278 Comments
Apr 28, 2023Liked by Noah Smith

"Indian polity revolves around those who believe that India went through single colonization (European) vs those who believe India went through double colonization (Islamic and European)"

*Everything* about Indian politics will make sense if one understands above statement.

I can give a link where 2 from first camp and 2 from second camp debate (in english) ==>

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dbG4IC7UOM&t=2790s&ab_channel=TIMESNOW

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What a great video! One of the things I love about Substack is that the commenters bring so much to the table.

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Would like to disagree a bit and add that there are essentially 3 sides to this.

The Indian National Congress believes that India went through single colonization (European) vs The Bhartiya Janata Party which believes that India went through double colonization (Islamic and European) vs All the other caste based parties who believe that Indian public's woes can be addressed only when the lower castes occupy positions of power and do stuff for the lower castes.

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May 2, 2023·edited May 2, 2023

There is also a small group of people who believe that India went through a triple colonization - European, Muslim and Aryan - and these people are the people that the two-colonizations lot are scared of most. The topic the right wing lies about the most blatantly in India is caste and its origins - they must realize that the double colonization theory they propagate will one day fall victim to its own logic.

The caste parties have an intuitive affinity for this third view, but have not presented a coherent grand ideological narrative around it and are instead looking after parochial interests in their respective states.

Group 1 is now eclipsed by Group 2, but if Group 3 rises then Group 1 + Group 3 might be able to overthrow group 2.

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See the Aryan Colonization/Aryan Invasion/Migration theory has so many so many so many holes the three “so many” are not enough to actually demonstrate that there are holes in it.

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No it’s not, the Vedas, discovery of Harappa and MD, (IVC) and other archaeological evidence disproves migration. The replacement for that is OIT. Sanskrit progeny languages have migrated outward. AIT is based on racial prejudices. There are plenty of western historians who also have sworn by AIT and AMT but have revised their views, and the geneticists have found no conclusive findings. I’m open to an open debate if anyone is up for it though I’ll need better preparations And I’ll keep an open mind because I am also aware of the right and left wing angle to this.

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Aug 21, 2023·edited Aug 21, 2023

how does it disprove migration if IVC samples don't have steppe admixture but vedic era onwards Indians have steppe admixture?

Can you even explain something this basic. This is the most retarded thing I've ever heard.

Can you even summarize succinctly what the chain of events according to AMT/AIT is, along with the summary evidence - really needs only 5 bullet points, and can you give the counterfactual theory to it in 5 bullet points?

Let me share the question more clearly:

Why do indian upper castes share significant amounts of Y chromosomal DNA with Europeans, but not share much in terms of overall DNA, and also have entirely different mt-DNA. Why is the extent of presence of this Y-DNA directly correlated to the presence of indo aryan language family vs dravidian?

All you confident brickheads can't even summarize the arguments in favour of OIT even now because everyone has their own convoluted logic based on some spurious thing based on some linguistics heard on youtube and never critically analyzed.

I'm quite sure you don't even know what AMT is.

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Still waiting for your source

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Aug 22, 2023·edited Aug 22, 2023

There's not one source for this, but many disparate data points. The study on IVC not having steppe genes is a different paper from the ones that studies brahmins having high levels of steppe admixture. The study that shows that Y-chromosomes are 60%+ shared in common with european haplogroups amongst brahmins is from a different paper.

The general Aryan Migration hypothesis is summarized here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pra7YZWVc-s

"A Tale of Two Subcontinents"

TLDR: of the modern AIT/AMT narrative.

- First wave of humans settled in india 50k years ago. Paniya related tribal hunter gatherers, no known advanced civilization but many cave paintings and tool use in the era. (ancient south asian tribals)

- 10k years ago, new group coming in from iran mixed with local tribals, not sure if this group knew farming or were hunter gatherers - this group formed the indus valley civilization and either brought in farming through contact with sumeria or developed it indigenously. They created the indus valley civlization that contributes to the majority of the modern indian genome and probably spoke a proto-dravidian language and sumeria called this civilization 'meluhha' or 'melukkha'

- 3k years ago, new group of people speaking proto-sanskrit started coming down from ukrainian steppe via central asia and mixed in starting with the local civilizations punjab area. By this time IVC had been weakened, probably been dispersed by weather events and migrated further east and south. (that's AMT), or that they fought violent wars of conquest (that's AIT). Either way the net result is that the north has higher steppe ancestry, and particularly concentrated in the male line, so brahmins as far east as bihar and bengal are majority "european" on their Y-chromosomes (60%+) even though they are heavily mixed overall (overall steppe gene contribution of only 10-15%). This happened because it was Steppe men marrying local women and not vice versa. There is one exception of a small valley town in pakistan where the opposite happened - which is that the people are 10-15% steppe admixture but it's entirely concentrated on the maternal DNA.

- The end result is that north indian languages descend from the steppe group's languages and form a spectrum with persian, russian, lithuanian, greek, and european languages, south indian languages descend from the IVC's languages, and hinduism arose out of a synthesis of the vedic religion that was followed by the steppe immigrants with that of the IVC religion - along with all the other developments that took place in the 3000 years afterward.

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Give me the source for your question or your reasoning at least before I answer this because I do have an answer

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I hope you are kidding. Palaeolinguistics alone is sufficient proof (Indo-European Urheimat cannot have been India for lexical reasons so multiple this comment won't hold them, thus ancestors of Indo-Aryan speaking people must have migrated inside India, and specifically from northwest of India where the relevant plants, animals, and other biological realities were found in the era - whether it was Pontic-Caspian Steppe, Balkans, or Anatolia is irrelevant for this discussion, and these are the only somewhat-surviving hypotheses in mainstream linguistics), and other sciences seem to point the same way. We cannot expect much from archaeology of that old, so absence of evidence is not evidence of absence there; genetics is consistent with this idea, as Akuma shows below (although I don't agree with his tone). Indus Valley civilization probably simply predates Aryan migration (and, given what Indo-Europeans have done elsewhere, its demise may even be related).

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and out of india is one big hole

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I never said Out of India is just as valid but then there is on going genetic research to determine what the real truth is. Besides AIT was based on very limited linguistic evidence

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this is ridiculous, at this point aryan migration is attested to by both linguistic, historic (itihaasas/gathas) and genetic evidence in both y-dna and mt-dna.

There is a reason aryan migration deniers don't engage in live debates with serious geneticists.

If you need to do so much gymnastics just to prove a point then clearly there's no point engaging with such chameleons and snakes.

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Er… I fail to understand how the colonization narrative is relevant.

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Wow! Very astute!

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Apr 28, 2023Liked by Noah Smith

I spent 2-3 weeks per quarter for three years (2012-2015) in India on business ( I worked for a sustainability certification for IT at the time and was engaging Indian purchasers and brands to promote the certification as a way to identify more sustainable hardware). The rate of growth and wealth building was truly astonishing - showing up even between those quarterly visits in astonishing ways! The first time I visited the tech-brand-hub city of Gurgaon a woman was hoeing and a cow was wandering around in a big empty lot near the Dell building. By 9 months or a year later the whole area was crowded with tech brand HQ buildings and a huge mall was crowded with thousands of middle class people with money to spend on Friday afternoons and weekends. The Wipro tech services Bangalore campus was a manicured, sustainably landscaped space where thousands of well dressed young people ate in sparkling food courts during lunch hour. Hyderabad has an astonishing cluster of medical and other businesses, with a brilliant flyover highway making it possible to cross town in no time. (Despite my enjoyment as an outsider of traffic coming to a standstill for local festival parades to go by, it certainly slows down business!) Noida outside Delhi had literally dozens and dozens of residential apartment buildings going up - being built by hand by laborers in a much more labor intensive way than any construction in the US . The scale of rapid growth and increasing prosperity was visible every day - contrary to US perceptions of India as a dusty backwater. There is still immense, visible, intractable poverty, with ragged tents of laborers even in central urban streets and large swathe of the countryside still not fully electrified. But I have an enduring admiration for the grit, determination, cleverness and industry I witnessed in India - and for the creativity and initiative with which individuals pursue "the American dream" of finding a way to make a living, get an education, build a business, have a home. Some of the industrial stuff has yet to reach the Chinese pinnacle of sophistication - but I would never bet against India. Modi on the other hand is a divisive guy and while his government may not be directing the pogroms, they do happen with impunity, just as they did in Gujarat when he was in charge. And even if you view it with no moral judgment (not sure who that would be possible but...), riots and murders breaking out randomly are not good for business continuity

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Ms Sarah, Mr Modi has been given a clean chit for gujarat, by the highest court of our land - the Supreme Court of India. Perhaps you may like to check that judgment for yourself. Its available online i am sure.

As for riots they've were agiven under previous regimes - a substantive list of which can be googled too. The riots have come down significantly since Mr Modi took charge. Also factor in that we the people of India, no longer live under the threat of random bomb blasts across the country. While i may be observing him from an insider's perspective, I can assure you his policies are benefitting the masses (if they weren't, I wouldn't be averse to criticizing them either) which I am sorry to say was not the case with previous governments. I have lived in india all my life (and travelled to US and Europe) n am well versed with the changes that have or not taken place socially n politically in the last 6-7 decades. The Indian economy has picked up since 2014 n as an entrepreneur n a skeptic with my ears to the ground let me share that we're definitely happy that people at the grassroots are much, much better off than ever before. His politics is not divisive, else his beneficiary policies would've been selective too.

... there are enough in my country who do that divisive bit with impunity. N cry foul because they are unable to match up to his visionary approach.

Unlike the perception being built by the Western media of how oppressive Modi's regime is and how scared the minorities are, pl come back again and see for yourself how people across board are thriving in our cities n in the interiors, n continue to live and let live, barring stray incidents. Which by the way, though very unfortunate, are also inevitable given the sheer size n diversity of this nation. We're only human (which is not an excuse). Very fortunately we are not a trigger happy nation like the US.

Finally allow me to share that the one thing Mr Modi has managed to do during his time which other previous leaders were unable to even conceive of - let alone execute is that he has been able infuse in his countrymen a sense of pride of being an Indian. We longer walk around with hunched shoulders n apologetic air around us. As a result, more n more people sign up n pledge to work for the benefit of the country - that more than anything will continue to propel the country forward in time to come, Modi or no Modi.

Like this very detailed, incisive and well researched blogpost suggests Our time has come n whether anyone likes it or not, we're marching ahead n you're invited, very courteously, to join us.

And our 5000+ year old history is proof that everyone is welcome to walk with us. We truly believe in Vasudev kumtabhkum - the world is our family.

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Another ignorant westerner about Modi. Indians are not foolish to vote for him again and again. He will win 2024 again fyi.

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Sounds like China 15-20 years ago, where life in Shanghai seemed to move twice as fast as even NYC and there were more changes in 2 years than 2 decades in the US.

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Exactly what I was thinking. The before/after photos of Pudong blow my mind whenever I see them.

https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2013/08/26-years-of-growth-shanghai-then-and-now/100569/

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Ms Sarah pls take note of the dwindling minority populations of Pakistan and Bangladesh as against the consistent growth of population of Indian minorities. On plain facts you cannot attest that Modi is divisive or congress is non-divisive. Hindutva is about indigenous people protecting and asserting their traditions and their inalienable rights to their sacred geography, that has already suffered a brutal partition at the hands of colonial oppressors. At least colonization is something we have in common with the Americans and I’m sure y’all haven’t forgotten your right of revolution. We have not forgotten our roots either. Not to mention even Americans uprooted Native Americans from their lands.

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Hi! Interesting! You may enjoy reading my posts in helloIndia! Thanks for sharing!

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I’m glad this isn’t the usual “oh no my poor pet victims, MoDi Is HiTlEr AnD a PoPuLiSt WhAt AbOuT hInDuTvA aNd ThE rSs AnD gOdHrA” type of crap I usually see from Americans about India (bonus points for quoting Arundhati Roy).

That said, Modi hasn’t delivered all the reforms necessary. There’s still a very long way to go before India can reach its potential. Unfortunately, it still needs to heal the wounds inflicted by the INC and Nehru’s braindead economic policies (look up Uttam Nakate). Hopefully the BJP can implement them in the states it runs, and pick up more seats in the Rajya Sabha to make passing them at the federal level easier.

https://indiareforms.csis.org/

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Yes, but the lives of many many Indians have improved a good amount under his rule; if India's economy falters, he'll have as much trouble as Erdogan has in Turkey now).

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They have, and I haven’t disputed that. My point is that there’s a lot more to be done. The INC won’t make the necessary economic changes since they are captured intellectually by people who think that the economy was “fair” before the 90s. Guess why Narsimha Rao is basically retconned from INC history?

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May 2, 2023·edited May 2, 2023

He's retconned from INC history because he's a non-Gandhi and makes all of Nehru's descendants look bad.

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The current turn in Indian politics has all the hallmarks of a move towards competitive authoritarianism. On the other hand, if what we're trying to do is decouple more and more from China, India seems the natural place to turn, especially given what you note about their lack of industrialization; there's a lot of mutual benefit to be found there. And then perhaps by more closely aligning with them, we could help nudge them in a more liberal democratic direction.

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Tell you what, if the Muslim population in the US goes to around 20 percent, you'll see riots every now and then and the options you'll have is to accept that or you guys will turn full Nazi to stop that. India definitely hasn't done that. It is Hindu by nature and will do everything to preserve that.

When you say that the the Indian political scene is turning towards authoritarianism, what do you mean by that ? How about giving specific examples ?

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India is more democratic than US.

Here, the people choose their representatives. In the US, the representatives choose their people(gerrymander).

Perhaps you can learn a few things from India.

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India has been pretty liberal, perhaps even more than western nations in some directions. Eg - Concept of equity - might be a new thing in west but we have government mandated reservations for unprivileged communities since our independence.

Similarly, India often allows separate set of laws to accommodate minority religious and other culturally diverse groups.

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Has been, yes, in some ways, yes. Now it’s censoring the press and going hard on nationalism

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Adam I remember we were growing slow when we were growing very slow when we were governed in a "western style"

After the regime change and "Indian" style of governance we are able to aim high.

One thing we have learnt is not seeking validation from people sitting 1000 miles away and have no idea of ground reality. There are 1000s of languages and ethnicities and we will do whatever it takes to prevent any civil conflict.

Hope you will understand!!!

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Thanks for your little fascist propaganda, hope it helps you sleep at night

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May 2, 2023·edited May 2, 2023

Thank you for your amazing insightful 3rd hand recycled western propaganda bile, hope it helps fuel your superiority complex for another couple of decades because it is genuinely running close to its expiry date.

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Is the Indian state censoring criticism or is it not, yes or no?

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I was expecting a better reply.

But maybe I am not "liberal enough" to deserve reply from you.

Anyway peace :)

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Let’s try this: liberal democracy is not “western style” and this to-formula ethnic nationalism plus state censorship nonsense Modi has been pulling is no more “non-western” than what India was doing before. The growth also occurred in large part before this recent turn so you can’t attribute it to that. Hope this helps.

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A separate set of laws for different religions is something the West junked a long time ago.

https://www.liberalcurrents.com/liberalism-and-jewish-emancipation/

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That was provided for by the Brits before they left - a legacy of partition.

India is now moving towards a uniform civil code while Canada and the UK have functional sharia courts now.

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"Functional sharia courts"? What? When?

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https://europeanconservative.com/articles/commentary/parallel-law-the-rise-of-sharia-councils-in-the-uk/

https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CDP-2019-0102/CDP-2019-0102.pdf

They have semi-legal status of an 'alternate dispute resolution mechanism' already - but there are potentially million of people who are following sharia courts instead of British law already - muslim women, in particular are pressurized to follow Sharia law for civil disputes which keeps them isolated from modern law - and as the islamic population will grow, you will see that court orders are ignored while Sharia council edicts are put into effect. One of the core tenets of Sharia law is that it is above the law of the land - and those using the parallel court system today are also likely being simultaneously being indoctrinated to ignore the common law.

We already know how this story ends, have seen it happen in India over 75 years in a few regions.

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There at least 2 Indias, one north of the vast fertile Gangetic Plain and one south of it nestled around the arid Deccan Plateau. The North is not as industrialized and population growth is well above replacement rate. The equally populated South is more urbanized and population growth is below replacement. How the people of this most complicated country handles this divergence will be shape the subcontinent's future.

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The fertility rate in the north is still pretty high but dropping fast.

For instance, Bihar, which has the highest fertility rate of any Indian state, dropped from a TFR of 3.9 in 2009 to 3.0 in 2020.

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This is going to be an issue with the upcoming Lok Sabha delimitation and is why Modi is expanding the LS.

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Won't be correct to say that's it's the reason why they are expanding LS. They are legally mandated to do that. Now doing it, would be undemocratic, but yeah, one needs to watch out for details.

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They could have kicked the cab down the road like they did with the 87th and 82nd amendment.

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they probably should - the southern states are not getting rewarded for being better at family planning.

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This was alluded to in those comments about the three, not two, invasions.

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Apr 28, 2023Liked by Noah Smith

Their train system, both freight and passenger, are something I envy as an American despite their status as a third world country. America had a missed opportunity both in the 70s and in 2009 to nationalize RoW and built a world class electrified system.

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I think Indian railway is the lifeline in India..you will find indian standard sophisticated trains, comforting trains, then not so comforting but will do type, and the daily passenger type local trains which literally ferry lakhs of passengers everyday..but one thing that has not been upgraded is speed..despite introduction of semi high speed trains which can easily run at 170-180km/hr it is being run at 100 km/hr because of old track infrastructure...but still almost 90%of track is electrified which is a great achievement because of the length of railway network in India..a dedicated freight corridor is being established between major manufacturing sites and ports .. then first bullet train network is being done between mumbai and ahmedabad..

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I thought you were talking about the 1870s when the railroads were given an enormous Head Start that wasn't possible in Europe with free land and monopolies to have a first class rail system and keep it first class. But then there were the robber barons who milked those advantages for cash and let the rail and rolling stock deteriorate and then asked the government for more money and bought up the shares of stock that they had sold at their highs turned around and bought more at the bottom

What are they saying these days? "Socialism for the wealthy and capitalism for the poor."

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Arguably the civil war would’ve been the best time to nationalize in addition to keeping rail nationalized following WW1.

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Apr 28, 2023Liked by Noah Smith

Why is Asian geography destiny? For the last two generations, Asia's given us one economic takeoff after another, and in weirdly geographical order. You can see a long chain of "growth miracles", a chain that starts with Japan and works south and west along Asia's coast. Now, as if by economic law, the growth miracle has come for Bangladesh and India.

But what's the underlying economic reason? Why do countries in the same region grow together?

It's not transport costs. The distances here are much larger than between London and Manchester; deliveries go by container ships on the ocean, not breakbulk cargo on railroads. If Taiwan's growth primed India more than Kenya, it's not because of the different prices in ocean shipment.

It's not "culture," either, at least not in the usual senses of the word, if we want to link Bangladesh and India to Taiwan and Korea. You have to torture your data a lot to explain why "culture" singles out India and Bangladesh rather than, say, the Latin American or East African countries with large Japanese or Chinese diaspora communities.

Is it human capital endowment? It might be. The East Asian countries were high in literacy before their economies took off, and I think you can make a case that India and Bangladesh were behind Southeast Asia but ahead of East Africa on that list.

But it still feels weird to see such a geographical chain in the order of economic takeoff, and not have much understanding why.

Regional agglomeration on the scale of a car ride or a railway delivery makes sense to me. But regional agglomeration on the scale of thousands of miles? That feels like something else.

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author

Travel time of engineers and managers and financiers, turnaround time for shipping parts and components, time zones

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Apr 28, 2023·edited Apr 28, 2023

Do we see travel-time effects in which parts of Latin America have grown most, beyond the car-travel zone right next to the USA?

That is, if Asian-scale air-travel time mattered for growth, I'd expect Central America to have had better growth than Columbia or Ecuador, and those all to have outdone Chile and Peru, because of better travel times to the USA. But that hasn't happened, I think.

We see a travel-time / shipping-time effect for Mexico near the US border, where it's car and rail not plane and ship. But we don't see that effect on the >2000 miles scale that we're suggesting for Asia.

So I like the travel/turnaround time hypothesis, but I don't see the gradients it suggests for distances past car travel (say above 1000 miles) elsewhere in the world than Asia.

So I don't see how this mechanism, which isn't predictive outside Asia, should be what's driving things in Asia.

Maybe I'm missing some GDP growth facts, and air-travel-scale, long-distance growth gradients do show up other places than Asia?

I agree it's a natural hypothesis, since it obviously *is* a big part of the story with London-Manchester or Berlin-Warsaw or Los Angeles-Tijuana.

I'm just nervous scaling up a hypothesis that doesn't seem to work at that scale, not anywhere else in the world, and claiming it's still the answer in Asia.

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author

You can absolutely see the effect in Mexico. U.S. investment and supply chains contributed to a ton of industrialization there; they build many of our cars and computers. You can also see it in the Dominican Republic, which is experiencing a manufacturing-led growth boom. Someday, if South American countries ever stop specializing in natural resource export, you will see it there too.

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Mexico is all in car and rail distance. I'm asking whether travel time is still predictive at air and ship distance? But the Dominican Republic obviously counts for that.

I'd still be happier with the travel-time hypothesis if we had an American chain or gradient the way Asia does. As it is, we're left saying "they *would* have a gradient/chain if more of them had good policies," which seems hard to distinguish from "policies, or human capital that facilities those policies, is the geographically correlated phenomenon, and travel time isn't that important."

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author

Do you know the gravity model of trade? One of the most empirically successful and predictive models in all of economics, and it relies crucially on a distance parameter!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_model_of_trade

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Apr 28, 2023·edited Apr 28, 2023

Yes! But Ireland is much closer to London than the United States is, yet the American economy took off long before Ireland. Gravity doesn't predict growth takeoff; it predicts trade volumes at a given GDP. If you want to predict growth takeoff, gravity waits on policy.

But if gravity waits on policy, we come back to a question:

Why did so many Asian countries end up with growth policies before the rest of the developing world? And within Asia, why did growth policies roughly flow south and west down the coast from Japan?

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I would love to see a discussion between you and Peter Z, moderated by Beau of the fifth column

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Copy thy neighbour. Japan was first in Asia. Taiwan and SK copied them. Singapore kinda did some similar things, but was driven more by its status as an entrepot city state so ended up a more state based, clean version of HK. Malaysia kinda tried all the above. Indo tried copying Malaysia. China and Vietnam copying their neighbours.

I think you learn by watching those slightly ahead of you. Doing what the West tells you to do isn't as helpful, they're already mostly rich.

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A lot of it is about political unification. Industrialization requires a certain level of political unity and a strong central government to achieve its economies of scale and effective standardization. The battle between kingdoms and empires against the local aristocracy is old, but the industrial era has raised the stakes as it requires a different kind of peon, one motivated by an improved lot in life and more rights and opportunities.

Japan unified centuries ago under the shogunate. When it decided to industrialize, it was a way to deal with outside challenges to that unity.

China was dealing with dynastic collapse. It unified under Mao. Mao recognized the need to industrialize but failed horribly. His successors pushed the current industrialization.

Korea was a Japanese colony until after WW2. It industrialized after a civil war which left the nation divided, but unified the south.

India was unified a long time ago, but it still has a lot of internal divisions. If you've been watching what Modi has been doing, his authoritarian side has been forcing unification. It hasn't always been pretty.

Not everyone loved Louis XIV, Henry Tudor, Bismark, King Ferdinand or Mao.

Europe has been pushing a program of unification ever since WW2 when it became apparent that national divisions were holding back European development. Read a book like The American Challenge to get a sense of this. The EU is far from perfect, but it is sure a lot better than the interstate anarchy that preceded WW2.

Closer to home, there was the US Civil War. Along with the fight for human liberty there was the fight to advance the business interests of the Northeastern elite. S modern industrial society requires a level of political unity that is unacceptable to an agricultural elite. That division is still there in the gap between red states and blue states. It shows up in income levels, medical outcomes and crime rates. The battle between the local agricultural elite and the requisites of being a modern industrial nation is being fought in fought even today in Congress.

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May 2, 2023·edited May 2, 2023

"I think you learn by watching those slightly ahead of you. Doing what the West tells you to do isn't as helpful, they're already mostly rich."

Amen, they are already rich and they have collectively mostly forgotten everything they had to do to get rich anyway.

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May 2, 2023·edited May 2, 2023

It's about 'global value chains' - i.e. the efficient existing maritime shipping chains that transports goods from producers in the east to consumers in europe, MEA and the US from East Asia via the Malacca strait.

It is much easier for a country to hook into the global manufacturing value chain if it sits close to that route already. When wages rise in the current manufacturing powerhouse along the GVC, the next country with a significant cost arbitrage and a sufficiently educated population is well positioned to enter the GVC as a contributor to the global production process.

At that point it can start by assembling using imported components and ship the finished product on its way, arbitraging its lower labor costs to take over the simplest but most labor expensive part of the manufacturing process - final assembly. This creates a significant number of jobs and drives industrialization and industrial attitudes in society. Over time it starts to vertically integrate and move into more complex production.

For e.g. assume Kenya and India achieve more or less the same level of human development and are trying to enter a valuable high-value added industry such as electronics - it will be easier for India to hook into into global value chain since most of the parts and products it needs to kickstart the industry will need to do a pretty small diversion to come to India.

Kenya will find it impossible since there's no shipping routes for electronics parts close to it and no one will ship to Kenya to get some electronics manufacturing done if they can get the same done at some other low income decent HDI country which is closer to the existing routes.

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You may not realize that cost per mile, per kg for transporting goods long-distance is cheapest to do by shipping. It's actually cheaper to transport goods by ship from the UK to Italy, rather than by train, for instance. All of the major success stories in breakaway national economic growth in East Asia are predominantly exposed to the same sea lanes. Mongolia and Bhutan are not experiencing the same benefits. The shipping pathways and supply chain concentration in East Asia has been incredibly powerful for growth in these economies, and it allows the next country to step into place as the previous manufacturing superpower moves up the value chain, without relocating talent or supply chains to a different part of the globe.

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You often get this kind of thing. Look at the spread of technologies and armies out of central Asia, starting with agriculture moving out of Anatolia and each time with its source further east. Look at the European pattern with Spain and Portugal first, then England, France and Holland, followed by Germany and Italy each unifying and building world empires. It reminds me of crystalization. When there is a gradient of conditions, crystals form as the gradient changes.

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Uh, continental Europe was one of 2 places in the world to industrialize after the UK was the first in the world to do so (the US was the only other 1). In particular, the parts of Europe close to the UK in the (north)west.

The other thing to keep in mind is that shipping by water has traditionally (and I believe still is) orders of magnitude cheaper than shipping by land.

So what's happening in Asia isn't anything unique.

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Apr 29, 2023Liked by Noah Smith

>Equally big, or maybe even bigger. Unlike China, India doesn’t mount a massive government campaign to copy (or steal) the technology of multinational companies that invest there, then transfer that technology to state-supported domestic champions.

Do you think this is a good or bad thing, for India? Stealing technology seems to have worked out well for China (and for America, early in our history). Maybe spying and hacking would backfire too much in terms of relations with the US, but 'voluntary' technology transfer--conditioning investment on tech transfer, seems like a reasonable policy for national development.

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Korea successfully appropriated Japanese technology by hiring older Japanese engineers; it didn't require the massive espionage campaign that China has done, which has made multinationals reluctant to have research ties with China and which has invited export controls. India should use the Korean method.

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That's a much bigger ask though, right; Korea and Japan are close and have a long history of, ahem, ties to each other. Hiring a Japanese engineer to work in Mumbai is tougher. The cultural proximity of east Asia countries is a boon that India does not have. (as in, it's the most economically advanced of its cultural peers)

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May 2, 2023·edited May 2, 2023

India will get "tech transfer" primarily via the circulation of its own diaspora to Europe, SEA and the Anglosphere and from all the companies coming to set up shop in India who will end up absorbing local talent.

India's biggest unicorn was built by a couple of Amazon engineers working in India who saw that Amazon wasn't planning to launch in India for the forseeable future.

They built Flipkart following Amazon's strategy adapted to India and Amazon eventually had to accelerate its launch in India to keep them from monopolizing the market.

Many of the other unicorns are built of supported by people bringing in the silicon valley tech and VC ecosystem to India

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This is a very good observation. This is exactly why India may struggle as there's high levels of resentment that will result if the fruits of FDI will mostly accrue to Western headquarters

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I think it's a lot more complex right now - relationships flowing in all directions.

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Apr 29, 2023Liked by Noah Smith

This is so good.

One real limitation of empirical work in political science (and to some extent public policy and admin) is a lack of focus on Asia. This short piece should be part of syllabi going forward making the case as to why we should be examining that part of the world, and India in particular, more

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Apr 29, 2023Liked by Noah Smith

Great post. But you missed one key indicator of an emerging ‘Indiamerica’ - a U.S. Vice President who’s mother was born in Chennai.

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But the VP doesn't really bring her mother up as it doesn't help her much politically unlike her black father. And she briefly brought out her supposed Indianness once she started faltering in her presidential campaign in the primaries. Plus, she's not really viewed as a success symbol by Indians either in India or America (save for a few 'wokes').

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Why not? She's the first female vice president, I don't think it's terribly woke to say that's a major accomplishment.

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Apr 29, 2023Liked by Noah Smith

Three snarks for Muster Mark! (ala Joyce).

A spokesperson for the Chinese foreign ministry, reacting to the news that India had the world’s largest population, recently sniffed that “Population dividend does not depend on quantity but also quality”

If India wasn’t significant, why would a spokesperson for China even bother to snark?

India has planted its flag in the U.S. -- heads of major corporations, thousands of small businesses, etc. -- so it seems appropriate for the U.S. to follow suit.

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Love the Joyce reference!

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Apr 29, 2023Liked by Noah Smith

Unmentioned is India's lack of port facilities. China has more port capacity than the rest of Asia combined. High valued products like iPhones can be sent by air, but for India to make any dent in China's exports, India must develop their port facilities. That was recognized when I lived in India 25 years ago and it remains true today. Or have things changed so quickly I've missed it?

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Apr 29, 2023Liked by Noah Smith

Government has launched the Sagarmala project to modernise the ports. Also the control of ports has been changed from govt being the sole owner to govt playing the role of facilitator while the ports will be privately run. So there is recognition of improving the ports and some actions are being taken too.

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May 2, 2023·edited May 2, 2023

There's a reason why Adani is one of India's richest men - his wealth is largely tied to the Mundra port - which has become India's largest port in a few short decades.

TLDR version : Yes ports are an issue - but a lot of the projects needed to to scale them up for a big manufacturing push are already under way and will reach scale over the next decade.

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Apr 29, 2023Liked by Noah Smith

It is interesting to contemplate that the competition between India and China may be determined by which country is more open and transparent. That is a lovely incentive that could improve life in both countries.

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Apr 30, 2023Liked by Noah Smith

Interesting article. Americans’ general ignorance of Indian culture shows up on how they are currently being taken for a ride in their caste policies and laws: https://quillette.com/2023/04/29/the-fragility-of-the-caste-oppression-hypothesis/

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May 2, 2023·edited May 2, 2023

They also haven't yet realized that black americans descended from slaves form a caste in America - not a race.

African-Immigrant-Americans - those that voluntarily immigrated from Africa - earn far more than Black-Americans.

At my ivy league grad school I interacted with so many kenyans, ethiopians and nigerians - 2nd gen immigrants who were able to leverage the college's 'diversity' policies - but not a single black american descendant of the slaves.

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If caste oppression doesn't happen, then surely there's no possible harm in banning it.

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Apr 29, 2023Liked by Noah Smith

You make a great point about American perceptions of India and China. As someone who works in consulting and tech, I’ve worked with hundreds of Indians, including folks living in India and Indian-Americans. I’ve made good friends. I’ve gotten job referrals. They are a huge part of the tech ecosystem. My perception is that they are hard working and brilliant and hilarious. Compare to China- I don’t even have a perception of Chinese professionals because I have not worked with a single Chinese person in 12+ years in the workforce. My perception of China is that it is an autocratic country terrified of a free press and open internet. Not as evil as Iran or Russia but not far behind. India has a massive advantage in this regard.

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Noah, I almost never write comments before to you or others but would like to add one to your post. I am 74 years old (a woman, by the way!) and have a PhD in international economic development from University of Chicago (1979). I actually went there and had a National Defense Language Fellowship (when those things existed!) and was supposed to go to study what makes for healthy, economic growth in emerging, post-colonial societies. Well, first off, Nixon ended up freezing the NSF budget and then India didn't allow foreign researchers into India. I won't go into the boring detail about what I had to do, but it was interesting! In any case, I still follow actively international developments, and have always been intrigued with India developments. This is by way of a purely anecdotal comment about India and the US relationships. We have a nephew and wife who have lived in southern NJ between Princeton and Trenton smack in the middle of pharma country, and the resentment of Indians taking over the area is palpable on all sorts of levels. I could go into detail but won't, though the clear undercurrent is they stay to themselves, the kids are over-achievers academically, and don't participate in sports. It's insidious, and I hate it. But this is in blue America, not red America, and it is very, very concerning if more Americans think Republicans have an answer or solution. I am not sure I address anything here but I had to say something of what I think are emerging dynamics for someone who loves cultural diversity and still travel and hike around the world!

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They are lightweight by nature and fantastic at cricket which is their national sport unlike the USA which play a sport disparagingly mocked and described as rounders.

But it is the progressive rather than the right that have the real difficulty with Indians. They don't do master plans, work for themselves, don't blame everyone else and look for handouts. They vote for freedom not dependence hence like the Vietnamese and others cannot be corralled by the progressive into pigeon holes and stereotypes.

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Yes, that's why the progressives have issues with immigrations, unlike the right who always welcome immigration with oopen arms.

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"Progressives" don't like high achieving legal immigrants for some reasons.

Not enough victimhood narrative to peddle.

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Sure, that's why progressives keep whining about immigrants. The conservatives never do that, do they?

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May 2, 2023·edited May 2, 2023

No, the progressives keep trying to convince me that H1B->GC->Citizen Indians should support illegal immigrants (oops - forgot i can't even say that - because there's no such thing - "No human is illegal" - such third rate gaslighting) because apparently our common immigrant identity should supercede any ideological belief in the necessity of the rule of law and that any mention of my own observations of how badly the system gets abused by unethical people - that's racist and bigoted.

And if I tell them something that they don't like to hear, they just call me a white/hindu nationalist right winger and run off into the sunset. Because American politics is polarized to the point where people are only attacking caricatures of each other.

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You're perfectly free to believe what you want. Recent migrants complaining about perceived illegal immigrants is nothing new. Happened in Australia too.

PM John Howard lied about asylum seekers throwing their kids overboard to force Australian boats to rescue them so they could get asylum. He was approached by Muslim women in headscarves - recent migrants. They told him they very much supported what he was doing (being tough, not lying). Like you, they didn't like the perceived jumping of the queue.

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How true and inconvenient for your critic. His attempted deflection is true in sense that right wing require legal immigration. However after that the progressives just can't abide the immigrants that think for and work for themselves.

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I am an Indian American who was born and raised in the same area - in Mercer County, born in the old Princeton Hospital (not the new one on Route 1). A) I played sports B) I wasn't the only desi that did C) new jersey, while being very desi, isn't just asian - it's incredibly diverse as a whole. D) I'm sure there's some white folks who resented us. But on the whole, growing up in New Jersey affected my belief in America as a diverse land of immigrants.

I'm not saying your understandings are wrong. But it certainly does not tell the whole story. Our very diverse school wasn't all kumbaya, but we all had fun playing sports, seeing different cultural shows, and generally being American kids. Frankly, I had an easier time as an Indian in New Jersey than my cousins in Britain or Australia did. I know things have changed in both of those countries, and I'm sure they have changed in New Jersey too, but I wouldn't paint too broad of a brush.

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Sounds exactly like the Indian-Americans I went to school with in California. Lots of them were basketball-crazed.

100% identifiably American, especially by their cousins still in India.

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Regarding your last point about the prejudice against Indians for those reasons you gave, including that they isolate, I find it sadly amusing that the current natives of this land can look down on and call them names and then complain that they isolate..

New York Times had a great article written by an editor from the local newspaper in Storm Lake Iowa where a number of immigrants from Mexico had moved in to that small City and taken jobs in the local packing industry. replacing a lot of empty workstations because the white young ones had left. Partly because the city was small enough and houses were empty enough The Immigrants settled throughout the community and got involved in sports and all the rest and everybody lived happily ever after until the next change comes along and everybody thinks that the past is a good place to live. As an 80-year-old white male feminazi who comes from a family with a lot of strong women, I'm here to tell you Ward and June cleaver Don't Live Here Anymore. There seem to be plenty of Eddie Haskell's around these days, subhumans who look human and employ logic like humans but have the values of chimpanzees, perhaps due to that crippled "Y" chromosome that doesn't fully support empathy.

EOF End Of Rant

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