Why Indians had not industrialized earlier?

To us, it is normal to use man-carts or rickshaws to ride to markets close by. But we do not know how much pain, it would cause the puller. So that is why we never invented the car or other motorised vehicle in India. We did not “industrialize” mentally; we do not see how much effort can be mechanised and that its pain can be alleviated because we had never felt the pain. It is normal for us to extract labour from a living man for getting us comfort and we had never known the exact value of his labors’ cost. So it is difficult for us to understand the concept of mechanisation which would have alleviated the pain of work.

This mindset affects our socio-political life too.We had always taken the help of the poor people for granted. When we have a government for the people, we had failed to understand why the poor people are central to development of the nation. At present we just want to adopt the concepts of economy from the West and apply it here. Liberalisation and adoption of “laissez-faire” is not wise  for the Indian environment, but we have done that. The consumption based economy of the West did not fair well on the long run;and because of it the West has attained decadence. They have now set a bad example. We can learn from that and avoid those policies. We are a selfish lot and want comfort at the cost of the poor persons and we accordingly adopt policies which would benefit us only.

If we industrialise very fast without caring for the environment, we would have lost everything—fresh air, fresh water and our home environs. If we make plans to industrialise for just generating wealth for benefit of few and without caring for the health and welfare of the people who live in the locality of industries, we are making big mistakes. Ultimately the poor people will ask for their rights and revolt.

So we have to create an environment for progress by adopting technology of the west but not the exploitative policies. The setting-up of industries should keep the environment clean and benefit the people (economically). This would empower them and they would not revolt. In other words, people should be the main stakeholders of the farms and industries of their lands. This is how we should industrialise--giving power to decide on industrialisation to the people of the local lands.They will devotedly work for their own betterment, by adopting the Western technology themselves. By this further impoverishment of people would not occur.