Bharat Rakshak

viv wrote:

shiv wrote:
I remember reading long ago that the idea of putting tyres on bullock carts improved efficiency of transport in India a great deal. ...

For those in CBSE, there was a chapter on the 'efficient bullock-cart' and how tires, a better placement of the yoke, change in some other structures made it more long lasting, efficient and less of a burden on the animal. I've since read lots of mocking of the effort put into it rather than other forms of transport.

A_Gupta wrote:If you believe this economist, Robert Fogel,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Fogel
turns out that the idea that the US South was much less well off at the start of the Civil War than was the North is wrong, and why that idea persisted is interesting. The Northern Abolitionists argued that slavery produced poverty; while the Southern whites rallied around the politics of victimization, namely that the Northern policies were impoverishing the South. So both sides were happy to keep the idea going that the South was not well-off. Most of the Civil War was fought in the South, and the South was devastated. Then, after the war, the South did not recover economically for a long time; fell behind the North by a factor of two, and even in the latter part of the 20th century, were 10% behind the North.

Ah, the power of myth-making!

shiv wrote: The south of the US appears to be represented exactly by the states where there are most blacks. I did not know that the states to the south and west of Texas are not "south"

Gus wrote:

shiv wrote: The south of the US appears to be represented exactly by the states where there are most blacks. I did not know that the states to the south and west of Texas are not "south"

well its not a geographical south.

when the US was formed, the southwest of today (texas, new mexico and arizona) were with mexico. so, as a cultural term - south would mean the south of old - without those southwest states.

Germany before 1800 was heavily rural, with some urban trade centers. In the 19th century it began a stage of rapid economic growth and modernization, led by heavy industry. By 1900 it had the largest economy in Europe,

The first several years after World War II were years of bitter penury for the Germans. Seven million forced laborers left for their own land, but about 14 million Germans came in from the East, living for years in dismal camps. It took nearly a decade for all the German POWs to return....After 1950, Germany overtook Britain in comparative productivity levels for the whole economy

The centenary of World War I has set off a debate in Great Britain, about which you can read here. One sentence there struck me:

Britain wasn’t a democracy at the time either: until the Fourth Reform Act of 1918, 40% of adult males didn’t have the vote, in contrast to Germany, where every adult man had the right to go to the ballot box in national elections.

Some digging into Wiki provided this:

1. The First Reform Act of 1832:

The Act also increased the number of individuals entitled to vote, increasing the size of the electorate from about 500,000 to 813,000, and allowing a total of one out of six adult males to vote, in a population of some 14 million.

2. The Second Reform Act of 1867:

Before the Act, only one million of the five million adult males in England and Wales could vote; the Act immediately doubled that number. Moreover, by the end of 1868 all male heads of household were enfranchised as a result of the end of compounding of rents.

3. The Third Reform Act of 1884:

The act extended the 1867 concessions from the boroughs to the countryside. All men paying an annual rental of £10 or all those holding land valued at £10 now had the vote. The British electorate now totalled over 5,500,000....The 1884 Reform Act did not establish universal suffrage: although the size of the electorate was widened considerably, all women and 40% of adult males were still without the vote at the time. Male suffrage varied throughout the kingdom, too: in England and Wales, 2 in 3 adult males had the vote; in Scotland, 3 in 5 did; and in Ireland, the figure was only 1 in 2.

4. The Fourth Reform Act of 1918:

All adult males gain the vote, as long as they are 21 years old or over and are resident in the constituency
Women over 30 years old receive the vote but they have to be either a member or married to a member of the Local Government Register, a property owner, or a graduate voting in a University constituency (be a graduate).

.....It is worth noting that had women been enfranchised based upon the same requirements as men, they would have been in the majority because of the loss of men in the war.

5. The Fifth Reform Act of 1928:

It widened suffrage by giving women electoral equality with men.

Unlike Great Britain, with a century-long song-and-dance of the reform acts of 1832, 1867, 1884, 1918 and 1928 to get to universal adult franchise, Germany, not exactly known as a bastion of democracy, equality, etc., had full adult male franchise since 1867, and universal adult franchise since 1918. This is so easily found on Wiki that I don't bother to link it here; I make this post because it surprised me. It shouldn't have surprised me; I ought to be ever aware that my view of Europe is heavily an Anglo-American-centric one.

While I'm on it, the US in principle had full adult male franchise after 1868/1870 (the 14th/15th amendments), and in 1920, the vote was extended to women with the 19th amendment. In practice, it took the voting right acts of 1964 and 1965 and the 24th Amendment in 1964, to give all adults a fighting chance of being able to exercise their right to vote. In 2014, the battle over the right to vote continues, with Republican-ruled states trying to put all kinds of barriers in the way of voting. They do this in the name of preventing voter fraud, which mostly doesn't exist, and the few cases are at the level of a few votes per million. The fifty states have a mess of rules about allowing/disallowing prisoners, probationers, parolees and people who have completed all obligations to the prison system to vote in state and federal elections. As of 2010, 5.85 million people were disenfranchised in this way. (The voting eligible population in 2010 was around 217.5 million.)

Contrast with Germany, (Wiki):

In Germany, all convicts are allowed to vote while in prison unless the loss of the right to vote is part of the sentence; courts can only apply this sentence for specific "political" crimes (treason, high treason, electoral fraud, intimidation of voters, etc.) and for a duration of two to five years.

As an aside, the Republican/Democratic duopoly have made the rules very difficult for an independent or third party to get onto the ballot. (It is a patchwork of laws over the fifty states.)

So the battle for full adult franchise is an ongoing one in the "Leader of the Free World", the United States of America.

A_Gupta wrote: I ought to be ever aware that my view of Europe is heavily an Anglo-American-centric one.

rsangram wrote:Modi's Independence Day Speech - a good one, except, what does he mean by "providing the poor with toilets and a clean India" - a little Western Universalism creeping in, perhaps....

In any event, is this really a matter to be addressed from Red Fort on a day as auspicious and sacred as Independence day ?

rsangram wrote:
Just goes to show how difficult it is to stay immune from Western ideas...and how even a Modi cannot remain completely unaffected by them.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-new ... 52422.aspx

A_Gupta wrote:

rsangram wrote:
Just goes to show how difficult it is to stay immune from Western ideas...and how even a Modi cannot remain completely unaffected by them.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-new ... 52422.aspx

It is an Indian, Gandhian idea. Everyone, Indians and British alike, used to ridicule Gandhi about this.

And it is all biodegradable anyway and clearly, recycles the nutrients through soil and ultimately the crop.

shiv wrote:Question:

If, as we are told , "Universal values" like democracy, human rights, religious freedom, equality for all were what created the wealthy developed societies of today I would like to know which of these values created the powerhouse economies of Germany and Japan?

According to Ryoshin Minami’s (1998, 2000) estimates for before-tax income distribution, the Gini index was 0.42 in 1890-94 and 0.57 in 1937. If back projected, this implies that the coefficient level must have been a little over 0.3 soon after the opening of the country in 1859. It is worth emphasising that while the level of 0.3 does not compare unfavourably with any present-day welfare state.

shiv wrote: In fact the late rise of German and Japanese power helped India by a quirk of fate - they simply tried to expand like everyone else had done and instantly came into conflict with existing powers. And Germany and Japan were powerful enough to more or less neutralise all other European power, leaving the US (and Russia) standing. It was the US that has spread Anglo-American "universalism". Germany and Japan were demonized, and the Anglo American powers donned the halo that they never had earlier.

Japan
After a long period of self-imposed seclusion, Japan re-entered world trade amid the emergence of the first globalisation wave. The stylised facts about inequality trends, summarised graphically in Figure 6, for the period after the late nineteenth century are as follows: first, there was a sweeping rise in income inequality from 1895 to 1937, during which GDP per capita grew at an average annual rate of 1.7 percent—a takeoff from the slow-growing Tokugawa past.

According to Ryoshin Minami’s (1998, 2000) estimates for before-tax income distribution, the Gini index was 0.42 in 1890-94 and 0.57 in 1937. If back projected, this implies that the coefficient level must have been a little over 0.3 soon after the opening of the country in 1859. It is worth emphasising that while the level of 0.3 does not compare unfavourably with any present-day welfare state, the estimated coefficient of 0.57 for the late 1930s is higher compared not only with the corresponding British figure, but also with Britain’s peak index in 1867. Thus, in less than a century, Japan changed from a reasonably egalitarian to a very unequal society. Then came a sudden drop in the Gini coefficient in the period of austerity and reforms immediately after World War II. In 1956, the Gini stood as low as 0.31. Subsequently, the coefficients remained generally low, although it is worth noting that there were alternating sub-periods: an initial rise, a long period of decline, and a recent upturn in inequality.

A_Gupta wrote:^^^from simple pragmatic things like this trek from home to open-air toilet is used as an opportunity to attack women, to the more complicated things that beyond a certain population density you really want sewage treatment, the ecosystem cannot handle that much; and so on.

And it is all biodegradable anyway and clearly, recycles the nutrients through soil and ultimately the crop.

Unless it is totally biodegraded before it goes on crop land, you get disease organisms and parasites contaminating the food.

udaym wrote: Shivji, what is interesting is that Germany/Japan, grew up in the shadows of of large powers, watched them loot, pillage world resources and its people, and thought, "if they can do it, we can do it". Does that thinking only work if one is not constrained by values (built on strong foundation of thousands of years, like Indics) that would make/force you think otherwise (only to fall prey to Brits)? But what is even more interesting is that even after German and Japanese vilification, they continue to be power centers.

shiv wrote: ...
I wonder if a compact self contained tank can be developed for every toilet where faeces is collected and then treated appropriately. One possibility may be a process called Joule heating or Ohmic heating that plugs the tank into electric supply, reduces the bacterial count. Don't know - will see what Google says.

habal wrote: But does that mean all the people must now start obsessing over defecation.

<snip>

Or do we have to as a society, now start from bottom of the chart and now start to think collectively on how to deal with defecation before we can address other issues.

In 1923, Alexander Glenny perfected a method to inactivate tetanus toxin with formaldehyde. The same method was used to develop a vaccine against diphtheria in 1926. Pertussis vaccine development took considerably longer, with a whole cell vaccine first licensed for use in the US in 1948.

Raghunath Dhondo Karve published a Marathi magazine Samaj Swasthya (समाजस्वास्थ्य)starting from July 1927 until 1953. In it, he continually discussed issues of society's well being through population control through use of contraceptives so as prevent unwanted pregnancies and induced abortions. He proposed that the Indian Government should take up a population control program, but was met with opposition.

The fertility rate in India has been in long-term decline, and had more than halved in the 1960-2009 period. From 5.7 in 1966, it declined to 3.3 by 1997 and 2.7 in 2009.

shiv wrote: Maybe the Indic philosophy of not going out developed because of a rich fertile land? People who came, found a great place to settle, and settled. And developed a philosophy that supported the idea of staying put and worshipping the fertile land and its plenitude.

Just a hypothesis..

shiv wrote:Let me make a medical gyan post to start with. Most infants who died in the past used to die from infections. Diphtheria, whooping cough("pertussis"), tetanus and diarrhoeas.

Now look at this timeline:
http://www.immune.org.nz/brief-history-vaccination

In 1923, Alexander Glenny perfected a method to inactivate tetanus toxin with formaldehyde. The same method was used to develop a vaccine against diphtheria in 1926. Pertussis vaccine development took considerably longer, with a whole cell vaccine first licensed for use in the US in 1948.

So it was in the 1930-1950 period that children were less likely to die from such infections as vaccines became available. The first antibiotics came in the 1940s - and spread around the world.

Now look at the following graph of world population. there is an initial jump from 1930 to 1950, After 1950 it skyrockets. The world population reached 2 billion around 1935. From 1935 to 2000 it jumped to 6 billion.



When you talk about poverty, economy, industrialization etc. You have to look at what the level of industrialization, economy and literacy was in the 1930 to 1950s period when populations started exploding and the ability of the country to organize and build the public health infrastructure as populations went out of hand. For India the chance to do that started only after 1950 and it was 1970 (two census decades later) that Indians really understood how much the Indian population was burgeoning. This information does not come from dreams.

I believe it helps to know what happened to OUR country rather than having all the data about the west on our lips and be ready with their solutions.

shiv wrote:Let me make a medical gyan post to start with. Most infants who died in the past used to die from infections. Diphtheria, whooping cough("pertussis"), tetanus and diarrhoeas.

Now look at this timeline:
http://www.immune.org.nz/brief-history-vaccination

In 1923, Alexander Glenny perfected a method to inactivate tetanus toxin with formaldehyde. The same method was used to develop a vaccine against diphtheria in 1926. Pertussis vaccine development took considerably longer, with a whole cell vaccine first licensed for use in the US in 1948.

So it was in the 1930-1950 period that children were less likely to die from such infections as vaccines became available. The first antibiotics came in the 1940s - and spread around the world.

Now look at the following graph of world population. there is an initial jump from 1930 to 1950, After 1950 it skyrockets. The world population reached 2 billion around 1935. From 1935 to 2000 it jumped to 6 billion.



When you talk about poverty, economy, industrialization etc. You have to look at what the level of industrialization, economy and literacy was in the 1930 to 1950s period when populations started exploding and the ability of the country to organize and build the public health infrastructure as populations went out of hand. For India the chance to do that started only after 1950 and it was 1970 (two census decades later) that Indians really understood how much the Indian population was burgeoning. This information does not come from dreams.

I believe it helps to know what happened to OUR country rather than having all the data about the west on our lips and be ready with their solutions.

Name	                                   Descendants      Year of Degree
--------                                        -----------------      --------------------
Manuel Bryennios	                  115784	
Theodore Metochites	          115783	               1315
Gregory Palamas	                  115782	
Nilos Kabasilas	                  115781	               1363
Demetrios Kydones	          115780	
Elissaeus Judaeus	                  115757	
Georgios Plethon Gemistos	  115756	       1380, 1393
Basilios Bessarion	                  115753	       1436
...

Georgios Plethon Gemistos
1380, 1393
Dissertation: Nómoi (Book of Laws)
Advisor 1: Demetrios Kydones
Advisor 2: Elissaeus Judaeus

Students: 
Click here to see the students listed in chronological order.

Name	                              School	Year	Descendants
--------                                    ---------      -----         -----------------
Basilios Bessarion	              Mystras	1436	115753
Laonikos Chalkokondyles   University of Crete		
Theodoros II Palaiologos    Mystras	1425	

Works[edit]

Bessarion was one of the most learned scholars of his time. Besides his translations of Aristotle's Metaphysics and Xenophon's Memorabilia, his most important work is a treatise directed against George of Trebizond, a vehement Aristotelian who had written a polemic against Plato, which was entitled In Calumniatorem Platonis ("Against the Slanderer of Plato"). Bessarion, though a Platonist, was not so thoroughgoing in his admiration as Gemistus Pletho, and he strove instead to reconcile the two philosophies. His work, by opening up the relations of Platonism to the main questions of religion, contributed greatly to the extension of speculative thought in the department of theology.
It was thanks to him that the Bibliotheca (Pseudo-Apollodorus), an important compendium of Greek Mythology, has survived to the present.
His library, which contained a very extensive collection of Greek manuscripts, was presented by him in 1468 to the senate of Venice, and forms the nucleus of the famous library of St Mark's, the Biblioteca Marciana. It was 482 Greek manuscripts and 264 Latin manuscripts.[1]
Most of Bessarion's works are in Migne, Patrologia Graeca, vol. 161.

Leonardo has often been described as the archetype of the Renaissance Man, a man of "unquenchable curiosity" and "feverishly inventive imagination".

Arjun wrote: You were arguing against Shiv's statement that Colonialism was responsible for Britain and the West's wealth and for the industrial revolution. I proved that you are wrong, and that colonialism (specifically that of India) was directly responsible for the West's gain in GDP and for its industrial revolution.

Now you seem to be asking a different question - which is, why did India allow herself to be colonized ? That is an entirely different question which others are better qualified to answer. But history, as you know, is replete with examples where sophisticated civilizations have fallen to more vicious hordes of barbarians. So, the fact that India did fall to the British does not really tell us much about the relative standing of the two societies.

One explanation that I can offer is that the West was clearly far more incentivized to change the rules of trade which India was overwhelmingly winning - by using violence, force or any other means that today would be termed 'unfair trade practices'. When the playing field is level - Indians tend to come out on top, and that is obviously very true even today. So the British were certainly more incentivized to stop the outflow of wealth from its shores to India. Secondly - the state apparatus and business interests worked closely with each other to develop a comprehensive mercantile philosophy that had not developed to the same extent in India. The latter may in part be due to decay caused by Mughal / Islamic rule or due to a general Hindu outlook where Kshatriyas, Brahmins and Vaishyas were individually world beaters but operated in silos and never really teamed up for larger goals.

India did not have a mercantile philosophy,....,general Hindu outlook where Kshatriyas, Brahmins and Vaishyas were individually world beaters but operated in silos