India's Rate of Industrialisation/Modernisation Since 1991

A country's GDP growth rate can be taken as a measure of its rate of industrialisation/modernisation (I/M). After Independence, India opted for an inefficient industrial system - socialism - and industrialised/modernised at an average rate of 3.5% per year. More than four decades later (in 1991) we switched to an efficient industrial system - capitalism. Here are the results:

Year	Rate of Industrialisation/Modernisation
1991	1.06%
1992	5.48%
1993	4.77%
1994	6.65%
1995	7.57%
1996	7.56%
1997	4.05%
1998	6.19%
1999	7.39%
2000	4.03%
2001	5.22%
2002	3.77%
2003	8.37%
2004	8.28%
2005	9.35%
2006	9.67%
2007	9.06%
2008	6.07%

Notice how the rate of I/M increased to 7%+ in the mid-1990s and later to 9%+ in the mid-2000s.

Source: World Bank (via Google public data)

Literacy Rate: India and Other Countries

Here are the literacy rates of India and some other countries:

Country	Literacy Rate
India	66%
Brazil	90%
Indonesia	92%
China	93%
Russia	99%
Japan	99%
France	99%
Germany	99%
Britain	99%
America	99%

Source: United Nations Development Program Report (2009)

Per Capita Income (PPP): India and Other Countries

Here are the per capita incomes (PPP) of India and some other countries:

Country	Per Capita Income (PPP)
India	$ 3,100
Indonesia	$ 4,000
China	$ 6,600
Brazil	$ 10,200
Russia	$ 15,100
Japan	$ 32,600
France	$ 32,800
Germany	$ 34,100
Britain	$ 35,200
America	$ 46,400

Data from CIA's The World Factbook
PPP = purchasing power parity

Marx: The Modern/Industrial Age and Modernity

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the first chapter of "The Communist Manifesto" (1848):

1. On the Modern/Industrial Age:

In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves. In the Middle Ages (we have) feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs.

The modern capitalist society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. Our epoch, the epoch of the capitalist class, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms.

Thereupon, steam and machinery revolutionised industrial production*. The place of manufacture was taken by the giant, modern industry; the place of the industrial middle class by industrial millionaires, the leaders of the whole industrial armies, the modern capitalist.

The capitalist class, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of nature's forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalisation of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground — what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour?

2. On the nature of modernity:

Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the capitalist epoch from all earlier ones.

All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify.

All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.

*The Industrial Revolution