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Modern India Summary of A Very Short Introduction by Craig Jeffrey Note: this is a personal memo to summarize my own thoughts on Mr. Jeffrey’s work. All errors, of which there will be plenty, are my own. Some bullet points are direct quotations, others are summaries. Book is excellent. Chapter 1 - Hope ⁃ India is the fastest growing major economy in the world with a large and rapidly growing middle class. ⁃ Major industries information technology, real estate, construction, pharmaceuticals, and gemstones ⁃ GDP per capita below that of Sudan ⁃ 37% of the worlds illiterates ⁃ Child under nourishment typically affects about 20% of children in sub-Saharan Africa but 30% in India. The poorest eight Indian states are actually worse off than the poorest sub-Saharan African nations ⁃ 66% of the population voted in 2014 elections ⁃ Most populous state is Uttar Pradesh ⁃ Granted independence in 1947 when it was a poor illiterate country ⁃ Legal system has a backlog of gargantuan proportions ⁃ Education system remains poor and most Indian citizens cannot attain effective healthcare Chapter 2: Colonial India ⁃ Before colonialism and today India is a fertile country with rich alluvial soil‘s, vast plains, reasonable water supplies, extensive mineral wealth (especially coal, iron, and manganese) and a long coastline providing excellent trading opportunities. Historically it has been wealthy outside of the colonial period. ⁃ Three phases of imperial dominance of the English in India. First phase from 1600 until 1757, the East India Company. Second phase the Company’s army grew from 3,000 in 1750 to 155,000 in 1805. During the second phase the ruinous impact of British imperialism began to become apparent. Details pages 16 to 18. Third phase of the British economic exploitation of India can be traced to the first three decades of the 19th century and involved the emergence of a more systematic form of imperial economic exploitation. As an example the value of manufactured cotton goods exported from India fell from 1,300,000 pounds in 1815 to 100,000 pounds in 1832. Essentially as common in colonies raw materials flowed to the mother country and finished goods flows from the mother country to the colony. ⁃ The amount remitted from India to Britain between 1851 and 1901 increased sevenfold in the export of treasure, especially gold, from India to Britain continue to rise equally rapidly in the early decades of the 20th century. In addition British financiers engaged in speculative investment in India especially from the last quarter of the 19th century onwards accruing vast profits. ⁃ My general sentiment from this chapter is that the British used a divide and conquer strategy anointing certain Indians to rule over other Indians while exploring the country for its resources. ⁃ “The main point therefore remains. The British transformed India from a country with a mixed agriculture and industrial economy into an agricultural colony of British manufacturing capitalism. In 1800 Western Europe and the seaboard of North America had twice the GDP per capita of India; by 1900 those regions had 10 times the Indian figure” ⁃ Various revolts and rebellions spelled out on pages 26 and 27, including the establishment of the Indian National Congress in 1885. ⁃ The rise of Gandhi begins on page 28 in the second decade of the 20th century. He was born and raised in Gujarat in a Hindu merchant caste family. Trained as a lawyer in London. Practiced law in South Africa. Became involved in the struggle of expatriate Indian community for civil rights in South Africa. Experimented with nonviolent civil disobedience as a means of opposition. Wrote a critique of British rule : Hind Swaraj in 1908 ⁃ According to the author of Gandhi‘s political skill had three key dimensions. First he forged a bond with his followers thru his personal appearance and lifestyle. Second he provided vocabulary that could inform and orient aspects of the independence movement (swaraj - self rule; swadeshi- self suffficiency; satyagraha truth force/civil disobedience). Third one of his major strengths was the “capacity to appeal to people over and above particularistic interest based on caste affiliation or faith” ⁃ A massacre on 13 April 1919 solidified the opposition. 379 people killed, more than 1200 injured. By Indian and Nepali soldiers commanded by General Dyer ⁃ One convert at this time was “hitherto pro British family of the prominent Indian lawyer Motilal Nehru”. His son was Jawaharlal Nehru ⁃ Gandhi was the leader of Congress from 1921. Initially the movement focused on non-cooperation strikes boycotts etc. Big moment was in 1930 the salt march when he walked 241 miles to make salt on the Gujarat coast. This was a protest against unreasonable British taxes on the Indian production of salt. Salt is to Indians what tea is to Americans. ⁃ By 1933 the British jailed about 135,000 Indians including roughly 5,000 women ⁃ During the second world war the British appropriated enormous amounts of food and other resources from India and the food shortage lead to soaring prices. It is estimated that between 3.5 million and 3.8 million people died in the resulting famine in Bengal. Lots of protests after that some of the violent destroying hundreds of government buildings. “Facing problems at home the British sent out a mission in spring 1946 to discuss the terms of Indian independence“ Chapter 3: Religion and Caste ⁃ Buddhism and Jainism arose in India approximately the fifth century BCE. Buddhism spread throughout the subcontinent as the preferred religion of the commercial classes and was adopted ultimately adopted by the emperor Ashoka in the third century BCE and remained dominant on the subcontinent until around the time of the Gupta empire 320 to 650 common era. ⁃ Islam/Muslims occupied portions of northwest India as early as eight century. Also long established are Sikh, Jain, Zoroastrian, Jewish and Christian communities. Sikhs in the northwest and Christians in the south and north east ⁃ “The religion that is now termed Hinduism cohered only relatively recently and India’s history” ⁃ The holy Scriptures written in the period between 1500 and 500 BC E. Relatively intelligible overall shape between 500 B.C.E. and 300 B.C.E. when several Hindu schools of philosophy were founded ⁃ Lots of details about the religion on page 36 and 37. Fun fact words from Sanskrit: karma, yoga ⁃ The rise of the concept of India is a predominantly Hindu country seems to have occurred in the 19th century, the 1800s. ⁃ Fun fact the word Pakistan was invented. It means land of the pure, but it is also an acronym for Punjab P, Afghan A, Kashmir K, Sind S, and tan possibly referring to Baluchistan all regions in the north west of India ⁃ The Muslim league under Muhamed Ali Jinnah aimed for a separate states for north western and eastern region of India in which Muslim dominated numerically ⁃ The partition of the country is detailed on page 40. ⁃ Notably approximately 35 million Muslims remained in India 10% of the population at the point of partition ⁃ Details of the caste system on page 42 ⁃ The British essentially use the caste system to divide and conquer as per usual. They marked some castes as criminal, including 13 million people belong to 127 communities marked as criminal in 1947. They were not freed of this label until 1952 ⁃ Preferential system for lower castes begins and discussed on page 46. ⁃ Notable Dalit figure Ambedkar who got doctoral degrees from Columbia and the London school of economics and became a highly successful lawyer and intellectual. Wrote an important book The Annihilation of Caste Chapter 4 Making India work? 1947 to 1989 ⁃ Constitution developed in 1949. One of the longest and most comprehensive constitutions in the world. Extraordinarily ambitious for its time. Universal suffrage. Positive discrimination. Detailed set of ideas about how a just society should be ordered and how government should pursue development on behalf of the people ⁃ In 1950 India had a population of 350 million. It was a poor and mainly rural country. Agriculture accounted for 51% of national income and more than 70% of the workforce. Manufacturing accounted for 25% of GDP and 12% of the workforce. Life expectancy was 40. Only 27% of men and 9% of the women could read. ⁃ Nehru ruled from 1947 to 1964. Somewhat by chance, because Mahatma Gandhi had stepped back, and in 1948 was assassinated by a member of the Hindu far right Godse. Two years later neighbors main rival for power in the Congress Patel also died. ⁃ Five factors ensured India’s survival in the 15 years Nehru was at the helm. ⁃ First strong leadership. ⁃ Second an economic plan gave some stability to the economy. Nehru’s economic policies did not generate additional employment. Nor did Nehru have the will or capacity to reform land ownership in a meaningful way. Nonetheless the rate of growth was good relative to the first 50 years in a century under colonialism. Growth rate roughly 7% per year over the 1950s and 1960s. ⁃ Third a fairly robust democratic system of rule, Including the institutions necessary including the Supreme Court, Indian administrative services, planning commission, electoral commission. Pakistan by contrast suffered a military uprising in 1958 and subsequent coups in 1977 and 1999 ⁃ Fourth dimension of Nehru’s power was his view that religion and caste should not shape of politics. Nehru was an atheist. ⁃ Fifth Nehru managed to avoid major sustained conflict within India or between India and other Nations. He chose not to act when China annexed Tibet. But he did give sanctuary to the 14th Dalai Lama in 1959, and then there was a war in October 1962 over the boundary between India and the Chinese territory in the Himalayas. The war ended in 1962 November when China declared a cease-fire along the borders of “line of actual control”. Relations with Pakistan were fraught particularly on the question of Kashmir ⁃ Nehru died in 1964. Interim leader Shastri ⁃ Discussion of the green revolution on page 59 ⁃ Indira Gandhi was installed by the leaders of Congress in January 1966 ⁃ Under US pressure Indira Gandhi devalued the rupee in 1966 and liberalized import policy. The devaluation and partial liberalization inaugurated low economic growth. It was the last through the mid-1980s. Typically explained through in shopping list of economic mistakes: states inability to raise income tax; failure to raise domestic demand due to focus on large scale heavy industry; and the failure to reform agriculture to give land to those actually cultivating. Indira Gandhi enacted policies in the period between 1969 in 1973 to tighten state control over the country and complicated any effort by private business to promote growth, such as the nationalization of the banks and introduction of legislation that regulated big business. She did however prevent famine: by 1970 India was self-sufficient in food, and brought the fiscal deficit under control. Indian in the late 1960s was moving from a phase of “command politics” under Nehru to “demand politics” under Indira and her successors. Lots of political bargaining. ⁃ She routed her opponents in the March 1971 elections. Same year she successfully provided military support for Bangladeshi nationalist movement in a 13 day war with Pakistan that led to the establishment of Bangladesh as a separate nation ⁃ Semi dictatorial tendencies, for example a 20 month emergency when she quashed organized criticism, locked up political adversaries and banned student groups. Emergency was associated with abuse of political power including the clearance of slums and for sterilization drive orchestrated by her son Sanjay Gandhi ⁃ An independent party was elected in 1977 the Janata party. Pro agriculture platform. They also to centralized power. In 1980 the Congress party returned power under Indira Gandhi. From 1980 Indira Gandhi said to develop a more pro-business approach, for example by reducing corporate taxes. However much of the Prime Minister‘s attention was occupied with dissent within India ⁃ Examples given in the book but the one that takes the cake is “Indira adopted a violent approach storming the Golden Temple of Amritsar,” supremely holy site for the Sikhs where…(armed opposition)..were hiding. In revenge of the sack two of Indira’s Sikh bodyguards assassinated the Prime Minister in her home in Delhi on 31 October 1984. This incident sparked an anti-Sikh pogrom in Delhi which claimed several thousand lives ⁃ Her son Rajiv Gandhi took over. He pledged to root out corruption.. He once noted that of every Rs.100 intended for the poor in the villages only Rs.17 ended up in their hand. Salman Rushdie famously quipped “Indian democracy: one man one bribe“ ⁃ Rajiv Gandhi reduce corporate and personal income taxes, deregulated the cement industry and introduced to greater degree of competition in several key sectors of the economy. GDP growth rate average nearly 6% per year over the 1980s. ⁃ Unfortunately “Rajiv retreated often to the type of heavy-handed approach that had been characteristic of” his mother. There were several issues that he miss handled including elections in Kashmir, which were rigged by the central government. A Tamil extremist assassinated Rajiv Gandhi in 1989 in protest against the Prime Minister’s management of Tamil politics in south India and Sri Lanka ⁃ Chapter 5 deals with major changes between 89 and 92. First caste reservations became a major political issue, second is the rise of Hindu nationalism and third was economic reform. ⁃ To me the key figure regarding caste reservations was 49.5%, which is the quota for backward caste and similar in government and education ⁃ Ambedkar statues ⁃ Bharativa Janata Party (BJP); PM Narendra Modi (also member of Backward Caste) and rise of Hindu nationalism ⁃ Hindutva philosophy: All living in the territory of India are culturally Hindu and it is the duty of the government and prominent people in society to espouse the benefits of Hinduism ⁃ Some claimed that Buddhism and Jainism we were simply atheistic branches of Hinduism ⁃ Gujarat 2002 - Hindu Muslim violence ⁃ Babri Masjid - historic mosque in Uttar Pradesh torn down by Hindus ⁃ Page 75, third major shift occurring in the early 1990s was economic reform.. Before that under Nehru was the license raj or rule by licensee. The state could largely direct companies with regard to what they made how much of the product is made and how it’s sold ⁃ Foreign direct investment group from $132 million in 1991 to 5.3 billion $ in 1995 ⁃ GDP grew between 5 and 7% per year from the mid-1990s to 2002 and then at about 9% annually between 2003 and 2008 ⁃ Fun fact the India diaspora is about 25 to 30 million people of Indian origin living around the world especially in the USA, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Malaysia, and the United Kingdom ⁃ In the US number of migrants from India are second only to migrants from Mexico ⁃ “On average they have considerably higher incomes and levels of employment another migrant communities and .. with more than 76% of Indian born Americans holding bachelor degree or higher, they are almost 3 times more educated than people born in the USA” ⁃ Modi has tried to position India as a key ally of the United States ⁃ Regarding poverty according to the World Bank the proportion of Indians earning less than $1.90 per day fell from 46% of 1993 to 21% in 2011 ⁃ Regarding wealth inequality in 1991 the richest 1% of India control 37% of the national wealth in 2016 they controlled 58% of the wealth. India is more unequal on this measure than any other major economy in the world excepting Russia ⁃ 6% of the population is middle class earning between $10-$50 per day in 2010. This is 69 million people ⁃ Rich states in the south and west, poor states in the north and east ⁃ The number of people with mobile phone subscriptions rose from 2 million in the year 2000 to 980,000,000 in 2015 ⁃ As part of the digital India initiative the Modi government has established more than 250,000 common service centers ⁃ The number enrolled in secondary school grew from about 50% in 2004 to 75 Percent in 2014. The literacy rate increased from 52% of the population in 1991 to 74% in 2011 ⁃ In 2012 Bollywood produced four times as many films as Hollywood and sold more than twice as many tickets. ⁃ Discussion of anticorruption campaign starting on page 93 ⁃ One in 10 people in the world are in Indian youth aged under 30. ⁃ Research recently found the 25% of teachers were absent from class in doing spot checks across India and only 50% of the teachers who were present for actually teaching ⁃ The Indian state spends 3.7% of GDP on education ⁃ According to the book India arguably does not contain a single world-class university. (This comment seems odd) ⁃ Only 10% of the working age population in India has any technical training; India currently skills just 7 million people annually ⁃ In better news infant mortality declined from 202 per thousand live births in 1970 to 64 in 2009 ⁃ Absenteeism rate amongst health workers range from 35-58% across India. As late as 2005, 60% of India‘s children were malnourished and only 44% fully immunized. Over 50% of the population defecates in the open. And only 26% of India slum population has access to safe drinking water. 5% of the Indian population has health insurance. By one estimate 40 million people every year move into poverty in India as a result of out-of-pocket expenses associated with healthcare ⁃ Suicide is now the leading cause of death among 15-29-year-old men in India ⁃ 1 million young people enter the job market every month. Over 90% of people in India work in the informal economy