ABSTRACT
This chapter takes a long-run view and presents evidence on living standards in India going back to 1595. By taking a long-run view people can try to pinpoint when the living standards began to decline and how they compared with European standards in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The discussion is situated in the context of Pomeranz's (2000) picture of the Great Divergence between Europe and Asia. The same indicators can also be used to trace the evolution of Indian economic performance during the colonial and post-colonial years. The chapter considers India's economic performance by making use of a historical national accounting framework to analyze GDP per capita and sectoral performance. In this chapter we have covered four centuries of Indian economic performance and living standards. Using data on real wages and GDP per capita, people have established that the Great Divergence was already under way during the early modern period.
