Quote

The East India Company's domination of the Indian economy was based on its private army.

Many Chinese saw opium as a poison introduced by foreign enemies.

Fear of foreign domination in India led the Janata Party, in the 1970s, to push for partial Indian ownership of all multinational firms within the country. The result was a spectacular pullback, by companies such as IBM and Coca-Cola, and a stagnant economy.

With liberalisation, Indian industry gained international exposure because of which it became imperative for companies to rework their strategies to become globally competitive.

I think you can go back in history and look at what the effect in Asia and the world was of a divided, fractured China from, you know, the opium wars through the Chinese civil war, and I don't think it was pretty for Asia or the world.

The British seizure of Hongkong was an aspect of one of the most ugly crimes of the British Empire: the takeover and destruction of India, and the use of India to flood China with opium.

Although the Chinese had used opium as a medicine, there was no widespread addiction before the British arrived.

Prior to 2001, hardly any company in North America or Europe would buy from India.

In 1991, the government unleashed the power of India and created a partnership between itself and industry. As a result, India has emerged as an economic success story, and that is a matter of pride for all of us.

The License Raj in India was a time when, to set up an industry, you needed a license. Which made the government an omnipresent and sort of all-pervasive authority.