Gregory Clark is quickly becoming the economist du jour due to his recently published (and quite controversial) A Farewell to Alms. 
Late last year, Sepia Mutiny had a preview of some of the book’s content and, as schedule permits, we will likely cover more of it moving forward. As we said back then, for Mutineers Clark is definitely an economist to watch relative to others due to his outsized focus on Indian economic history.
So, until we get a chance to dive into more of the detail here, GNXP (Razib’s home when he’s not a 1-man comments machine on SM) has a great interview with Clark up right now and question #1 hits squarely into desi territory –
1) In some early work, you wondered why workers in British cotton mills were so much more productive than workers in Indian cotton mills. You discuss this in the last chapter of A Farewell to Alms. You looked at a lot of the usual explanations-incentives, management, quality of the machines-and none of them really seemed to explain the big gap in productivity. Finally, you seemed to turn to the idea that it’s differences between the British and Indian workers themselves-maybe their culture, maybe their genes-that explained the difference. How did you come to that conclusion?
…When I set out in my PhD thesis to try and explain differences in income internationally in 1910 I found that asking simple questions like “Why could Indian textile mills not make much profit even though they were in a free trade association with England which had wages five times as high?” led to completely unexpected conclusions. You could show that the standard institutional explanation made no sense when you assembled detailed evidence from trade journals, factory reports, and the accounts of observers. Instead it was the puzzling behavior of the workers inside the factories that was the key.
What was this “puzzling behavior”? Well, unfortunately, it appears a good chunk of it was IST.
<
p>Read the rest, let it whet your appetite for more, and expect to see Clark here on SM in the near future 
Sharmishta,
Your post makes me want to run out and read all the CBSE texts!
Clark uvach:
Free trade?? Really?? I guess captive and guranteed market had nothing to do with their success.
Even then the British were paid 5 times as much but they were able to “compensate” that via their higher “productivity” and “superior culture”, but now they cant compensate the wage difference and losing jobs to India and other nations ??? Did their culture deteriorate or productivity??
Sharmishtha, I’m an Air Force brat! Like you, I went through eight schools before graduating high school (four were before graduating first grade, though). All the schools were CBSE. Just BTW, there was a similar system in place before independence – it catered largely to children of British army and civil officials, who too, would often be transferred from place to place in India. Pakistan, incidentally, retained that system whole, and Pakistani elite children still attend them. In India, that system survived for probably the first twenty-five years, after which it was slowly modified beyond recognition.
The function of the CBSE textbooks (NCERT to be precise) in the social sciences was largely to indoctrinate the young in the ‘central tenets’ of Nehruvian ‘secularism’, ‘socialism’, ‘non-alignment’ etc, and encourage their uncritical acceptance, as if they were laws of nature. In the physical and mathematical sciences, the CBSE/NCERT textbooks were badly written, poorly produced, and sometimes altogether wrong. Perhaps post-1980s, they have been improved. My NCERT physics textbooks were so bad, that I had no option but to read my cousins’ books written for other State board exams, and ‘foreign books’! Sorry, had to get that in to counter the uncritical adulation of NCERT/CBSE I am sensing here. Addressing your other points will take us too far afield in this thread, I’m afraid!
I think the primary reason for the productivity differentials across cultures is work ethic. Only those societies that can inculcate a strong work ethic among the population can expect to have a highly productive workforce that can rise to the competitive demands of globalization. The bottom line is all about work ethic as this more than anything else shapes attitudes to work, motivation, efficiency and a lot more. Though the total work time i.e. the number of minutes worked per day varies considerably from one country to another, higher work time need not necessarily lead to greater output. Total Work Time
lies, damned lies and statistics
culture – genes – wealth – luck/destiny?
Genes dictate the sort of civilizational culture? Or Culture influences the genetic makeup? Or Genes/culture creates the wealth? Or is wealth a matter of luck/destiny/happenstance? Or the dominant culture is the one that is propagated by the wealthy/influential?
Different cultures/races have been influential/wealthy during different periods of human history. Does this say something abt the above questions?
What utter nonsense. Is this joker considered an economist? When did this Nazi obtain a time machine ? If his conclusion is IST – how about doing a contemporary study. There is an IT industry that competes on a global scale using the same tools as everyone. Use them as the basis for a productivity study. Again as anyone who a basic understanding of business – productivity can be viewed from many angles. India has serious problems but this kind of shoddy work has but one purpose – to perpetuate the myth of the superior British worker. As someone who has managed workers from various parts of the world in multiple industries, there is hardly a difference. Poor management results in low productivity.
Razib – I can confirm that the Biharis are no less intelligent than the Keralites. Have managed both.
I dont think he has factored in a simple reality – time is treated differently in various cultures – how is one method better than the other? (Hofstede / Trompenaars). Pray what is the difference between a social scientist and a Bible swearing Christian. One claims Jesus as the saviour and the other statistics.
The function of the CBSE textbooks (NCERT to be precise)
Off the topic
Technically, no school in India under CBSE board is under any obligation to NCERT books except Kendriya Vidhyas (since they are funded by the Central Government). They only have to cover course material required by CBSE exams, and get their students passed irrespective of the book used. More than often (very often), schools under CBSE framework use their choice of textbooks. Also, students prepping for JEE, Medical exams go on their own for the quality books through in-school, off-school coaching, be it from Kendriya Vidhyas, or Doon School or Modern School in Delhi. In Bihar, there is a coaching school that had 50 students from rural/ semi-rural background making the cut at the JEEs last year.
That is another topic that only a very small part of Indian population gets the opportunity to be competitive at JEEs, etc, and is in fact a no brainer, and not part of the discussion.
But that has nothing to do with NCERT books, etc. Typically, one who makes to JEE top list also by default makes top list of their boards, since they are over-prepared for their boards. If you can solve 3 problems at JEE exam paper, you can solve all the problems for your board exams correctly in your sleep.
For example, many schools (the ones that are not government owned but are CBSE certified) under CBSE in India use Resnick and Halliday for Physics for high school physics..and that is the best best physics book in the world for that level (no hype)……sure, which they do not use it properly in Indian schools ( with no homeworks). Same Resnick and Halliday is often used in US of A, for freshmen-sophomore college courses @ MIT, Cornell, RPI. Here, they actually do the homeworks.
Delhi Board, and Senior Cambridge (O, A, levels) board (which most of the prep schools in India belong to) adhere to their own selection of books, and have a lot of freedom on choice of books.
Dude, in Pakistan, at present, Professors and Teachers sans few elitist schools are shit scared of student Islamic police (vigilantes) that they utter anything unislamic in their classes (be it physics, history, economics, political science), and they will be in deep shit. Ask any academic from Pakistan, they have not progressed in their educational fields in a long, long time. Abdus Salaam was a product of undivided India/ England/ Italy. Have you ever talked to a Pakistani academician, and they will tell you their strait-jacket. Let’s back to the topic of mills……….
I started reading this book recently and havent finished it yet but I think most of the people commenting out here havent even started reading it! but rather just read the wiki page or something. What I understood from the book is that the “average” English was more productive. And he explains it with social darwanism. How there was downward social mobility of the English elite. The productivity of mill worker is just one example he gives to support this view point. I agree it is very politically incorrect to say this but there might be some truth to it. We have no problems accepting Darwins’ theory when it comes to different species then why in this case?
Clark: “Anyone who reads history cannot fail to be impressed by the difficulties that hunter-gatherers, or societies with only limited experience of settled agriculture, have in successfully incorporating into the modern capitalist economy. I spent a week in Australia this summer, and the plight of Australian Aboriginals is very sad. The surviving Aboriginal communities have seen tremendous rates of poverty, alcoholism, drug use, violence and sexual assaults.”
Not having read the book yet, I wonder if Clark has arrived at a similar conclusion about African-Americans?
Not having read the book yet, I wonder if Clark has arrived at a similar conclusion about African-Americans?
i don’t note any mention of african americans, though he does mention africa some, but not in great detail.
btw, you can search inside the book on amazon.
Rule of the masses, the gospel that is democracy, laws of increasing returns, he who shouts loudest writes the history book, the popularity of mediocrity since the majority is mediocre… take your pick, or all of them together. Hmm, I sound like such a pompous elitist.
Anyways, am still reading Gupta’s paper… very interesting and definitely gives a good idea of the prevailing conditions at that time, why certain decisions were made, etc. Recommended for this discussion if you have not yet bothered to read it.
Razib – whats your take on the Elephant and the Dragon, seems like you were impressed? Does it bring anything interesting to the table besides the usual media hyped comparisons and speculations, with some accounts of disparity thrown in?
thanks, razib btw, i say this with utmost sincerity and some levity that, i would happily give up my very handsome visage for 1/4th of your brain.
Razib – whats your take on the Elephant and the Dragon, seems like you were impressed? Does it bring anything interesting to the table besides the usual media hyped comparisons and speculations, with some accounts of disparity thrown in?
there was the usual. but i liked the emphasis on data as opposed to anecdotes of people she knows in asia. e.g., i did find it important to know that the chinese savings rate is 40%, while the indian one is 26% (which are both high by western standards). and the statistics and projections for china, as well as highlights on its incredible pollution problem, were great in their density. there was a little less data on india, but enough points to see that china vs. india is like michael jordan vs. clyde drexler. i think she is more optimistic about india than the data she presents would warrant, but that might be because india has non-quantifiable “intangibles” (e.g., democracy, more accountable rule of law [in theory], etc.).
there was the usual. but i liked the emphasis on data as opposed to anecdotes of people she knows in asia. e.g., i did find it important to know that the chinese savings rate is 40%, while the indian one is 26% (which are both high by western standards)
Razib this year india’s saving rate has reached 34%.
Melbourne desi, I don’t see a reason for such a strong negative reaction. I like the approach sepiamutiny is generally taking: not ceding the competent high ground of empiricism to people who may make politically incorrect claims about desis. Whether Clark’s conclusions are correct or not are empirical questions. It doesn’t do us any harm to take that position.
lifelong (#51), I’m still holding on to my 9th grade ‘Social Science’ NCERT textbook. I can’t imagine a better single volume high school introduction to world civilizations and culture.
Chachaji (#53), I beg to differ in the above instance. Also, I clearly remember that my algebra textbook was very good indeed, with nary a typo-a near miracle, if you are familiar with the Indian math texts of those days. Credit where credit is due.
A good recent book on India is Ramachandra Guha’s “India After Gandhi,” which gives an account of the resoning behind Nehru’s “commanding heights” economic philosphy, which combined a “brahmanical disdain for industry” with Soviet State Planning. It tells of the few Indian dissenters (not just Rajajai but some obscure ones as well) and Milton Friedman, who argued more for literacy and the equipping of human capital against state planning. But they were crowded out by very many eminent Western – even American – economists. This fellow Mahalnabois – a brilliant Sanskrit scholar, a founder of the Indian Statistical Institute, who also has an equation in mathematical statistics in his name, comandeered the “plans.” Puts things in context.
Besides which there’s a host of other history — a good account of the 1971 war which created Bangladesh, the history of the Kashmir conflict, Sanjay Gandhi’s sterilization program which disproportionately targeted Muslims, the honorable role of the Quakers in modern Indian history, colorful separatists like the Naga Angami Zapu Phizo, who claimed the Mongoloid Nagas “became depressed at the very sight of Indians” who were simply not his people.
so both are equally good, but one gets much,much more media hype?
Worth a few pukes.
risible, (#67) I’m no scholar nor an economist but perhaps can provide some minor anecdotal perspective having hotly debated at least a few ‘Uncles/family friends’ who were very closely involved in the economic policy process of the 1950s, most of them part of the Mahalanobis whiz-kid group that made the choice in favor of state planning.
From the perspective of the early 1950s, the Soviet Union was the wondrous miracle economy of economic history in industrial times. Remember, back then there was no China, South Korea, or post-war Japan to consider as a model for economic growth. The industrial powers had achieved their wealth over more than a century of economic development. The Soviets, on the other hand, had gone from being a desperately poor, largely agrarian society, to being an industrial world power within a generation. This, despite losing millions of their population in social upheaval and purges in the 1920s and 1930s, and another 20 million in the Second World War, in all about a fifth of the total population within 25 years. No other country in history had ever come close to this kind of economic performance.
It was entirely sensible to assume that a liberal democracy like India could learn some useful lessons from the Soviet planned economy in order to speed up the process of economic growth. Nehruvian socialism went for the idea of the managed economy (to speed up growth), but very successfully jettisoned the accompanying baggage of Soviet style authoritarianism and lack of freedom. No sensible person would deny that India was anything but a liberal and free society, politically speaking, right through the Nehru years. And the record shows that the first 5-7 years of the planned economy (i.e. the 1950s) actually produced measurable results.
The post Independence planning crowd actually pushed aside the bureaucrats in those years in order to implement these changes. But the bureaucrats had their revenge by engineering the license raj at the end of the 1950s, ostensibly to further the planned economy, but actually to restore administrative and executive power to themselves.
And under Indira Gandhi, the whole system went totally sclerotic, producing the years of the so-called “Hindu rate of growth”. I’m not entirely sure why Raj Krishna, the economist who coined the phrase, used such a self-deprecating term (to the effect that the low rate of growth reflected Hindu pessimism and fatalism).
But from the viewpoint of the years from 1950-1955, Nehruvian socialism was the obvious, intelligent choice to many an Indian (and foreign) economic planner, regardless of their political leanings.
Interesting point Razib regarding mass literacy vis-a-vis the “commanding heights” of the IIT’s. With India’s obviously limited resources, the funding of such prestige products really was in effect a zero-sum competition for public funding in which the masses lost. The cost of funding advanced institutions was essentially robbing Peter to pay Paul. In fact, the analogy is probably closer to robbing Anil, Sandeep, Rajeev, Jaswant, AND Vijay to educate Deepak. The opportunity costs were and still are staggering to theorize.
A comment from Amazon.com
In late 90s, Resnick and Halliday was not considered good enough by some for being top-notch for IIT-JEE. I always considered it gold standard and still do
In fact, some of the NCERT books are quite good – it is a mixed bag.
Then there is a cottage industry of books that adhere to course syllabus of different boards but are not published by NCERT but private publishers. They usually have sentences like “Adhere to CBSE Std XII sllyabus” on their front page. Also, Senior Cambridge board used classical books like Hall and Knight for Algebra as required text.
My point: There is no broad brush.
Quote from Amazon site. Not mine.
I find the question: What is resposible for developmental gaps: is it institutions — which is the economic orthodoxy — or is it middle class values, which is Clark’s thesis?
quite silly. Both institutions and vehicles which utilize the middle class workforce are creations of the elite. But its very name, the “middle” class is more of a well, less powerful entity.
If so, and if it is the failure of the elite that is responsible for the developmental gap, then the suggested policy tradeoffs become quite the opposite. In other words, more IITs would be called for, not less. In fact, tertiary education is so abysmal in India, that anybody calling for less of it, should be quite sure of his assumptions and his data.
We do know a lot about econ. at the small-scale level, (i.e., within certain parameters–cf. my comment 18)–much of which the Desh continues to flub–e.g., failure to allow “foreign devils” to practice law in India–even the Chinese Communists do! So, no US or Japaese or Eur. law firms in Delhi, etc.–pretty crazy if you want incremental improvement.
Cookiebrown, you offer an interesting perspective. However, this is only part of the historical background of the evolution of Nehru’s thoughts on centralized economic planning. Nehru first visited the Soviet Union in 1927-28, and is said to have been favorably impressed by what he saw then. But at the time the Soviets had not really achieved very much. However, Nehru had been favorably disposed to interpret whatever he might have seen, because, during 1912-1915, even before the Soviet revolution in 1917, he had been influenced by ideas of Fabian socialism that were current in Cambridge. Shortly after returning to India circa 1920, Nehru was also elected President of the All-India Trade Union Congress (AITUC). Nehru visited the Soviet Union sometime in the mid 1930s also, noticing that the Soviet Union had not been impacted as much by the 1930s Great Depression. Shortly thereafter, he established a National Planning Committee within the Congress party organization. Mahalonobis and Nehru had been in contact at least since the late 1930s, and a ‘barebones’ draft plan already existed, even before the British had decided when, or even whether, they would withdraw. So, while it is true that the 1st Five Year Plan came up in 1952-57, it is not quite true that the decision to go in for planning was based on Soviet economic achievements, as they seemed in the 1950s. His decision had long been made, and was based on more fundamental attitudes he picked up in Cambridge, than the then situation of the Soviet Union.
was based on more fundamental attitudes he picked up in Cambridge
Yes, at that time, places like Cambridge were full of fabian socialists. People like GB Shaw and others were too influenced.
For that matter, even American intellectuals were influenced or it seems – Robert Oppenheimer would pay heavy price for it later in his life.
Also, I don’t think it is fair to separate the Congress government and the planning process too much. Although there were certainly technocrats running the show in the Planning Commission, there were also Congress ministers, at both the Centre and the states. And many of them were corrupt. So it is not just as if the bureaucrats captured the ‘license permit raj’ – the Congress party bosses saw that as a way of generating party funds, and there is no question that political considerations played into ‘plan priorities’. Even as early as the 1950s, there were several corruption scandals involving Congress ministers at the Centre. The first report specifying the corrupt Central ministers came out as early as 1950. So these things affected the implementation of the planning process, and there is also evidence that, unless things got too far out of hand, or entered the newspapers – Nehru ignored or shielded his corrupt colleagues. This kind of thing, I now realize, is not something that can be cured by, say, Gandhian moralism (though Gandhi anticipated the problem and tried to suggest his own solutions) – rather, the problem arises when too much economic power is concentrated in one place. It is inevitable that people will politically try to influence things to their private benefit, and then it is no use claiming that the original intentions were good, for we know where that usually leads.
A strong hostile reaction is warranted when untruths are spread under the camouflage of serious scholastic study. I make no apologies. I dont subscribe to the theory of empirical study being the fount of all knowledge. Statistics can be sliced and diced to suit ones pre-conceptions. Eg. Pre-World war II we had several studies by distinguished scholars that used cutting edge techniques to prove the superior intelligence of the white man and the animal nature of the black man. How is this study any different from those studies. Just old wine in a new cask. Productivity (howsoever defined) is a function of a myriad factors. To distil it to one factor exposes a clear lack of business understanding.
Just curious – how many folks have worked in a manufacturing environment. Life is very different on a factory shopfloor.
“A strong hostile reaction is warranted when untruths are spread under the camouflage of serious scholastic study.” Well, that wouldn’t be competent empiricism, and can be criticized as such.
“Statistics can be sliced and diced to suit ones pre-conceptions.” That would also not be competent empiricism.
“Productivity (howsoever defined) is a function of a myriad factors. To distil it to one factor exposes a clear lack of business understanding.” If that’s true (and it seems to me reasonable that it would be), it’s yet another example of something that’s not competent empiricism.
So then Clark’s work could potentially be criticized on these grounds, without resorting to positions like “I dont subscribe to the theory of empirical study being the fount of all knowledge” -positions which I suspect non-whites are sometimes baited into taking, as part of a sort of usurpation of the competent/moral high ground.
The Soviets, on the other hand, had gone from being a desperately poor, largely agrarian society, to being an industrial world power within a generation. This, despite losing millions of their population in social upheaval and purges in the 1920s and 1930s, and another 20 million in the Second World War, in all about a fifth of the total population within 25 years. No other country in history had ever come close to this kind of economic performance.
Cookiebrown, I think you’re right on this. The transformations in the USSR observed by Nehru most definitely had an effect on him. Also interesting, Indian private industry, as represented by a consortium of Mumbai industrialists was very much behind the command economy, even though it prevented their entry into many “national” industries.
Clark seems to be arguing that the die-off/lower fertility of the peasants and “violent petty aristocrats” created a superior stock of human beings in England – descendants of the burgeoise. Is this why the Gene Expression Team picked up on it? Some of the questions go in this direction though the author finally begs off Social Darwinism. As one commenter on a cantankerous site put it: England killed off the shudras and the dalits in order to escape the Malthusian trap.
Germany went from flat broke and in debt to almost conquering Europe under the Nazis in a shorter time frame. Thank god Nehru did get inspired by them.
i think he was also inspired by the japaneese. the japaneese defeating the russians showed him that an asian country can defeat westerners. you can be inspired by someone, but the important thing is how you act on your inspiration.
But the burgoisie arose from peasants who moved to towns and cities, and “fallen” aristocrats, didn’t they? It’s the same “stock,” I thought, a class that arose out of social changes and opportunities, not generations of natural selection. A class, not a breed. I guess Clark is arguing otherwise, which is interesting, but dubious.
people make all sorts of claims to feel like ‘their people’ are superior for some nonsense reason…
But the burgoisie arose from peasants who moved to towns and cities, and “fallen” aristocrats, didn’t they? It’s the same “stock,”
The argument would probably be that on average the burgeoise is of higher stock than the peasantry – in intelligence, mercantilist skills, showing up to work on time.
The troublemakers, the dull, the lolling invalids — all weeded out in the great English progression to “modernity.”
This reminds me of the Goldman Sachs report that came out last year citing the rise of India (and China??) and outlining the reasons for the same. It said India was better put for some reasons that you mention like democracy (though some detractors cite that as a failing too since the Govt. has less freedom to push forward reforms) but one that was in there was a ‘rise and rise of a strong non profit sector’. At that time I was skeptical about this but on second thoughts it does make a lot of sense – reduces Govt. failing in primary health, literacy, social justice, natural and man made disasters plus acts as a strong watchdog for effective implementation of the rule of law and anti corruption.Of course, nothing is perfect, but the NP sectos seems to make a difference.
Risible – I have read a couple of chapters of India After Gandhi and it’s fast becoming my book du jour, seems very well written and definitely fills a hole in Indian history. Highly recommended though a little pricey ($40).
Cookiebrown, Chachaji – Interesting side discussion.
I am no scholar on this and I think I need to do a lot of reading before I can give a informed opinion but the more I hear and read, the more it has started seeming to me that at the time of independence, there were not too many alternatives. India though having some institutions did not have enough and thus it was the need of the hour to develop institutions for engendering growth – be it educational, manufacturing, public transport, etc etc and thus the state had no choice but to play a big hand in the same. The other way would be private investors but India did not have the credibility for investments from without and it did not have the money for large scale institutional development from within. Thus starting as a public sector based economy might have been the only option (even if Nehru had decided the same for other reasons). Where we went wrong was we persisted for too long with the model, the model may have served it’s purpose initially but at some time we should have moved over to a free marketish model gradually (91 was a little too late). Anyways, enough reasons for optimism now (despite Clark leading us to believe that we are genetically lazy or something).
But was there really enough time for this selection to create whole new strains of human beings? Clearly troublemakers, the dull and lolling invalids are still being produced in the West, and still reproducing. Is the argument that British produced comparitively fewer lollygags? Because you could also explain higher worker production by cultures jailing and otherwise punishing people who wouldn’t or couldn’t work.
In Malthus’ time, according to his essay (which is a must-read), poor people had many disincentrives to breed, including barriers to marriage and penalties for bastards (offspring born out of wedlock). If the British did “escape the Malthusian trap”, they also made it easier for everyone to breed – those Malthusian social checks no longer exist. New social freedoms allowed slackers to breed like never before, thus offsetting any advances the hard-workers contributed to the gene pool. That’s assuming worker traits are genetically encoded, which is dubious.
A couple of points: 1) Ardy: It’s true that in post-independence India, there was no widespread “system” as such. Remember, that when the British left India, they did not give independence to “India” but to 500-odd princely states (each with its own unique system of nepotism, some better off like Mysore and Kolhapur, some dismal) and to a chunk called “British India”. Let’s give credit where credit is due: our first post-independence leaders had to create a pan-Indian system from scratch roughly for the economy, for human capital, for pretty much everything. Sometimes they succeeded, sometimes they did not, but it was their honest effort, the system was not a gift bequeathed from the departing Brits.
2) Chachaji: why blame Congress alone for planning? Plans were all the rage in the 1940s and 1950s everywhere in the world: Britain, France, the USSR. Some would argue that the New Deal was America’s way of planning, and the critics of Social Security are still hammering away at “big government”. Indian economists at the time were products of their age.
Empirical studies such as Mr. Clark’s are too easily accepted as self-evident just because they claim to present facts, not opinions. But as any good salesperson knows, the trick is in choosing only those facts that advance your argument.
Empirically, I cannot dispute his theory that individual productivity is not replicable merely through institutional models, though there are many, many cases proving the contrary. I admit, begrudgingly, that there are cultural and other local drivers of human productivity. Today’s Indian workers, for example, working in the world class environment of an office tower in Gurgaon, given the same American style name tags, lap tops, water bottles, Six Sigma, Quality Process and MBO, are less productive than their western counterpart. I admit it despite my huge first gener Indian pride.
The important question is whether our “puzzling behavior inside the factories,” as Clark puts it, will ever change given a new set of circumstances or they are permanently embedded in our poor desi genes and we are forever doomed.
The answer to this question can be found in what Clark missed rather than what he found. Clark’s timeline starts with “forager” and ends with “agrarian,” and he correlates the development of mathematical and verbal skills to an agrarian economy. So far so good, though it fails to explain why India, the biggest agrarian culture in the world, with over 70% of its population rural and tied to farming (as opposed to less than 5% in the US), does not have enough agrarian type skills to excel in cotton mills.
The answer lies in the fact that Mr. Clark stops at agrarian and does not progress to the most revolutionary global change of the past 200 years – urbanization. I purposely did not say industrialization because, a) the two are not synonymous, and b) it would simply beg the question why India could not become an industrial nation and whether cultural traits were the reason.
All economists, regardless of their school of thought, agree that countries with greater urbanization (65% and above in the First World countries vs. under 30% in the Third World, per World Bank data) have higher per capita GDP even after accounting for Purchasing Price Parity. People of urbanized countries possess the individual traits to do most things well, even in a de-incentivized, partly socialistic economies as in the Scandinavian countries, to use Mr. Clark’s own example.
The urban theory, if one can call it that, cites numerous urban factors, not to be confused with institutional factors, which are more microcosmic, contributing to growth and productivity. Aggregation of resources in a small geographical area (the Silicone Valley effect), quick scalability and the ensuing economic efficiency, a huge concentration of producers and consumers found in the same area, better social services… wagerah, wagerah, as Kush Tandon would say. But the most important are the changes urbanization causes to the individual – better education, constant improvement of skills, entrepreneurship, competition and, hence, competitiveness, the focus on self that leads to more self-enhancing activities… wagerah, wagerah.
We all know this stuff on an anecdotal basis. A Bihari villager goes to Delhi, finds work in a factory, works more in a week than he did in a month back in the gaon, starts to learn a little about fixing machines to get a raise, earns enough to send his kid to a decent school, thus raising a future generation of educated workers…wagerah, wagerah.
If Mr. Clark can somehow graduate to the next level from agrarian, he will find some answers in the urban theory that will greatly modify his earlier findings. I am surprised how a researcher dabbling in economic anthropology could ignore the one megatrend (of course, I am referring to John Naisbitt) that even a rookie economist knows intimately.
In Malthus’ time, according to his essay (which is a must-read), poor people had many disincentrives to breed, including barriers to marriage and penalties for bastards (offspring born out of wedlock). If the British did “escape the Malthusian trap”, they also made it easier for everyone to breed – those Malthusian social checks no longer exist.
Right. I think the downward mobility leads to less “lower” class (and comparatively more robust) “upper” class breeding. Clark apparently reviewed medieval will records to confirm this. In time the lower classes whittled away, and with their genomes cast to oblivion, so fled disorder, mayhem and maybe even laziness. The manna of “upper class values” percolated through the new stock. The current Englishman are largely descended from the rich upper classes. This explains why they’re so civilized.
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/08/a-genetic-expla.html
how the hell are they “so civiized” these are the people that held the world up at gunpoint for hundreds of years. is that ‘civilized’? f-ck that.
just to be clear, clark seems to find that the records from the late medieval period to the early modern period show that the rich rural gentry were reproducing at a very high rate. cities were population sinks until the 20th century, so that couldn’t be a source. the blooded nobility didn’t start going above national average until the early 18th century when wars became less frequent. around 1870 the lower classes started to outbreed the upper classes.
It’s even older than that. After the new Municipal Act of 1923, Calcutta Corporation became the first important public body to pass from British to Indian control in India. It was run by Congress. But after C.R. Das, the first mayor, died in 1925 and Subhash Bose was put in jail, within a decade, the Councillors became so greedy and bribes were so commonplace that it was widely known as ‘Calcutta Corruption’ — the Bangla version was Chorporation.
In Delhi, even before independence, the comforts and luxuries enjoyed by the Interim Government ministers were a stark contrast to their humble backgrounds and Gandhian austerity and it must have been hard for some not to succumb to it. Patel wrote about it — “.. scramble for power and office is there, but it is not any defeatist attitude that is required but firmness and determination to combat these evils from within” [link]. Ironically, Patel himself was the target of a Muslim League atttack published in Dawn when his orders of luxurious furniture for his new residence at 1 Aurangzeb Road were “inadvertently” billed to Government of India. [Thy Hand Great Anarch, Page 833].
re: speed of evolution. for a quantitative trait is it governed by the prediction equation:
response = heritability X selection differential
if a trait is heritable and there is a selection differential associated with that trait, evolution will occur. here’s an example of how the calculation would work: http://scienceblogs.com/gnxp/2007/08/how_fast_do_gene_frequencies_c.php#comment-533382
Interesting side discussion developing, hope Vinod and the mods continue to be indulgent…
Just a brief comment now, might add more later. I think you’re referring to the ‘Bombay Plan’ – a document put together in 1944 by a group of Bombay industrialists including JRD Tata. Here’s what PM Manmohan Singh said in 2004, at the 60th anniversary of the plan.
Link
However, there is also an argument to be made that the Bombay Plan merely ‘acknowledged the inevitable’ – i.e., that the British were leaving, that Congress with its mass-base politics would form the next government, and that Nehru, who had already formed the National Planning Committee with Mahalonobis in 1938, would introduce centralized economic planning, so the Bombay industrialists better get on the good side of Congress, and hope thus to have some influence on the shape of things to come, and head off a more drastic nationalization scheme. Also, the plan argued for better infrastructure and schooling, which makes sense from any businessman’s standpoint, not an endorsement of the command economy per se. And in what happened subsequently, the big business houses prospered like never before – Tata, Birla, etc did extremely well throughout the next fifty years of ‘central planning’, they seemed not to have trouble getting licenses and permits. Tata did lose control of his airline later, but continued as Chairman and MD, so the difference was barely noticeable, at least in the beginning.
The link above also shows that, as a practical matter, some industrialists hedged their bets between the British ‘sarkar’ that was handing out war contracts, and the Congress leaders, many of whom were still in jail. As well, the Bombay industrialists did not even make a token above-the-table and on-the-record contribution of Rs 1,000 to the National Planning Committee! This can be taken to mean their commitment to planning as a concept was not nearly as deep as Nehru’s.
Puliogre wrote: “i think he was also inspired by the japaneese. the japaneese defeating the russians showed him that an asian country can defeat westerners. you can be inspired by someone, but the important thing is how you act on your inspiration.”
Any victory is the stuff of inspiration, regardless of details. However, it was the Anglo-Japanese alliance that emboldened the Japanese to oppose Russia in war. Got this from an on-line Britannica article, so it’s hardly arcane history. Japan was only just emerging as a technologically developed society, and it would have been foolhardy to wage war on a western country without a backup plan. The London bureau of the Rothschild funded them and began, through Jacob Schift, an association with the great Takahashi Korekiyo that persists to this day (well, not Takahashi, but the Japanese-Rothschild relationship). [Takahashi Korekiyo, the Rothschilds and the Russo-Japanese War, 1904–1907, Richard Smethurst recalls the genesis of the relationship between the Rothschildbanks and one of the great figures in Japan’s history, Takahashi Korekiyo] http://www.rothschildarchive.org/ib/articles/AR2006Japan.pdf (Smethurst paper)
Still, Russia was a big butt to have kicked, so the Japanese entered the 20th century as a power to be reckoned with.
Floridian “Today’s Indian workers, for example, working in the world class environment of an office tower in Gurgaon, given the same American style name tags, lap tops, water bottles, Six Sigma, Quality Process and MBO, are less productive than their western counterpart”.
For probably the first time on SM I must disagree with you. This is a canard spread by vested interests. Offshoring is hard work and the same complaints occur when the Americans offshore to Australia. Further, a key element in the comparison is missing – the quality of management. Sadly, there are far too many incompetent Indian Managers (I was one). Most learn the tech stuff – Six Sigma / MBO etc etc. However very few learn the soft stuff. Western style management struggles in India and blind copying of techniques results in lower productivity. India’s most successful business have learnt to marry to Western techniques with a ‘Desi’ touch.
Would love to hear about your experiences with lower productivity in the desh. I take it that this is in the advertising industry.
As an aside I used to have a hard time convincing Western bosses not to confuse english skills for good management – although that may be true in the West.
SM bloggers – I vote for Floridian to be a guest blogger.
“The troublemakers, the dull, the lolling invalids — all weeded out in the great English progression to “modernity.”
They were shipped out to faraway lands including USA / Australia.