Yes Britain did some bad stuff. That is why we became independent. However the contributions of the British Empire to these societies are significantly overlooked while the bad sides are overemphasized. Yes the British practiced mercantilist policies, yes they bribed, yes they did some unfair things. But what about the infrastructure they built? What about the education they gave? My original point was Britain made India to the country it is today. Its borders are those of the British raj; without Great Britain India would not have the land it has today or frankly be the country it is today (it would be split up into multiple smaller countries as a couple posters stated). Moreover, the British handed India a pretty extensive infrastructure network, especially in railroads, something that was far superior to the rest of Asia at the time. Also let's not forget about the literacy in English the British gave, which created the Indian IT industry. Can Chinese or frankly any other Asian country speak English as well as the Indians on average?
You should do your homework before copying and pasting imperialist apologies, just because they suit your mood of the moment.
What about the infrastructure they built? The telegraphs were built to improve military communications; there was practically no civilian traffic until decades later. The railways were built on terms that the BRI planners would salivate over; investors (all British) were guaranteed return, it was not, ever, a risk investment. They were also built exclusively to transport raw materials to ports, or to transport troops. The rectification of these imperialist templates has taken time, and is still a work in progress. Roads? The same. Old existing Indian highways were taken up and macadammed; there is precious little about arterial roads that were not overlays of tar on existing roads. Connecting roads to towns and villages did not exist; they are still being built and the task is massive. Roads to the borders were non-existent; they are now being built, and that is one reason why the neighbour is distraught and fretful; having done it themselves in furtherance of an imperialist outlook, they now resent India doing what they did forty or fifty years ago.
Education? Unless you were really ignorant, you would not have written this. There is no point in even attempting to set you right on the broad picture; there is such a gulf between what you assume may have taken place and what did that it will take several volumes in print, several hours of hard work for even an Internet breezy summary.
The politics of course takes pride of place in every cheap shot that is taken at India. Starting, naturally, with Churchill, that favourite of the consumer of colonial ****, and his witty "India is a geographical expression". When the East India Company took steps against the dominant Indian power of its times, the Indian succession to the Mughals, that power held sway from Tanjore in the south to Attock in the north, from Kutch and Kathiawar in the west to Bengal in the east; pretty much the central block around which the colony of India was re-built; those who read maps with any facility will readily see what that means in practical terms, given that the north-east was then and continues to be till today sparsely populated and lightly developed. Even the centralised rule that Britain is said to have given us was in existence nine centuries before them, in greater detail, and far more tailored to the weather and agricultural conditions and the living conditions of the people, unlike the brutality of British rule that saw famine after famine after famine.
Your kind of gloss on a regime that swiftly brought Indian share of the GDP - that same India that prats like to project as an ungovernable mass of petty kingdoms but that remained a vibrant, knitted-together economy - from over 20% down to 2%
Singapore is an excellent example. Even the Chinese under Deng Xiaoping looked at Singapore as a model example. I think many Chinese officials were even sent to Singapore to study their development. But the fact of the matter is India desperately needs a much stronger central/national government and far weaker regional governments. That would be a very good start.
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