Saturday, January 24, 2015

Impact of Industrial Revolution on China and South Asia



Here's a video discussion on the subject:

Vision 2047: Political Revolutions and South Asia from WBT TV on Vimeo.

Major East-West Power Shift Since Industrial... by faizanmaqsood1010


Related Links:

Haq's Musings

Was India Ever Rich? 

Pakistan Military Industrial Revolution

China's Checkbook Diplomacy

Education Attainment in South Asia

Pakistan Needs Comprehensive Energy Policy

Social Media Growth in Pakistan

Is America Young and Barbaric?

Godfather Metaphor for Uncle Sam


Riaz Haq said...

Countries still industrialize and then deindustrialize as they become richer. However, industrial employment shares for today’s late industrializers such as China, India and Bangladesh are all below 16%, and on today’s trends seem unlikely to rise much further. Moreover, the per capita income levels at which deindustrialization kicks in have fallen from $34,000 in 1970 to around $9,000 in 2010.
These results urge a balanced approach to industrialization. They confirm that industrialization matters – when it brings jobs; but they also confirm that this is less and less likely to happen. Governments must not neglect manufacturing. Nor can they rely as heavily on it as they once did.

Riaz Haq said...

At the end of May, the Oxford Union held a debate on the motion "This house believes Britain owes reparations to her former colonies". Speakers included former Conservative MP Sir Richard Ottaway, Indian politician and writer Shashi Tharoor and British historian John Mackenzie. Shashi Tharoor's argument in support of the motion, went viral in India after he tweeted it out from his personal account. The argument has found favour among Indians, where the subject of colonial exploitation remains a sore topic. Here he gives a summary of his views:

At the beginning of the 18th Century, India's share of the world economy was 23%, as large as all of Europe put together. By the time the British departed India, it had dropped to less than 4%.



British imperialism had long justified itself with the pretence that it was enlightened despotism, conducted for the benefit of the governed. Mr Churchill's inhumane conduct in 1943 gave the lie to this myth.

The construction of the Indian Railways is often pointed to as a benefit of British rule, ignoring the obvious fact that many countries have built railways without having to be colonised to do so.

India contributed more soldiers to British forces fighting the First World War than Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa combined.

Riaz Haq said...

Aakar Patel Op Ed on Tharoor speech at Oxford Union:

Tharoor sought reparations for the Raj. These being mainly moral reparations, yes, but coming out of a conviction that the Raj was a very bad thing.
I went on a TV show on Friday (handicapped greatly by my Surat accent going up against the crispness of Tharoor’s more civilized one). I made a few points which I thought I should repeat and perhaps elaborate on. Mainly because Sunday Times of India readers probably did not watch once my mug was visible.
For me, whether the Raj was good or bad is not as important as whether it was better than what went before it. Of course it was. The British didn’t come to conquer India; it was a creeping takeover facilitated and encouraged by Indians. Gujarat was relieved when the British finally protected them from the excesses of the Marathas (who still squat on Baroda) and the incompetence of the Mughal rump. It was the Oswal Jains who financed and executed Robert Clive’s win at Plassey. They did so because the Mughal governors there were in power but incapable of leading them, even if they were not foreign.
Tharoor says that Clive looted India. True. But he also stabbed himself (with his pen-knife I understand) in the throat because of his guilt. I wish that fate for not a few of those who looted us after him. But forget that.
Tharoor touches upon the Indian contribution to the world wars as an instance where Britain owes us. The Indian sacrifices at Gallipoli, Monte Cassino and all the rest of it. I am frankly bored by the great stories of these noble contributions.
The fact is that the Indian army has historically been an army of mercenaries that became a national army overnight on August 15, 1947. It has zero history of fighting for national causes, only ever for money. Herodotus describes the clothing and weaponry of an Indian contingent in Greece hired by the Persians against the Athenians at the Battle of Plataea in 479 BC. A century later Alexander fought and massacred mercenaries in Punjab, according to Arrian.
The Jats and Marathas rode to battle for whoever paid them, as did the Rajputs. And why go back that far? General Dyer only ordered the firing at Jallianwala Bagh. Aim was taken and triggers pulled by the Gurkha Rifles and the Baloch Regiment.
If the British failed to govern India well it is because India is ungovernable. They did as good a job as might be expected of colonialists and have little to apologize for. Under the British, India’s population quadrupled for the first time in the 19th century (having only doubled each century before that according to the economist Angus Maddison). That is in my opinion purely down to Pax Britannica, the peace ensured by the Raj’s monopoly over violence. All Indians should be forced to read Sir Jadunath Sarkar’s four-volume history of the century between Aurangzeb’s death and the final defeat of the Marathas. Mother India was weeping and wounded when she went into the arms of Victoria.
India’s share of the world’s economy went down in the period of British rule, as Tharoor points out, but that was not because money was sucked out of it. We had a large share of the global economy in the age when all economies were agrarian and depended on the productivity of individual farmers.
Europe went to a different level in that period, particularly England after the Restoration and the forming of the Royal Society and the genius of Boyle, Hooke, Newton and all the rest of it. We remained where we were, and that is why it isn’t very different today, not because of the flaws in the Congress and the BJP.

Riaz Haq said...






Riaz Haq said...


Fossil Fuel CO2
Land-use CO2
Nitrous Oxide, and
Aerosols, which have a cooling effect on the climate.

Riaz Haq said...

Height, lifespan, GDP: Humanity has stagnated for most of its history

Over the past millennium, income per capita in the selected countries has increased 32-fold, from 717 US dollars per person per year around the year 1000 to 23,086 dollars in 2010. This contrasts sharply with the previous millennia, when there was almost no advance in income per capita. The figure shows that it started rising and accelerating around the year 1820 and it has sustained a steady rate of increase over the last two centuries. One of the main challenges for growth theory is to understand this transition from stagnation to growth and in particular to identify the main factor(s) that triggered the take-off.

Is the finding that there was stagnation in the standard of living until 1820 truly robust? This claim is particularly important given that mankind experienced significant technological improvements that would have been expected to increase productivity and income per person, from the Neolithic revolution to the invention of the printing press.

Two facts corroborate the idea that there was indeed stagnation over the most part of human history: first, estimates of longevity computed on specific groups across time and space do not display any trend before 1700 CE. For example, De la Croix and Licandro (2015) show using a long-running database of 300,000 famous people that there was no trend in mortality during most of human history, confirming the existence of a Malthusian stagnation epoch.

Second, body height computed from skeletal remains does not display any trend either, while height is known to depend very much on nutrition when young (Koepke and Baten, 2005). This indicates that there was no systematic improvement in nutrition over time. One has to wait until the 19th century to observe a trend in height, as witnessed by the data of the Swedish army.

The three measures of standard of living proposed here – GDP per capita, height and lifespan – are therefore in the same direction: that of stagnation for most of human history. The economic growth that we now enjoy, with its positive effects on the standard of living but also its negative effects on the environment, is therefore an unprecedented and recent phenomenon on a historical scale.