Yes, I think that's captured by "the most desperately impoverished portions of Indian cities". Their parents have often sent them to beg, because the need is greater than that society's willingness to fill (vs. low income school lunch programs in the US that keep us from having that scenario). The blame for that situation is squarely on India.
But you don't have to go very far up the socioeconomic ladder even in India to get to a strata of the population who would not send their kids to beg in the streets. People there wish to protect and provide for their kids as much as anywhere else in the world.
> The blame for that situation is squarely on India.
This is a bit of a sweeping statement. Colonization has a big role to play here also. When the british left india the average life expectancy was barely 40. Many other former colonies struggle with poverty and the socioeconomic disaster that it brings along. India has improved since then but has a long way to go.
> This is a bit of a sweeping statement. Colonization has a big role to play here also
I agree completely. Colonization set the stage for many of the persistent struggles faced by many in the developing world. But colonial powers didn't teach people in India how to oppress their own people, even if they wasted no time taking advantage of and amplifying the pre-existing situation.
Today, when a country as productive as India (they are self sufficient in food production) still has large numbers of children going hungry, it suggests that there are serious issues with distribution of basic resources like calories. Yes, it has improved, but not nearly enough.
Also, the US is not orders of magnitude better in this way, since we have millions of children relying on "last-resort" food security programs - vestiges of the New Deal - that are under constant threat of being cut. Before these programs were enacted in the 1930s, children were indeed going hungry in the streets of the US, and it continued for a long time afterwards (and sometimes to this day).
If we didn't have these programs, I'm not convinced the situation wouldn't be more like India, since we have equivalent fundamental social ills that drive children into precarious hunger situations.
At a primary school in Utter Pradesh (a state in India) salt and bread (roti) was served to children as part of mid-day meal.
Then the state government did what any sensible government will do. They filed a case against the journalist for criminal conspiracy maligning the image of state government.
Since last few years it has become fashionable to call Indians who criticize the government "anti-national" as if nation = government.
Yes, it's a situation with the far right riding the up-winds of economic growth whose foundations were largely put in place by previous center-left governments, and supercharging themselves with nativist/nationalist politics that victimizes their own minority populations.
And many others don't... even places that were brutalized by the occupiers such as Taiwan and South Korea (the Japanese Empire definitely played for the gold in the Imperial League when it comes to brutality against the natives).
If anything, the measurable differences between ex-colonies, when it comes to their current state, are maddenigly confused. People tend to forget that even smaller European nations were sort-of colonized, the Czechs and the Slovenes by the Austrians, the Slovaks by the Hungarians, the Serbs by the Turks, the Finns by the Swedes and later by the Russians.
And it seems that it mattered who colonized you. Long term, former Austrian and German colonies are doing okay, Hungarian less so (sorry, Hungarians, but it is true!), Russian and Turkish ones much less so. You can still see the difference e.g. in Romania, when you cross the former Hungaro-Turkish border, or in Poland, when you cross the former Russo-German border. Even 100 years of independence didn't erase the differences.
How long you colonized a place is important as well. Japanese occupation did not last very long and while brutal Japanese were not very effective at using their colonized subjects for any productive labor (they were too brutal for their subjects to cooperate).
Taiwan is a bit interesting because much of the migration happened post world war with the rise of the CCP. While Chinese presence there predates this wave, most ethnic Chinese there are migrants. The aborignese aren't particularly well off.
With regards to German colonies doing OK I'd like to point you to the African colonies like Central African Republic.
British occupation in India, Bangladesh and Pakistan broke down a lot of industries. For instance industries like Wootz Steel, Muslin which had a very long history were in effect dismantled as the British could not compete.
> During the period of Company rule, the East India Company imported British-produced cloth into the Indian subcontinent, but became unable to compete with the local muslin industry. The Company administration initiated several policies in an attempt to suppress the muslin industry, and muslin production subsequently experienced a period of decline. It has been alleged that in some instances Indian weavers were rounded up and their thumbs chopped off, although this has been refuted by historians as an misreading of a report by William Bolts from 1772. The quality, finesse and production volume of Bengali muslin declined as a result of these policies, continuing when India transitioned from Company rule to British Crown control. [1]
