How did one of the richest nations in the world in the 18th Century managed to transform itself into one of the poorest? Well, some of the reasons have been rather eloquently discussed in the book - An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India by Dr. Shashi Tharoor. However, if you're not much of a bibliophile and would rather consume a digital summary instead, then this short 15 minute speech by Dr. Tharoor at the Oxford University titled - British does owe reparations ought to be a rather intriguing alternative for you.
Although I'd argue, that while the British colonial rule was certainly a contributing factor but it cannot take the blame away from all the indecisions that we as a nation had taken post independence which led to India growing at the pace of a snail for decades.
The ignorance of the elite class in India towards introducing the use of machines to replace redundant human efforts meant that we as a nation were compelled to keep throwing people at problems. However, even with a population as large as India, it is not a scalable solution. The decision of the then government to take control of the critical industries meant that we could not compete on both quality and price with the rest of the world owing to inefficiencies stemming from lack of competition. Given that we had recently come out of an imperialistic regime spanning two centuries, we did not want to expose the aftermath of colonialism to any other nation. Secondly, we did not have a strong enough army to create compulsion for other nations to open up the trade for India as was the case with the methods adopted by the United States of America.
We therefore, resorted to the 3rd option i.e. a combination of capitalism and communism. However, what worked for countries in Latin America at the time of the Great Depression in the 1930s' i.e. the government taking over the key industries of the nation to ensure equitable distribution of wealth did not work for India.
Luckily, we've realised our mistakes - Strategic disinvestment of Air India and giving its control back to it's worthy private owner i.e. the Tatas' is a great step towards correcting our mistakes. And today, India is well on it's course to become one of the 3 superpowers in the world in the next couple of decades if not earlier.
After all, capitalism is all about increasing efficiency and productivity by ensuring that there is always a healthy competition to keep everyone on their toes while ensuring that Darwinism i.e. The Survival of the Fittest prevails.
Key Takeaway: Throwing people at problems is expensive both, in the near term as well as in the longer term. If there is an option to improve cost and time efficiency by a factor of 10 by leveraging a tool or a combination of tools then we should take it. That way, we can learn from the mistakes that our predecessors have committed years on end.
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