Calling India sone ki chidiya a ‘mockery’ based on cherry-picked data, says economist Swaminathan Aiyar

In article published in Economic & Political Weekly, he said data from ‘Hindu period’ of 1-1000 AD shows per capita GDP & population growth were both stagnant, no better than world’s.

Swaminathan Aiyar | swaminomics.org

New Delhi: Even as the Sangh Parivar firmly advocates that India in the “Hindu period” (1-1000 AD) was a sone ki chidiya (golden bird), a deeper look at India’s economic performance over the last 2,000 years showed that this was far from the case, and that the term “golden” sounded like a “mockery”, Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar, research fellow at the Cato Institute in the US, has argued.

Aiyar further said, in a 10 February article published in the peer-reviewed academic journal Economic & Political Weekly, that India’s performance on economic and population metrics has been far better post-Independence than during the “so-called sone ki chidiya period”.

In his article, Aiyar said the analysis done by economic historian Angus Maddison is often cited by the Sangh Parivar to support its narrative that India was the largest economy in the world in 1 AD.

“However, this is mere cherry-picking,” Aiyar said. “India’s economic condition, when seen in the entirety of Maddison’s work, was far less flattering.”

He said a more holistic reading of Maddison’s work — which is more complex and multifaceted than the Sangh Parivar portrays — provides no evidence of the thesis that India was a golden bird of prosperity in the Hindu period, and that it went downhill during the Muslim period, and was severely impoverished during the British period.

For example, he highlighted that Maddison’s findings show that in what Aiyar calls the “Hindu period”, the growth of per capita income was zero, just as bad in most other parts of the world, and no better.

According to Maddison’s data dissected in Aiyar’s article, the GDP per capita remained unchanged at a “shockingly low” $450 per capita through the thousand years of the Hindu period, a performance that is “so poor that calling it ‘golden’ sounds like mockery”.

The per capita GDP rose only modestly to $550 in the “Muslim period” (1000−1700 AD), and was still low at $619 at the end of the “British period” (1700−1950 AD).

“Great empires rose and fell, but living standards stagnated for all, save a thin upper crust for almost 2,000 years in India,” Aiyar said. “Per capita GDP shot up only after Independence in 1950.”

He alleged that Sangh Parivar stalwarts highlighted Maddison’s findings selectively, by focussing solely on India’s share in global GDP in the year 1 AD and its subsequent fall, to prove that foreign rulers impoverished a once-rich India.

Aiyar argues that this high share in global GDP was not an indication of prosperity but a by-product of the labour-intensive nature of the economy at the time.

“India’s high GDP share at the start of the Hindu period flowed not from higher prosperity but a higher population share,” Aiyar argued.

As per Maddison’s data, India’s share in world GDP was 32 percent in 1 AD, which fell to 24.4 percent by 1700 AD during the “Muslim period”, and then crashed to 4.2 percent by 1950 at the end of the “British period”.

Noting that in 1 AD, India had 33.2 percent of the world’s population, which translated to 32 percent of world GDP, Aiyar added that India’s per capita income was slightly below the world average, and surely less than golden.

“India’s population share more than halved from 33.2 percent in 1 AD to 14 percent by 1950, an important but little advertised reason for the fall in its global GDP share,” Aiyar said. “A much bigger reason, however, was the rapid rise in incomes in the West with the industrial revolution.”

India did not get poorer during British rule, Aiyar further argued, adding that India improved very little during the period while incomes “soared” in the West.

Aiyar argued that India’s population remained unchanged at 75 million during the 1,000 years of the “Hindu period”, showing that life during this time was “brutally short” and that a high death rate kept the population unchanged.  “Just staying alive was a feat,” he noted.

The population expanded to 165 million during the Muslim period, 359 million in the British period, and 1,049 million after independence.

“In this respect too, India’s best period is after Independence,” he said. “We need to acknowledge that conditions today are much better than in the so-called sone ki chidiya period.”

“Thus, overall, India’s economic plight for two millennia was one of stagnation and stark poverty,” Aiyar added.

“Historians may speak of the glories of this or that emperor. Hindu historians in India may present one set of heroes and villains, Muslim historians in Pakistan may present a very different set of heroes and villains, and British colonial historians yet another set. But, regardless of who ruled, the masses remained desperately poor, close to subsistence level, and at risk of starvation during every drought,” he concluded.

(Edited by Tikli Basu)