A lot of people have this misconception that South Korea was as under developed as India in the 50s This is a mis-reading of history. Korea had nearly two times India's per capita gdp in constant dollar ppp terms in early 40s, that then dropped first due to the the second world war and then the Korean war. As soon as the war ended they got back to being about a third richer than us. They were still a poor country but the poverty in India was much more acute and in some parts of the country it was orders of magnitude worse. After two centuries of colonialism, with very few tradable natural resources and a large fast growing illiterate population our challenges were of a different scale. China had similar poverty levels as us but they had better literacy rates even in the forties and a better natural resource endowment. PS : In a sense all i am trying to say is that we shouldn't judge our grand parents generation too harshly, they were facing very difficult challenges..
A lot of people have this misconception that South Korea was as under developed as India in the 50s This is a mis-reading of history. Korea had nearly two times India's per capita gdp in constant dollar ppp terms in early 40s, that then dropped first due to the the second world war and then the Korean war. As soon as the war ended they got back to being about a third richer than us. They were still a poor country but the poverty in India was much more acute and in some parts of the country it was orders of magnitude worse. After two centuries of colonialism, with very few tradable natural resources and a large fast growing illiterate population our challenges were of a different scale. China had similar poverty levels as us but they had better literacy rates even in the forties and a better natural resource endowment.
PS : In a sense all i am trying to say is that we shouldn't judge our grand parents generation too harshly, they were facing very difficult challenges..
Couldn't believe he is 90 years old
We want independence from Income Tax & Capital Gains taxes.