The Impact of Industrialization and Colonialism: A Global Crisis Unfolds
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Throughout recorded history, crises have been the lot of the human race. With the relatively rare exception of natural catastrophes , these crises were usually caused by man himself, by wars of conquest or religion, by periodic revolts against tyranny and oppression, and other forms of human conflict. The impact of these man-made crises was usually confined to the parts of the world where they occurred, for instance, where a war was waged. Rarely did it spread beyond adjacent countries or groups of countries. The conditions of living, in terms of means of livelihood and economic standards, were relatively uniform throughout the world.
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The industrial revolution brought about a dramatic and global change. Had the industrial revolution spread from the start to all parts of the world, an even balance in the living standards of the people of the world would have remained unaffected. However, the immensely increased economic and military power of the new industrial nations gave them the opportunity to conquer and exploit others with impunity, a new colonial era coincided with the industrialisation of Europe and America. As a result, by the time European colonialism melted in the fires of the Second World War, an enormous gap had developed between the wealth, productivity and living standards of the West and those of most of Asia and Africa.
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On the Indian sub-continent, the rapid increase in the population growth resulting from a sharp fall in mortality combined with economic stagnation through lack of industrialisation, aggravated the relative as well as absolute deterioration in the living standards of its people. Denied the benefits of modern technology which would have enabled them to modernize their age-old industries and agriculture and to create the wealth with which to pay for the education and other essentials of a modern, creative life, the people of the sub-continent gradually sank into poverty, lethargy and despair.
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It has been argued by some observers that, even had the benefits of modern technology been made available to Indians from the start, their caste-ridden system of values, their superstitions, and their fatalistic and philosophical attitude to life, would have in any case prevented them from taking advantage of the opportunities created by industrialization.
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The evidence of the last twenty years of industrial growth in India, the remarkable skills shown by all sections of society in the establishment and management of modern industries refutes this argument. There can now be no doubt that had India, and other similarly placed countries, been allowed or encouraged to develop their economy as in the countries of the West, by the application of modern science and technology, they would have, today, been in a situation comparable to, or not far behind, that of Japan.
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Is it surprising that, after two decimating world wars, the violent revolutions of Russia and China, the collapse of empires, the population explosion, the discovery of nuclear power and weapons of total destruction, the exponential advance of science and technology, the people of the world today find themselves in a state of deep crisis the complex causes of which they do not fully understand but which, they sense, threaten not only the survival of age-old and cherished values of a civilization built on the labours, sufferings and blood of centuries, but even their physical survival?
