i've read the book. clark uses india as a case study a lot in terms of the problems with labor productivity (e.g., only 15 minutes out of 1 hour of "work" is actually spent working in early 20th cent. textile mills, so they had to employ a lot more labor, etc.). to be short about it: nehru's choice in terms of investing in the commanding heights instead of basal human capital (e.g., steel mills vs. mass literacy campaigns) probably has resulted in more human misery integrated over time than mao's 'great leap forward'. i recently read a book, The Elephant and the Dragon: The Rise of India and China and What It Means for All of Us, and the litany of statistics is minding dumbing in terms of how inferior the bottom 3/4 of india's human capital is vis-a-vis china.

Maybe because Indians then didnt have much vested in the companies typically owned and run by goras. Its not like they were making the cloth for their use, most of it would be transported back to England, so they might have felt good riddance for pittance.

Ahh, yet another tactic of the western voice to win this battle on outsourcing. Attribute laziness to Indian genes and there you have the cake and eat it forever.

Maybe because Indians then didnt have much vested in the companies typically owned and run by goras.

yes, after all indians have such fellow feelings of brotherhood across class/caste lines! i know that all the servile maids my family in bangladesh can no longer employ (i.e., my uncle complains he has to drive 100 miles from dhaka to find a young poor girl willing to clean up his family's shit) because they work in textile mills which supply wal-mart miss having fellow brown people supervising them ;-)

Ridiculing me aside, do you honestly believe that a Indian labourer had the same kind of vested interest in his work then?

Adding to the resentment of fighting a foreign rule and heavy taxes, you think the indian labour were happy to see a english company being their employers?

If I have to paraphrase the cynicism I expressed in my previous comment, 'Does anyone who read the book felt that the book written by Gregory got an agenda to undermine the outsourcing movement'.

Adding to the resentment of fighting a foreign rule and heavy taxes, you think the indian labour were happy to see a english company being their employers?

nationalism is the luxury of the affluent. do you think it is a coincidence that men like ambedkar were a bit suspicious about the intentions and interests of the self-declared native elites who would push aside the english? the peshwa's dismissed the mahar's from their armies because they were unclean, while the british recruited them (and in places like madras they enforced the right of untouchable soldiers to enter brahmin areas). that doesn't mean that the british weren't racist, or they didn't often reinforce native prejudices and oppressive systems, but the whole white vs. brown angle is way too simplistic. workers are interested in the wage they bring home and the material conditions in which they live, not racial productivity.

If I have to paraphrase the cynicism I expressed in my previous comment, 'Does anyone who read the book felt that the book written by Gregory got an agenda to undermine the outsourcing movement'.

clark is a conventional economist from what i know, so of course he favors free trade (of capital and labor). there's nothing in the book which implies that outsourcing is bad, he simply notes that labor productivity in many third world countries is low. their comparative advantage is in low wages. this is pretty well known.

btw, this doesn't mean that labor productivity is stationary and fixed in stone. china had the same problems as india in the attempts to expand in industry, chinese workers simply wouldn't focus just like indians. obviously that's changed somewhat today. why? look at basic literacy and health statistics for china, they blow the median brown away (though not necessarily places like kerala or sri lanka). the focus on the 'talented 10th' of browns in terms of IITs, heavy industry and what not from on high in the 20th century is going to hurt big time.

I haven't read Gregory's book, but I would hope there would be an analysis of the manufacturing sector in India today. Still woefully underdeveloped to be sure, but with a few success stories that should be examined to compare and contrast productivity. The question would then be, eliminating external factors like abysmal transportation & power infrastructure, how productive are workers at Arvind Mills denim export business, Ford India for example

louiecypher, the book is actually more fixated on the period between 1200 and the productivity "lift off" in the 19th century when the seeds for the affluent consumer lifestyle were laid. there's not that much about contemporary macroeconomic trends. rather, the focus is on figuring out why england broke out of the malthusian trap first of all the world's societies.

I can't believe clark's one paper, which is by no means accepted withing econ (or econ history) circles has attained the status of stylized fact. there are several possible criticisms of which i'll pick one big one: data, data, data. clark has used three compiled sources for india (a house of commons commitee report and 2 U.S. government reports) and there is no reason to believe these date are comparable to the much richer, detailed data that he has for the UK (he himself elides this difficulty in the original paper).
if you think about it, there is just so much variation in productivity within textiles in a given country and clark (who has basically no standard errors in his entire JEH paper) does not (perhaps cannot given his data, but nevertheless) tell us whether the difference in mean productivity is even statistically significant.

at bottom, to just compare a non-random selection of aggregate firm data from one country to dissimilar data from anotehr country and attribute differences in their productivity to labour inefficiencies is a mighty leap and one that no modern day economist could make in any peer-reviewed journal.

yes, the data's crappy, but then acknowledge that rather than hoist your pet interpretation to the status of accepted wisdom.

badstatistics,

1) i think you are right that clark should have published more papers in journals fine tuning his ideas

2) some of the arguments sound like looking for the keys under the street lamp because that's where the light is. i.e., one reason he focuses on england is simply that there is a crap load of data sets one can retrieve.

3) for a non-economist like me i did enjoy his elucidation of the 'malthusian trap.' i knew a lot of the stuff about nutrition and leisure time from biological anthropology, but it was interesting to see another angle.

4) anyone who wants to read up on clark's stuff can read this paper or track this weblog.

5) his genetic arguments didn't persuade me, mostly because he really has no model (though he does allude to basic quant. genetics).

btw, economists with ideologies are as different as brad delong and tyler cowen seem to like the book. so though i respect any SM economists who thrash clark's work, i have to say that the rather serious engagement it seems to be receiving in the econosphere implies to me that it isn't a piece of crankery (despite my admitted love of p-values i acknowledge that would be gibberish to the general audience).

I don't know so much about the "free trade agreement" between India and England..... I was brought up on the version of history (don't know how objective the books were, maybe they were Marxist/ nationalist) that while Britain had almost no duty on the import of Indian cotton, there were heavy taxes on importing Indian finished cloth, mill goods etc. ..... which would explain why industry never took off... any idea about the same?

I think a large part of the differences can be explained by
a) Environment
b) Migration

Environment
In India a worker lost his job, he may have a little less to eat but that was it.
In UK you lost your job and could not have heat in the house and were hungry, you died.
I think this is more apparent as you go further south in India, where life is much more even keeled.
i.e. Greater rainfall, year round crops. The driving force for increased productivity in modern society, is the desire of consumer goods (or the ability of their children to have consumer goods).

Migration
The sentence that the indian worker being surrounded by his relatives is telling.
It means the workers were from the surrounding areas. Losing a job was not life threatening.
They probably had a extended family support network.
In UK in contrast it is well known that there was migration into the Industrial Cities.
Workers did not have a support network. Hence, motivation for hard work.
As time went on a support network was created, the union.

The environment/extended family thesis is observable in the US for say the 3rd generation white americans.
In the north-east large cities neither a warm environment or extended family exist. Higher productivity.
In north smaller towns, have greater amount of extended families. Productivity drops relative to big cities.
In the south extended families and a mild environment contribute to a slower pace of life and even lesser productivity.

my uncle complains he has to drive 100 miles from dhaka to find a young poor girl willing to clean up his family's shit) because they work in textile mills which supply wal-mart miss having fellow brown people supervising them ;-)

That may be true, but India saw a wave of industrial strikes, particularly in the textile industrty, in the early 20th century. Most of these were related to the extremely low wages the workers were paid, and the working conditions. Part of the 'puzzling' behavior might have been a lack of work ethic, but the other part probably was simply that they were pissed off.

"January 1919 witnessed the first great mill strike when 150,000 workers stopped work. The strike lasted for 11 days; the workers' demand for increased wages were conceded. Then followed a series of strikes (eight in January and seven in February) in the railway workshops, mints, dockyard, enqine-ring works, etc. The strikes were shortlived; as the demands for higher wages were granted...The fourth wave commenced with another great mill strike on January 2, 1920, which lasted a month. Approximately 150,000 workers struck for higher wages, shorter hours and other concessions. The industrial discontent spread to railway workshops, oil installations, dockyards, engineering works, municipal employees, tramway workers and even tailors and cutters. The strikes, which were chiefly for increased wages. were mostly successful. (link)"

sbarrkum, one of clark's main points is that prior to 1800 all societies were on the malthusian margin. that is, any society with excess resources just swallowed it up with increased population growth. so mild and salubrious climate of south india wouldn't have resulted in a higher income or more flexibility in terms of choices, but rather a higher population density.

It is probably a result of a more relaxed ,less cutthroat culture over the centuries in India. Land was relatively plenty in those days. Needs were simpler. Add to that the fact that whoever the employer was - British or Mughal invader, or some High Caste Zamindar, you had the factors responsible for a lack of ownership of the work done by the worker. How else can one explain how the typical Indian worker is hard working outside India and that includes productivity.

And if you want productive indians at work, just go to a roadside tea stall and see the guys work their magic.

Just throwing out thoughts. I have not done any real research on this.

one thing to note: the nutritional data does not suggest plentitude and relaxation in south asia prior to the arrival of british. yes, there was more land, but the productivity was much lower for a variety of reasons. as more land was cleared (e.g., eastern bengal) more inputs could be thrown into the mix, but the population always grew to match it. the problem isn't that people didn't work hard, but the type of labor necessary for the farm doesn't always transplant well to a regimented factory. e.g., if you have 15 factor steps and an error in one step could cause it all to be for naught you need a high degree of precision and accuracy.

Vinod, thx for the post, and Razib, thx for the insightful comments.

Gregory, Diamond, the "institutionalists"--isn't it all a bit reminiscent of the homeopaths, butchers, faith-healers, etc. before modern medicine--I'm glad people are working on understading this important topic, just doutful the
ultimate answer will look much like any present theory...

There's also the "book-consciousness" theory:

http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2006/08/book-consciousness.html

Gregory Clark first examined this question 20 years ago. Here is an interesting alternative explanation.

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/seminars/history/indian_cotton_mills4.pdf

cookiebrown, Is a peer-reviewed version of Bishnupriya Gupta's paper available?

I don't know for, but I assume it is, as he has published a number of papers in the field. He teaches at the University of Warwick in the U.K., a very well regarded university, especially in the social sciences, and is an economic historian of some standing.

Interestingly for members of SM, he has also done work on child labor in the United States around the 1900s, which could provide a useful point of comparison in the debate about child labor in the Subcontinent (and elsewhere, of course).

Should read: I don't know for sure....

Another interesting and accessible paper for us layfolk (no offence, SM economists) is this one on historical wage differentials between Europe and Asia, where he and his co-author, Stephen Broadbent look at whether wage differentials existed even before the Industrial Revolution put India and other traditional artisanal economies at a huge competitive disadvantage.

Grrr.

Broadbent.

Broadberry.

I give up. [goes off to coffee machine]

Greg Clark gave a talk in 1998 in my departmental seminar series on the productivity paper. It was a pretty frustrating exercise. He did a reasonable job with whatever data he had although he made some heroic assumptions if I remember correctly. To take one example for instance, the cotton yarn that was woven in India was short staple, unlike the long staple used in the US, and that takes longer to weave. Greg assumed an arbitrary number for the time differential.

I think his result that labor productivity in India was lower than that in the US was interesting. I think he refers to labor productivity though and not total factor productivity. (Please correct me if I am wrong, this was a long time ago) and the former can be affected by capital intensity. In other words labor productivity may be lower in factory A compared to factory B if it uses fewer machines than factory B. Calculating total factor productivity is harder since one needs more data.

I enjoyed the talk but I found Greg's justification for the "Indians are lazy" argument very frustrating. I asked him about the role of the trade union movement in Bombay at this time, and he had simply not considered it. I told him about the literature on the Bombay labor movement at this time. One problem in a country with a labor force which is in transition from agriculture is that the labor force still retains ties to the village and is not perfectly attached to the jobs. Recruiters went to villages to get workers. There was a problem that workers would leave around harvest or for social/cultural events to their village. Mills therefore "overstocked" on labor and this could show up as lower productivity.

I am trying to remember some literature on the trade union movement and recruiting for the industrial labor force (Its early in the morning and mutineers should remember that while I am not quite an Auntie, I am slowly getting there!). One article which stands out is by Chitra Subramanium in the Economic and Political Weekly. I will try and think of more.

When I asked Greg about this, he said that "I have been to these textile mills in Delhi. The workers were sleeping under the machines!" I am sure this is true, but I don't think Greg went to the textile mills in the 1930s. In the 1970s these mills were close to bankruptcy and had been nationalized. Greg was visiting a "sick" mill, which should have been shut down but due to bizarre Govt of India policy was still running. So this was a silly response to the question.

Bottom line in my opinion: I think Greg did a good job in assembling some data and showing an interesting fact. I am not 100% convinced of the fact and his explanation of the fact did not convince me at all. He is a serious historian though so I do not mean to cast aspersions on his scholarship or motives. I just have a difference of opinion with him.

PS Bishnupriya Gupta is a woman!

nehru's choice in terms of investing in the commanding heights instead of basal human capital (e.g., steel mills vs. mass literacy campaigns) probably has resulted in more human misery integrated over time than mao's 'great leap forward'

Thats truly incredible. I just finished this book on Mao and Mao's insanity during the 'Great Leap' was nonpareil.

I would imagine that the impact of the Great Leap was not as devastating because the policy was mostly reversed within a few years, while Nehru's policy went on for decades and the institutions/allocation of funds set up then are still in existence.

Have to go in a couple of mins, but its interesting to see speculation (provocative though it may me) backed up by fragmentary evidence given the status of well established argument. Quoting badstatistics:

at bottom, to just compare a non-random selection of aggregate firm data from one country to dissimilar data from another country and attribute differences in their productivity to labour inefficiencies is a mighty leap and one that no modern day economist could make in any peer-reviewed journal.

those who know the import of the above should immediately stop giving his interpretation much credence. On the other hand it is an interesting proposition, so its worth wondering what kind of available evidence may shed some light on it.

NotQuiteAuntieYet, I am impressed. Thanks.

You are very welcome Nina! And its not so impressive really.. just what I do for a living. Now what you do (for a living?) on the other hand is truly impressive!

NotQuiteAuntieYet, I am impressed. Thanks.

You are very welcome Nina! And its not so impressive really.. just what I do for a living. Now what you do (for a living?) on the other hand is truly impressive!

i like to call this the "mutual admiration society"

at bottom, to just compare a non-random selection of aggregate firm data from one country to dissimilar data from another country and attribute differences in their productivity to labour inefficiencies is a mighty leap and one that no modern day economist could make in any peer-reviewed journal.

“Why Nations Fail: Managerial Decisions and Performance in Indian Cotton Textiles, 1890-1938.” (with Susan Wolcott). Journal of Economic History, 59(2) (1999): 397-423.

I think the article (which the argument in the book is based on, I believe)was published in the Journal of Economic History which is peer reviewed. Not that I think you shouldn't be sceptical though.

Well, whether Indians were lazy or not, the fact remains that under British rule, most Indians are dirt poor and mostly uneducated with no prospects for upward mobility unless they were descendants of parasite local princes. In independent India, the absolute number of dirt poor people has declined steadily, if not at the pace we would like, over the last 60 years.

As for Nehruvian socialism, I will stick my neck out and say that for all its problems, it served a very important need: self-reliance in food, attempted self-reliance in high-tech industry (for those days) like steel, etc. Which is why we did not end up like Pakistan: with Mercedeses on the streets of Karachi and an inability to produce so much as a pin locally.

(OK, exaggerating about Pakistan, but you get the idea). Also, and this is from someone who has seen the Indian education system up close, warts and all (being an army brat, I moved all over the country and changed 8 schools): the educational reforms of the late 1960s were great! Not only did we ratchet up the standards of math and science, but even history and English textbooks became more interesting (if you were fortunate enough to be under the CBSE Board and if you were inclined to the humanities, as I was). So from studying the exploits of Grace Darling and Greyfriars Bobby in Grade I, my horizons expanded with the new textbooks. I read extracts from Alan Paton's _Cry the Beloved Country_ and Saki (H.H. Munro) among others. In Hindi, I read Meera's poetry along with the modernists like Premchand and Harivansh Rai Bacchan. And finally, there is a link between the current (however restricted) prosperity and the creation in the 1960s of top-notch technical and educational institutions like the Indian Institutes of Technology, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, central universities and the system of Kendriya Vidyalayas that helped education spread into the interior. None of these existed prior to independence. These were all the creation of post-independent India. Is there more to be done? Of course, there will always be work to be done even if a dozen people struggle to feed themselves. But all was not wonderful under the British (except for a select few) no matter what people like Niall Ferguson say. As Indians we should never doubt the benefits of our independence.

Adding to the resentment of fighting a foreign rule and heavy taxes, you think the indian labour were happy to see a english company being their employers?

Most textile mills during that period were in Bombay and were owned by Indian families like the thakarseys, kasliwals, tatas, ruias, wadia, khatau, kilachand.

I would imagine that the impact of the Great Leap was not as devastating because the policy was mostly reversed within a few years, while Nehru's policy went on for decades and the institutions/allocation of funds set up then are still in existence.

I think the 14 million dead (officially) and upto 43 million (due to famine caused by Great Leap) would bed to disagree.

I perused the article NotQuiteAuntieYet cited quickly (sorry, another class, and students waiting). The data is not very good, but I am inclined to buy the Bombay story (about low labor productivity); however the argument as a whole, that India could not capitalize on cheap labor because of low productivity is crazy on various levels. There are a a few other factors that account for this...British policy being one of them (eg. compare the performance of steel mills, started for the first time around that time)as Tomlinson has noted...sorry gotta go had so many more factors to mention...

And speaking of strikes, I think Mahatma Gandhi was very active in intervening in the Ahmedabad textile strike of 1918 where he urged Indian mill owners to give in to the workers' demands for higher pay, etc. And Indian ownership of industry only really came into its own during the First World War when communication with Britain was disrupted by the German navy, forcing the British India government to turn more to local manufacturers, especially to provision the troops in Iraq (then part of the Ottoman Empire) and other parts of the Middle East.

Most textile mills during that period were in Bombay and were owned by Indian families like the thakarseys, kasliwals, tatas, ruias, wadia, khatau, kilachand.

Yes, and No.

A lot of mills were British owned too, all over India. Some examples: Elgin Mills, Cawnpore Woollen Mills, Army Cloth Manufacturing...wagehera, wagehera.

Most importantly, they were setup within the British setup, rules, and regulations, and framework of English Industrial revolution - totally alien to Indian culture, and way of life at that time.

NotAuntieYet has raised some very valid points.

And finally, there is a link between the current (however restricted) prosperity and the creation in the 1960s of top-notch technical and educational institutions like the Indian Institutes of Technology, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, central universities and the system of Kendriya Vidyalayas that helped education spread into the interior. None of these existed prior to independence. These were all the creation of post-independent India.

Sharmishtha, hello. This is, of course, the standard argument made by those who defend the policies of Nehruvian socialism. I used to be more sympathetic to this line of thinking earlier, than I am now.

There were at least two solid steel plants in India before independence - the Tata plant at Jamshedpur, and the Indian Iron & Steel Works at Bhadravati, now in Karnataka - and both were private sector. Both these were established in the early 20th century, but even before that, in the 19th Century, there were smaller plants such as the Bengal Iron Works at Asansol.

Similarly, BITS Pilani, Banaras Hindu College of Engg, Roorkee, Indian Instt of Science etc were phenomenally good engineering schools during the 1940s already - before a single IIT had been set up.

Private Indian capital had also started an aeronautical industry - the Hindustan Aircraft of Walchand Hirachand was started in 1940 (admittedly during WW-II, but it was still private, and was major high-tech for its time). As well, Tata had started an Airlines much earlier, perhaps 1930s. Both these were later nationalized, and their private origins largely forgotten until now!

There were any number of hospitals and good medical schools in India before Independence too, some by the Tatas, others like CMC Vellore etc.

The point is that an argument can be made that the enormous investments channeled through the public sector as a result of Nehruvian socialism may have been wasteful in themselves, and crowded out much other productive investment which could have occured in the private sector. In addition, the peculiar 'license permit raj' froze many monopolies in place, and created new ones, aside from creating a crony capitalistic rent-seeking economy.

These arguments point out some inconvenient things, and frankly, I was much less sympathetic to them at one time. As for the comparison with Pakistan, I agree that India's development stategy did result in a large middle class, employed in wasteful, nepotistic state-run enterprises - while Pakistan's strategy created a rapacious crony-capitalistic class ('the fifteen families that owned all of Pakistan') and an equally nepotistic Mercedes-driving upper-middle class. Each strategy created entrenched interests which looked down on the other's value system and resulting political economy, and both need reforming.

Most importantly, they were setup within the British setup, rules, and regulations, and framework of English Industrial revolution - totally alien to Indian culture, and way of life at that time.

Kush (and notauntie...) have put their finger on something fundamental. Indian merchants and businessmen were not allowed to function autonomously during british rule...the comparison is clearer when you look at american merchants immediately after independence. in fact if you look at the indian railways, the lines/routes completely bypassed traditional (indigenous) commercial regions (the comparison with the u.s. could not be starker, train routes in the u.s. were completely dictated and run by american businessmen); in fact some marwari and gujarati businessmen (who wanted to be a part of the project) did complain but were powerless and completely ignored. for the rest of the story, await my book...

" at bottom, to just compare a non-random selection of aggregate firm data from one country to dissimilar data from another country and attribute differences in their productivity to labour inefficiencies is a mighty leap and one that no modern day economist could make in any peer-reviewed journal.

“Why Nations Fail: Managerial Decisions and Performance in Indian Cotton Textiles, 1890-1938.” (with Susan Wolcott). Journal of Economic History, 59(2) (1999): 397-423.

I think the article (which the argument in the book is based on, I believe)was published in the Journal of Economic History which is peer reviewed. Not that I think you shouldn't be sceptical though."

I am sorry. I should look at this paper. I was quoting from his JEH piece from 1987 (and also the responses by Wilkins) and the only point I was trying to make was that in the past 10 years the bar for how one makes a _causal_ argument using data in mainstreaam economics has been set considerably higher than it was previously. I very much doubt that the _empirical_ part of that paper would convince most empirical micro-economists today (or perhaps even then).

Essentially, I think that Clark's argument is provocative, but the provocativeness comes from his leaps from data to conlcusion and are not in the data themselves. while these leaps are interesting, they should be taken as such and not presented as a stylized fact as they are in his latest book.

really, the best way to answer this is to collect historical firm level data from the bombay mills in as comparable a form to the UK data as possible. there are some people actively working on the mills (tom asher i think is the latest in a long line) and using them to exploit the archival data (i hear that some of these old mills have very detailed production data) to write a paper. perhaps an interested grad student could be persuaded?

By the way I believe Prasannan Parthasarathi has done some work on the weavers of South India (though I think his work goes back to the beginning of the colonial era); it would be interesting to see whether some of Clark's speculations apply (or are plausible) in relation to that part of India.

Essentially, I think that Clark's argument is provocative, but the provocativeness comes from his leaps from data to conlcusion and are not in the data themselves. while these leaps are interesting, they should be taken as such and not presented as a stylized fact as they are in his latest book.

I agree completely. Thats part of the problem with writing books (rather than articles) in Economics though. For some reason an argument in an article is refuted or challenged but once it appears in a book, it seems set in stone. Same thing with Freakonomics. Steve Levitt wrote some interesting papers, other people refuted them in other academic articles, but as soon as the book appeared it became gospel truth.

I wonder why that happens.

ok, i read the first few pages of clark's 1999 paper and it seems to have more disaggregated data than the 87 piece. so, will have to read this paper to see if my criticism still stands.

meanwhile, a more recent paper that attempts to do cross-country comparisions in productivity in a careful, rigorous manner is http://personal.lse.ac.uk/sutton/auto_component_printroom_version3.pdf

the paper compares auto component manufacturers in india to "best practices" and tries to ensure that apples are being compared to apples. as is usual, it finds _huge_ spreads in productivity in india (so the mean productivity leves are very imprecisely estimated) and also lower mean levels.

To quote sutton's summary:
Differences among Indian firms are extremely large. A simple measure of labour
productivity (no. of machines produced per man-year) shows a difference among
Indian producers of a factor of more than 6.
(b) The best level of productivity achieved by any Indian producer is somewhat less than
half the minimum level achieved by the foreign firms surveyed.
One implication of these findings is that it may be worth undertaking further comparisons
among Indian firms, with a view to disseminating 'Indian best practice'.
(c) The productivity gap between the leading Indian producer, and the foreign firms
surveyed, is not as wide as the gap in wage rates, so that labour costs per machine arelower for the Indian producer. However, labour inputs constitute only a small part of
total unit costs, so that the corresponding advantage to Indian producers in terms of unit
production costs is small, and this small advantage is easily outweighed by even very
minor shortcomings in quality.

4. Comparisons of quality between two machine tools are notoriously problematic, since
it is usually the case that different machines are purchased with different uses in
mind, so a ‘fair’ comparison is difficult. To minimize the difficulty, we identified 50
Indian users who operate an Indian CNC lathe or vertical machining centre side by
side with a foreign equivalent machine, in the same production process. We inquired
in considerable detail about the relative merits of each machine, both in terms of
technical characteristics and in terms of service backup etc.
5. The main findings in respect of quality were:
(a) On technical performance, there was a small but significant quality gap in favour
of the imported machine.
(b) On service characteristics, there was a small but significant gap in favour of the
Indian machine.
(c) The most striking finding arose when we proceeded to pin down the source of
this difference in service characteristics. Here, there are two key elements, the
speed of response of service personnel when called, and the quality of service
provided on arrival. Indian firms out-scored foreign rivals in terms of the speed
of response when called, but - crucially - they scored less well than foreign firms
in terms of the quality of the service provided on arrival. The small net quality
advantage noted in point (b) above reflects the fact that the advantage of speedy
response slightly outweighs the relative shortcoming in service quality.

a couple of corrections: the sutton paper i linked to is not about autocomponents but about lathes and has a tiny sample size (8 indian firms, 2 japanese and 2 taiwanese) so some of the same statistical criticisms as before clerly apply. the pro is that they are trying as much as possible to compare apples to apples so some of the more egregious kinds of comparisions clark indulges in are not done here ...

re: great leap fwd vs. lack of investment in human capital in india. look at kerala and look at bihar. you have an enormous variation without india in terms of human capital. no offense to anna & v-man but i don't think the malayalis start out with better genetic capital than biharis. there are contingent historical differences in culture and so on. but it clear that kerala shows that high rates of literacy are realizable in india, and the low rates of literacy (and you know the "official" rates generally have a low bar) are going to cause a problem in the 21st century when india tries to yank the bottom 3/4 of the country upward economically. if it was a zero-sum world where one had to have fewer IITs for greater literacy because of finite time and funds what would you choose? i'd choose the latter. the indian elite is terrorizing the knowledge classes of the USA via outsourcing, but browns are the largest group of semi-starved and developmentally 'tarded people in the world because of the abjectness of the poverty on a mass scale. silicon valley and infosys millionaires can't erase that. india is on its way to being a mega-brazil.

a couple of corrections: the sutton paper i linked to is not about autocomponents but about lathes and has a tiny sample size (8 indian firms, 2 japanese and 2 taiwanese) so some of the same statistical criticisms as before clerly apply. the pro is that they are trying as much as possible to compare apples to apples so some of the more egregious kinds of comparisions clark indulges in are not done here ...

Another way to look at it would be to say that the Sutton paper is more of a "natual experiment" (i.e. do not look at it statistically); they are trying to control for as many factors as possible; in other words, instead of going for statistical control, they are trying to get as close to real control as possible. that is what people do when they perform experiments, so I'm not sure whether a statistically based criticism is valid.

Chachaji, hello to you too. Regarding BITS Pilani, BHU, etc, you are right. But they were individual oases, drops in the ocean as it were. After independence, the Indian state did not sideline these institutions but infused cash into them. For example, I believe the Tata Institute in Mumbai is essentially a joint venture, with the Indian state providing cash but agreeing to let it be run as an autonomous institution. In any case, Nehru and Homi Bhabha were intellectually not hostile to each other. But with the creation of the IIT's and the central universities after independence, we had a *system* that allowed scholars to feel a part of a broad academic community and that allowed students to feel that they were getting an education that was organized across the country on similar lines. I believe the CBSE Board was one of the best inventions in the Indian education system. In my childhood moves from school to school in very small towns, one thing that stayed fairly constant in the CBSE schools I attended (alas, not all my schools were CBSE)was the curriculum. Do you have any idea what a boon that was to a nomadic family? My teachers were not always imaginative but the books were always aimed at the higher-middle rather than at the lowest common denominator.

Sharmishta,

Your post makes me want to run out and read all the CBSE texts!

Clark uvach:

"Why could Indian textile mills not make much profit even though they were in a free trade association with England which had wages five times as high?"

Free trade?? Really?? I guess captive and guranteed market had nothing to do with their success.

Even then the British were paid 5 times as much but they were able to "compensate" that via their higher "productivity" and "superior culture", but now they cant compensate the wage difference and losing jobs to India and other nations ??? Did their culture deteriorate or productivity??

Chachaji, hello to you too. :: In my childhood moves from school to school in very small towns, one thing that stayed fairly constant in the CBSE schools I attended (alas, not all my schools were CBSE)was the curriculum. Do you have any idea what a boon that was to a nomadic family?

Sharmishtha, I'm an Air Force brat! Like you, I went through eight schools before graduating high school (four were before graduating first grade, though). All the schools were CBSE. Just BTW, there was a similar system in place before independence - it catered largely to children of British army and civil officials, who too, would often be transferred from place to place in India. Pakistan, incidentally, retained that system whole, and Pakistani elite children still attend them. In India, that system survived for probably the first twenty-five years, after which it was slowly modified beyond recognition.

The function of the CBSE textbooks (NCERT to be precise) in the social sciences was largely to indoctrinate the young in the 'central tenets' of Nehruvian 'secularism', 'socialism', 'non-alignment' etc, and encourage their uncritical acceptance, as if they were laws of nature. In the physical and mathematical sciences, the CBSE/NCERT textbooks were badly written, poorly produced, and sometimes altogether wrong. Perhaps post-1980s, they have been improved. My NCERT physics textbooks were so bad, that I had no option but to read my cousins' books written for other State board exams, and 'foreign books'! Sorry, had to get that in to counter the uncritical adulation of NCERT/CBSE I am sensing here. Addressing your other points will take us too far afield in this thread, I'm afraid!

I think the primary reason for the productivity differentials across cultures is work ethic. Only those societies that can inculcate a strong work ethic among the population can expect to have a highly productive workforce that can rise to the competitive demands of globalization. The bottom line is all about work ethic as this more than anything else shapes attitudes to work, motivation, efficiency and a lot more. Though the total work time i.e. the number of minutes worked per day varies considerably from one country to another, higher work time need not necessarily lead to greater output. Total Work Time

lies, damned lies and statistics

culture - genes - wealth - luck/destiny?

Genes dictate the sort of civilizational culture?
Or Culture influences the genetic makeup?
Or Genes/culture creates the wealth?
Or is wealth a matter of luck/destiny/happenstance?
Or the dominant culture is the one that is propagated by the wealthy/influential?

Different cultures/races have been influential/wealthy during different periods of human history. Does this say something abt the above questions?

What utter nonsense. Is this joker considered an economist? When did this Nazi obtain a time machine ? If his conclusion is IST - how about doing a contemporary study. There is an IT industry that competes on a global scale using the same tools as everyone. Use them as the basis for a productivity study. Again as anyone who a basic understanding of business - productivity can be viewed from many angles. India has serious problems but this kind of shoddy work has but one purpose - to perpetuate the myth of the superior British worker.
As someone who has managed workers from various parts of the world in multiple industries, there is hardly a difference. Poor management results in low productivity.

Razib - I can confirm that the Biharis are no less intelligent than the Keralites. Have managed both.

I dont think he has factored in a simple reality - time is treated differently in various cultures - how is one method better than the other? (Hofstede / Trompenaars). Pray what is the difference between a social scientist and a Bible swearing Christian. One claims Jesus as the saviour and the other statistics.

The function of the CBSE textbooks (NCERT to be precise)

Off the topic

Technically, no school in India under CBSE board is under any obligation to NCERT books except Kendriya Vidhyas (since they are funded by the Central Government). They only have to cover course material required by CBSE exams, and get their students passed irrespective of the book used. More than often (very often), schools under CBSE framework use their choice of textbooks. Also, students prepping for JEE, Medical exams go on their own for the quality books through in-school, off-school coaching, be it from Kendriya Vidhyas, or Doon School or Modern School in Delhi. In Bihar, there is a coaching school that had 50 students from rural/ semi-rural background making the cut at the JEEs last year.

That is another topic that only a very small part of Indian population gets the opportunity to be competitive at JEEs, etc, and is in fact a no brainer, and not part of the discussion.

But that has nothing to do with NCERT books, etc. Typically, one who makes to JEE top list also by default makes top list of their boards, since they are over-prepared for their boards. If you can solve 3 problems at JEE exam paper, you can solve all the problems for your board exams correctly in your sleep.

For example, many schools (the ones that are not government owned but are CBSE certified) under CBSE in India use Resnick and Halliday for Physics for high school physics..and that is the best best physics book in the world for that level (no hype)......sure, which they do not use it properly in Indian schools ( with no homeworks). Same Resnick and Halliday is often used in US of A, for freshmen-sophomore college courses @ MIT, Cornell, RPI. Here, they actually do the homeworks.

Delhi Board, and Senior Cambridge (O, A, levels) board (which most of the prep schools in India belong to) adhere to their own selection of books, and have a lot of freedom on choice of books.

Dude, in Pakistan, at present, Professors and Teachers sans few elitist schools are shit scared of student Islamic police (vigilantes) that they utter anything unislamic in their classes (be it physics, history, economics, political science), and they will be in deep shit. Ask any academic from Pakistan, they have not progressed in their educational fields in a long, long time. Abdus Salaam was a product of undivided India/ England/ Italy. Have you ever talked to a Pakistani academician, and they will tell you their strait-jacket.

Let's back to the topic of mills..........

I started reading this book recently and havent finished it yet but I think most of the people commenting out here havent even started reading it! but rather just read the wiki page or something.
What I understood from the book is that the "average" English was more productive. And he explains it with social darwanism. How there was downward social mobility of the English elite. The productivity of mill worker is just one example he gives to support this view point. I agree it is very politically incorrect to say this but there might be some truth to it. We have no problems accepting Darwins' theory when it comes to different species then why in this case?

Clark: "Anyone who reads history cannot fail to be impressed by the difficulties that hunter-gatherers, or societies with only limited experience of settled agriculture, have in successfully incorporating into the modern capitalist economy. I spent a week in Australia this summer, and the plight of Australian Aboriginals is very sad. The surviving Aboriginal communities have seen tremendous rates of poverty, alcoholism, drug use, violence and sexual assaults."

Not having read the book yet, I wonder if Clark has arrived at a similar conclusion about African-Americans?

Not having read the book yet, I wonder if Clark has arrived at a similar conclusion about African-Americans?

i don't note any mention of african americans, though he does mention africa some, but not in great detail.

btw, you can search inside the book on amazon.

but as soon as the book appeared it became gospel truth. I wonder why that happens.

Rule of the masses, the gospel that is democracy, laws of increasing returns, he who shouts loudest writes the history book, the popularity of mediocrity since the majority is mediocre... take your pick, or all of them together. Hmm, I sound like such a pompous elitist.

Anyways, am still reading Gupta's paper... very interesting and definitely gives a good idea of the prevailing conditions at that time, why certain decisions were made, etc. Recommended for this discussion if you have not yet bothered to read it.

Razib - whats your take on the Elephant and the Dragon, seems like you were impressed? Does it bring anything interesting to the table besides the usual media hyped comparisons and speculations, with some accounts of disparity thrown in?

thanks, razib
btw, i say this with utmost sincerity and some levity that, i would happily give up my very handsome visage for 1/4th of your brain.

Razib - whats your take on the Elephant and the Dragon, seems like you were impressed? Does it bring anything interesting to the table besides the usual media hyped comparisons and speculations, with some accounts of disparity thrown in?

there was the usual. but i liked the emphasis on data as opposed to anecdotes of people she knows in asia. e.g., i did find it important to know that the chinese savings rate is 40%, while the indian one is 26% (which are both high by western standards). and the statistics and projections for china, as well as highlights on its incredible pollution problem, were great in their density. there was a little less data on india, but enough points to see that china vs. india is like michael jordan vs. clyde drexler. i think she is more optimistic about india than the data she presents would warrant, but that might be because india has non-quantifiable "intangibles" (e.g., democracy, more accountable rule of law [in theory], etc.).

there was the usual. but i liked the emphasis on data as opposed to anecdotes of people she knows in asia. e.g., i did find it important to know that the chinese savings rate is 40%, while the indian one is 26% (which are both high by western standards)

Razib this year india's saving rate has reached 34%.

Melbourne desi,
I don't see a reason for such a strong negative reaction. I like the approach sepiamutiny is generally taking: not ceding the competent high ground of empiricism to people who may make politically incorrect claims about desis. Whether Clark's conclusions are correct or not are empirical questions. It doesn't do us any harm to take that position.

Your post makes me want to run out and read all the CBSE texts!

lifelong (#51), I'm still holding on to my 9th grade 'Social Science' NCERT textbook. I can't imagine a better single volume high school introduction to world civilizations and culture.

Chachaji (#53), I beg to differ in the above instance. Also, I clearly remember that my algebra textbook was very good indeed, with nary a typo-a near miracle, if you are familiar with the Indian math texts of those days. Credit where credit is due.

A good recent book on India is Ramachandra Guha's "India After Gandhi," which gives an account of the resoning behind Nehru's "commanding heights" economic philosphy, which combined a "brahmanical disdain for industry" with Soviet State Planning. It tells of the few Indian dissenters (not just Rajajai but some obscure ones as well) and Milton Friedman, who argued more for literacy and the equipping of human capital against state planning. But they were crowded out by very many eminent Western - even American - economists. This fellow Mahalnabois - a brilliant Sanskrit scholar, a founder of the Indian Statistical Institute, who also has an equation in mathematical statistics in his name, comandeered the "plans." Puts things in context.

Besides which there's a host of other history -- a good account of the 1971 war which created Bangladesh, the history of the Kashmir conflict, Sanjay Gandhi's sterilization program which disproportionately targeted Muslims, the honorable role of the Quakers in modern Indian history, colorful separatists like the Naga Angami Zapu Phizo, who claimed the Mongoloid Nagas "became depressed at the very sight of Indians" who were simply not his people.

see that china vs. india is like michael jordan vs. clyde drexler

so both are equally good, but one gets much,much more media hype?

"brahmanical disdain for industry"

But they were crowded out by very many eminent Western - even American - economists.

risible, (#67) I'm no scholar nor an economist but perhaps can provide some minor anecdotal perspective having hotly debated at least a few 'Uncles/family friends' who were very closely involved in the economic policy process of the 1950s, most of them part of the Mahalanobis whiz-kid group that made the choice in favor of state planning.

From the perspective of the early 1950s, the Soviet Union was the wondrous miracle economy of economic history in industrial times. Remember, back then there was no China, South Korea, or post-war Japan to consider as a model for economic growth. The industrial powers had achieved their wealth over more than a century of economic development. The Soviets, on the other hand, had gone from being a desperately poor, largely agrarian society, to being an industrial world power within a generation. This, despite losing millions of their population in social upheaval and purges in the 1920s and 1930s, and another 20 million in the Second World War, in all about a fifth of the total population within 25 years. No other country in history had ever come close to this kind of economic performance.

It was entirely sensible to assume that a liberal democracy like India could learn some useful lessons from the Soviet planned economy in order to speed up the process of economic growth. Nehruvian socialism went for the idea of the managed economy (to speed up growth), but very successfully jettisoned the accompanying baggage of Soviet style authoritarianism and lack of freedom. No sensible person would deny that India was anything but a liberal and free society, politically speaking, right through the Nehru years. And the record shows that the first 5-7 years of the planned economy (i.e. the 1950s) actually produced measurable results.

The post Independence planning crowd actually pushed aside the bureaucrats in those years in order to implement these changes. But the bureaucrats had their revenge by engineering the license raj at the end of the 1950s, ostensibly to further the planned economy, but actually to restore administrative and executive power to themselves.

And under Indira Gandhi, the whole system went totally sclerotic, producing the years of the so-called "Hindu rate of growth". I'm not entirely sure why Raj Krishna, the economist who coined the phrase, used such a self-deprecating term (to the effect that the low rate of growth reflected Hindu pessimism and fatalism).

But from the viewpoint of the years from 1950-1955, Nehruvian socialism was the obvious, intelligent choice to many an Indian (and foreign) economic planner, regardless of their political leanings.

Interesting point Razib regarding mass literacy vis-a-vis the "commanding heights" of the IIT's. With India's obviously limited resources, the funding of such prestige products really was in effect a zero-sum competition for public funding in which the masses lost. The cost of funding advanced institutions was essentially robbing Peter to pay Paul. In fact, the analogy is probably closer to robbing Anil, Sandeep, Rajeev, Jaswant, AND Vijay to educate Deepak. The opportunity costs were and still are staggering to theorize.

A comment from Amazon.com

In late 90s, Resnick and Halliday was not considered good enough by some for being top-notch for IIT-JEE. I always considered it gold standard and still do

I am a student in India and I find these series of books in Physics by Resnick/Halliday have a nice build up of theory from the ground level but do not have the level of problems required for someone preparing for competitive engineering entrance examinations like the IIT-JEE

In fact, some of the NCERT books are quite good - it is a mixed bag.

Then there is a cottage industry of books that adhere to course syllabus of different boards but are not published by NCERT but private publishers. They usually have sentences like "Adhere to CBSE Std XII sllyabus" on their front page. Also, Senior Cambridge board used classical books like Hall and Knight for Algebra as required text.

My point: There is no broad brush.

I am a student in India and I find these series of books in Physics by Resnick/Halliday have a nice build up of theory from the ground level but do not have the level of problems required for someone preparing for competitive engineering entrance examinations like the IIT-JEE

Quote from Amazon site. Not mine.

I find the question:
What is resposible for developmental gaps: is it institutions -- which is the economic orthodoxy -- or is it middle class values, which is Clark's thesis?

quite silly. Both institutions and vehicles which utilize the middle class workforce are creations of the elite. But its very name, the "middle" class is more of a well, less powerful entity.

If so, and if it is the failure of the elite that is responsible for the developmental gap, then the suggested policy tradeoffs become quite the opposite.
In other words, more IITs would be called for, not less.
In fact, tertiary education is so abysmal in India, that anybody calling for less of it, should be quite sure of his assumptions and his data.

From the perspective of the early 1950s, the Soviet Union was the wondrous miracle economy of economic history in industrial times.

We do know a lot about econ. at the small-scale level, (i.e., within certain parameters--cf. my comment 18)--much of which the Desh continues to flub--e.g., failure to allow "foreign devils" to practice law in India--even the Chinese Communists do! So, no US or Japaese or Eur. law firms in Delhi, etc.--pretty crazy if you want incremental improvement.

Cookiebrown, you offer an interesting perspective. However, this is only part of the historical background of the evolution of Nehru's thoughts on centralized economic planning. Nehru first visited the Soviet Union in 1927-28, and is said to have been favorably impressed by what he saw then. But at the time the Soviets had not really achieved very much. However, Nehru had been favorably disposed to interpret whatever he might have seen, because, during 1912-1915, even before the Soviet revolution in 1917, he had been influenced by ideas of Fabian socialism that were current in Cambridge. Shortly after returning to India circa 1920, Nehru was also elected President of the All-India Trade Union Congress (AITUC). Nehru visited the Soviet Union sometime in the mid 1930s also, noticing that the Soviet Union had not been impacted as much by the 1930s Great Depression. Shortly thereafter, he established a National Planning Committee within the Congress party organization. Mahalonobis and Nehru had been in contact at least since the late 1930s, and a 'barebones' draft plan already existed, even before the British had decided when, or even whether, they would withdraw. So, while it is true that the 1st Five Year Plan came up in 1952-57, it is not quite true that the decision to go in for planning was based on Soviet economic achievements, as they seemed in the 1950s. His decision had long been made, and was based on more fundamental attitudes he picked up in Cambridge, than the then situation of the Soviet Union.

was based on more fundamental attitudes he picked up in Cambridge

Yes, at that time, places like Cambridge were full of fabian socialists. People like GB Shaw and others were too influenced.

For that matter, even American intellectuals were influenced or it seems - Robert Oppenheimer would pay heavy price for it later in his life.

Also, I don't think it is fair to separate the Congress government and the planning process too much. Although there were certainly technocrats running the show in the Planning Commission, there were also Congress ministers, at both the Centre and the states. And many of them were corrupt. So it is not just as if the bureaucrats captured the 'license permit raj' - the Congress party bosses saw that as a way of generating party funds, and there is no question that political considerations played into 'plan priorities'. Even as early as the 1950s, there were several corruption scandals involving Congress ministers at the Centre. The first report specifying the corrupt Central ministers came out as early as 1950. So these things affected the implementation of the planning process, and there is also evidence that, unless things got too far out of hand, or entered the newspapers - Nehru ignored or shielded his corrupt colleagues. This kind of thing, I now realize, is not something that can be cured by, say, Gandhian moralism (though Gandhi anticipated the problem and tried to suggest his own solutions) - rather, the problem arises when too much economic power is concentrated in one place. It is inevitable that people will politically try to influence things to their private benefit, and then it is no use claiming that the original intentions were good, for we know where that usually leads.

A strong hostile reaction is warranted when untruths are spread under the camouflage of serious scholastic study. I make no apologies.
I dont subscribe to the theory of empirical study being the fount of all knowledge. Statistics can be sliced and diced to suit ones pre-conceptions.
Eg. Pre-World war II we had several studies by distinguished scholars that used cutting edge techniques to prove the superior intelligence of the white man and the animal nature of the black man.
How is this study any different from those studies. Just old wine in a new cask.
Productivity (howsoever defined) is a function of a myriad factors. To distil it to one factor exposes a clear lack of business understanding.

Just curious - how many folks have worked in a manufacturing environment. Life is very different on a factory shopfloor.

"A strong hostile reaction is warranted when untruths are spread under the camouflage of serious scholastic study." Well, that wouldn't be competent empiricism, and can be criticized as such.

"Statistics can be sliced and diced to suit ones pre-conceptions." That would also not be competent empiricism.

"Productivity (howsoever defined) is a function of a myriad factors. To distil it to one factor exposes a clear lack of business understanding." If that's true (and it seems to me reasonable that it would be), it's yet another example of something that's not competent empiricism.

So then Clark's work could potentially be criticized on these grounds, without resorting to positions like "I dont subscribe to the theory of empirical study being the fount of all knowledge" -positions which I suspect non-whites are sometimes baited into taking, as part of a sort of usurpation of the competent/moral high ground.

The Soviets, on the other hand, had gone from being a desperately poor, largely agrarian society, to being an industrial world power within a generation. This, despite losing millions of their population in social upheaval and purges in the 1920s and 1930s, and another 20 million in the Second World War, in all about a fifth of the total population within 25 years. No other country in history had ever come close to this kind of economic performance.

Cookiebrown, I think you're right on this. The transformations in the USSR observed by Nehru most definitely had an effect on him. Also interesting, Indian private industry, as represented by a consortium of Mumbai industrialists was very much behind the command economy, even though it prevented their entry into many "national" industries.

Clark seems to be arguing that the die-off/lower fertility of the peasants and "violent petty aristocrats" created a superior stock of human beings in England - descendants of the burgeoise. Is this why the Gene Expression Team picked up on it? Some of the questions go in this direction though the author finally begs off Social Darwinism. As one commenter on a cantankerous site put it: England killed off the shudras and the dalits in order to escape the Malthusian trap.

The Soviets, on the other hand, had gone from being a desperately poor, largely agrarian society, to being an industrial world power within a generation. This, despite losing millions of their population in social upheaval and purges in the 1920s and 1930s, and another 20 million in the Second World War, in all about a fifth of the total population within 25 years. No other country in history had ever come close to this kind of economic performance.

Germany went from flat broke and in debt to almost conquering Europe under the Nazis in a shorter time frame. Thank god Nehru did get inspired by them.

Germany went from flat broke and in debt to almost conquering Europe under the Nazis in a shorter time frame. Thank god Nehru did get inspired by them.

i think he was also inspired by the japaneese. the japaneese defeating the russians showed him that an asian country can defeat westerners. you can be inspired by someone, but the important thing is how you act on your inspiration.

Clark seems to be arguing that the die-off/lower fertility of the peasants and "violent petty aristocrats" created a superior stock of human beings in England - descendants of the burgeoise.

But the burgoisie arose from peasants who moved to towns and cities, and "fallen" aristocrats, didn't they? It's the same "stock," I thought, a class that arose out of social changes and opportunities, not generations of natural selection. A class, not a breed. I guess Clark is arguing otherwise, which is interesting, but dubious.

people make all sorts of claims to feel like 'their people' are superior for some nonsense reason...

But the burgoisie arose from peasants who moved to towns and cities, and "fallen" aristocrats, didn't they? It's the same "stock,"

The argument would probably be that on average the burgeoise is of higher stock than the peasantry - in intelligence, mercantilist skills, showing up to work on time.

The troublemakers, the dull, the lolling invalids -- all weeded out in the great English progression to "modernity."

i think she is more optimistic about india than the data she presents would warrant, but that might be because india has non-quantifiable "intangibles" (e.g., democracy, more accountable rule of law [in theory], etc.).

This reminds me of the Goldman Sachs report that came out last year citing the rise of India (and China??) and outlining the reasons for the same. It said India was better put for some reasons that you mention like democracy (though some detractors cite that as a failing too since the Govt. has less freedom to push forward reforms) but one that was in there was a 'rise and rise of a strong non profit sector'. At that time I was skeptical about this but on second thoughts it does make a lot of sense - reduces Govt. failing in primary health, literacy, social justice, natural and man made disasters plus acts as a strong watchdog for effective implementation of the rule of law and anti corruption.Of course, nothing is perfect, but the NP sectos seems to make a difference.

Risible - I have read a couple of chapters of India After Gandhi and it's fast becoming my book du jour, seems very well written and definitely fills a hole in Indian history. Highly recommended though a little pricey ($40).

Cookiebrown, Chachaji - Interesting side discussion.

I am no scholar on this and I think I need to do a *lot* of reading before I can give a informed opinion but the more I hear and read, the more it has started seeming to me that at the time of independence, there were not too many alternatives. India though having some institutions did not have enough and thus it was the need of the hour to develop institutions for engendering growth - be it educational, manufacturing, public transport, etc etc and thus the state had no choice but to play a big hand in the same. The other way would be private investors but India did not have the credibility for investments from without and it did not have the money for large scale institutional development from within. Thus starting as a public sector based economy might have been the only option (even if Nehru had decided the same for other reasons). Where we went wrong was we persisted for too long with the model, the model may have served it's purpose initially but at some time we should have moved over to a free marketish model gradually (91 was a little too late). Anyways, enough reasons for optimism now (despite Clark leading us to believe that we are genetically lazy or something).

The argument would probably be that on average the burgeoise is of higher stock than the peasantry - in intelligence, mercantilist skills, showing up to work on time.

The troublemakers, the dull, the lolling invalids -- all weeded out in the great English progression to "modernity."

In Malthus' time, according to his essay (which is a must-read), poor people had many disincentrives to breed, including barriers to marriage and penalties for bastards (offspring born out of wedlock). If the British did "escape the Malthusian trap", they also made it easier for everyone to breed - those Malthusian social checks no longer exist. New social freedoms allowed slackers to breed like never before, thus offsetting any advances the hard-workers contributed to the gene pool. That's assuming worker traits are genetically encoded, which is dubious.

A couple of points:
1) Ardy: It's true