Glorious India, Arise (Causes for India's Slow Growth)

Add as a preferred source on Google

The Vedanta Kesari, p. 301-305, August 2005

India: Some Facts

Many hold India as one of the poorest countries, the average per capita income

being Rs. 20/-. But Sir John Thomson, former representative of Britain at the UN and former British high commissioner to India, repeatedly spoke of India as 'a strikingly successful developing country a more successful society than not only most people outside India think, but most Indians think.' In terms of per capita foreign aid received, India ranks 111th while Pakistan receives four times and Israel 40 times as much as India. Actually Indians have a poor understanding of this country's achievements. The average man never takes the pain of looking into the real facts and figures to compare notes with other countries.

When the banks were nationalised in India in 1969 and were directed to issue loans to the agricultural sector, experts feared that the banks might lose all their funds if they lent them to farmers. No one conceived of the huge untapped reservoir of rural savings that would flow into the bank, increasing total bank deposits by nine times from Rs. 6000 crore to Rs. 54000 crore––in just 13 years. With the minimum of facilities available to them, the Indian peasants are transforming rural India at a rate that dwarfs all records available elsewhere.

There is an inadequate awareness of the achievements made by India, says Garry Jacobs, an economic expert. For example, in 1963

economic experts predicted only a 10% increase of India's food grains production by 1970 whereas the actual increase turned out to be 50%, with 180% increase in wheat. Without the initiative, skill, and energy of the peasants, all endeavours of scientists and government agencies would have been futile. The success of the green revolution has proved that the Indian farmers are enterprising, dynamic, and open to innovation.

In the industrial sector the progress that India has made is stupendous in view of the fact that it began with few advantages. In spite of the overall economic backwardness of the country, India has become the eighth industrial power in the world.

India manufactures her own ships, aeroplanes, locomotives, automobiles and all essential military hardware including tanks. She has also acquired nuclear capability and is now mastering space technology at an incredibly fast rate.

Causes for India's Slow Growth

For a deep study of the past history of India, we should not merely hold on to her achievements down the ages. Many factors have played a crucial role in retarding her developments. Swami Vivekananda, a keen student of history, delved deep into the causes of India's downfall and dug out its reasons as follows:

(1) Repeated invasions by foreigners who found the land fertile, full of natural resources, climate temperate and salubrious to live, and people hospitable and easy to dominate. The loopholes through which they made their entries were lack of unity among the kings, and a country with demoralised poor population.

(2) Lack of proper education and training for the masses who are, according to Swami Vivekananda, the hub of the wheel of India's national life.

(3) Neglect of the worldly affairs by the learned. After the 9th century AD there set in a progressive decline of interest in the real world, in anatomy, physiology and medicine, in astronomy and physical sciences. The best brains in India were preoccupied with the theories and hair-splitting judgements of ignorance and illusion, and remained satisfied with writing commentaries and glosses on philosophical works. Just as a thief enters a house taking advantage of the unmindfulness of the owner and takes away all valuables, so also did the invaders launch a double attack on the meek, tolerant Indians.

(4) Cutting off all connections and dealings with the outside world. In the good old days India maintained good rapport with the other countries in business and social dealings. As a result, there was constant exchange of culture. This declined substantially in later centuries.

(5) Callous indifference to the application of the life-giving Vedantic principles in day-to-day life. The Vedantic truths which proved to be so promising even to the extent of secular development were kept in cold storage for ages. It required a personality no less than a Rama krishna and a Vivekananda with Vedic integral vision to revive this fact and apply it in modern times in the amelioration of all evils.

(6) Relegating the womenfolk. A land giving birth to a galaxy of spiritual luminaries as Gargi, Maitreyi, Ambhrin, etc., in the Vedic age neglected women's growth. As a bird cannot fly with an injured wing, so also our civilisation had to pay the penalty for relegating the erstwhile glorious mother-power to insignificance.