India GDP in 1800

Average Indian doesn't want to think of Medieval India-It reminds them of useless war, treacherous victory, betrayal, rigid caste system, hindu orthodoxy.

Indians have learnt to accept things at face value. Our medieval history must be bad, isn’t it-all English press says so. Let’s assume we don’t know anything and assume that everything is biased. Europeans distorted history, Brahmins controlled knowledge, our rulers were busy among themselves, complete chaos everywhere. Modern medical science helped to increase average life span of Indian. Never mind, in most indian families today, grandparents live in their 90's.

Now, just for comparison, see any English movie with medieval theme- for e.g Robin Hood and now pick any Indian movie with medieval theme- First of all, there are very few. Only when which comes to my mind is Taj Mahal. This ancient land of kings,palaces,forts,rich folklore etc. produced only ONE medieval movie? Anyways.. When we compare Taj Mahal with Robin Hood movie doesn’t the differences between western civilization (or lack of it thereof) and Indian kingdom surprise?

With this background, here is hardcore economic date from Statistical compilation of world trade. Compare India and US portion of world trade in 1700 and 1990.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regions_by_past_GDP_(PPP)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_economy_of_India

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/104-1453956-9592705?%5Fencoding=UTF8&search-type=ss&index=books&field-author=Angus%20Maddison.%20Published%20by%20%3A%20OECD%20Publ

1700

Region / Country GDP (PPP) mill. of International dollars GDP Share percentage (%) World 371 369 100 India 90 750 24.4 Qing China 82 800 22.3 Western Europe 82 072 22.1

1998

Region / Country GDP (PPP) mill. of International dollars GDP Share percentage (%) World 33 725 635 100 United States 7 394 598 21.9 People's Republic of China 3 873 352 11.5

I took liberty of attaching a graph based on Angus Madison research.

There are "enlightened intellectuals" in our Indian society who believe that America is best way for India's recent progressiveness and that since last 2000 years we were buried in economic misery. From different local family histories of native indians and reading different archives, I beg otherwise.No other nation has still not matched extremely affluent lifestyle of Medieval india.

Is it is a coincidence that UK and USA share of world GDP in 1800 started rising when Indo-China region started falling?

If we can find what was correct in 1800 and replicate that in 2008, maybe India can come out of extreme poverty.