As Nehru and others had observed, poverty in India is highly correlated with the length of British rule in that part of India, Bengal being the poorest and Punjab the richest. This is actually true of the world in general - compare Africa with Japan - prosperity is highly correleted with the colonial experience a country had.
Caste is almost irrelevant - the Gini coefficient which measures inequality is much higher in the US than in India.
India which was 25% of the world's economy in 1800 was essentially crushed by the British to make way for
their industrialization via a captive market. Internal trade in India was crushed by internal tariffs.
Railroads which had a positive network effect in the US, had the opposite (destructive) network effect in India killing its manufacturing base and driving millions to unemployment and dependance on agricultural land which lead to the widespread poverty you see today.
Here's the book to actually understand India:- "Late victorian holocausts and the making of the third world". http://www.amazon.com/Late-Victorian-Holocausts-Famines-Maki...
As Nehru and others had observed, poverty in India is highly correlated with the length of British rule in that part of India, Bengal being the poorest and Punjab the richest. This is actually true of the world in general - compare Africa with Japan - prosperity is highly correleted with the colonial experience a country had.
Caste is almost irrelevant - the Gini coefficient which measures inequality is much higher in the US than in India.
India which was 25% of the world's economy in 1800 was essentially crushed by the British to make way for their industrialization via a captive market. Internal trade in India was crushed by internal tariffs. Railroads which had a positive network effect in the US, had the opposite (destructive) network effect in India killing its manufacturing base and driving millions to unemployment and dependance on agricultural land which lead to the widespread poverty you see today.