How the Role of Western Governments Evolved
Most of us never learnt Western history from a social perspective – how, for example, did the Western welfare state emerge? Prof. Karthik Muralidharan looks into that in his book, Accelerating India’s Development . Long, long ago, Western governments monarchies were about one thing only – security. After all, it was a time when your neighbor could attack, defeat, loot and occupy you, and enslave or kill your inhabitants. Those were savage times. The role of the Western state changed only with the Industrial Revolution. As production increased phenomenally, better systems were needed. Roads, ports, railways initially. As urbanization followed industrialization (people migrated for better paying jobs from the villages), the populations of towns exploded. Sanitation and sewage systems had to be improved. These improvements in turn boosted productivity and the state’s tax revenue, which could further improve infrastructure (and yes, continue to fund the militar...