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Falling behind and catching up : India’s transition from a colonial economy
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Gupta, Bishnupriya (2019) Falling behind and catching up : India’s transition from a colonial economy. Economic History Review, 72 (3). pp. 803-827. doi:10.1111/ehr.12849
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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.12849
Abstract
India fell behind during colonial rule. The absolute and relative decline of Indian GDP per capita with respect to Britain began before colonization and coincided with the rising textile trade with Europe. The fortune of the traditional textile industry cannot explain the decline in the eighteenth century and stagnation in the nineteenth century as India integrated into the global economy of the British Empire. Inadequate investment in agriculture and consequent decline in yield per acre stalled economic growth. Modern industries emerged in and grew relatively fast. The reversal began after independence. Policies of industrialization and a green revolution in agriculture increased productivity in agriculture and industry. However, India’s growth in the closing decades of the twentieth century has been led by services. A concentration of human capital in the service sector has origins in colonial policy. Expenditure on education prioritized higher education creating an advantage for the service sector. At the same time, the slow expansion in primary education lowered accumulation of human capital and put India at a disadvantage in comparison with the fast-growing East Asian economies. 1 This paper is based on the Tawney lecture of 2017. My debts are to my coauthors Steve Broadberry, Latika Chaudhary, Tirthankar Roy and Anand Swamy as fellow travellers in thinking of long run economic development in India. I thank Nick Crafts and James Fenske for their comments on an earlier draft and Duol Kim and Sun Go for sharing the data on Korea. The errors are mine.
| Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Economics | ||||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | Economic History Review | ||||||||
| Publisher: | Blackwell | ||||||||
| ISSN: | 0013-0117 | ||||||||
| Official Date: | August 2019 | ||||||||
| Dates: |
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| Date of first compliant deposit: | 9 January 2019 | ||||||||
| Volume: | 72 | ||||||||
| Number: | 3 | ||||||||
| Page Range: | pp. 803-827 | ||||||||
| DOI: | 10.1111/ehr.12849 | ||||||||
| Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||
| Publication Status: | Published | ||||||||
| Publisher Statement: | This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Gupta, Bishnupriya (2019) Falling behind and catching up : India’s transition from a colonial economy. Economic History Review, 72 (3). pp. 803-827, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.12849 . This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions. | ||||||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||||||
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