This is a reposting of a contribution to the "How did India go from Being a Rich Country to a Poor Country" thread.

Two of the earliest policies in India were to establish monopolies in key industries such as salt, tobacco, and essential spices, as well as to discourage manufacturing.

The most significant early economic policy of the British was the salt tax. It is said that in hot regions salt is worth more than gold. It was a necessity of life, which is...

“A historian must make do with such ideas as he has, but he might always try to send them out in better shape.” So wrote Archibald Paton Thornton, that fine historian of the imperial idea and its enemies. This brilliant gentleman’s words came back to me while I was being reprimanded by a schoolteacher a few months back as a consequence of a short speech I had given in class. She was appalled that I had apparently praised a regime that “looted Indians of their dignity”, and “plundered India of its...

India has more poverty than any place on earth with three quarters of the population living on less than two dollars a day (about a ninth of the world's people) and it still maintains instutionalised discrimination of lower caste groups such as the Dalits. Compare this to the development indicators of Iran who have 8% of their living on less than $2 a day, China with 35% and the Ivory Coast with 46%. Sounds incredible, doesn't it? Have I plucked these figures out of a hat?

Sadly no,...