbar’s regime as being higher than in Europe - Two thousand (2000) years ago India was bankrupting Roman Egypt of its gold reserves by its export surplus - Indian merchant navy which had a fleet strength of 40,000 ships in Akbar’s time and as many as 34,000 ships before the British arrived and the Bank of International Settlements [BIS] - Between 1493 and 1930 India absorbed 14 per cent of world gold production - which meant that it earned that much export surplus for five centuries continuously. newindianexpress/opinion/article1532597.ece
Posted on: Mon, 08 Jul 2013 06:53:14 +0000