c# - ODP.NET Oracle.ManagedDataAccess causes ORA-12537 network session end of file -

I am on a book tour of America as I write this column, and Americans sometimes ask, "Was India once really rich? Then why did it become so poor?" I remind them that Columbus had gone in quest of the riches of India but discovered America instead. Thinking he had found India, he called the natives "Indians." The name stuck and so has the linguistic confusion. It took the Portuguese five years to get over the humiliation that Spain, their enemy, had discovered America when it could have been theirs. In 1497, they sent Vasco da Gama the other way round the world. He did indeed find India's legendary wealth. He informed Portugal's King Manuel of "India's large cities, large buildings and rivers, and great populations." He spoke about spices, jewels, and mines. But he added that Indians were not interested in European trinkets and clothes. They made far better fabrics and trinkets themselves. In the European mind "Golconda" became the symbol of the haunting wealth of India. "The discovery of America and the passage to the East Indies by the Cape of Good Hope are the two greatest events in the history of mankind," wrote Adam Smith. At the end of the 16th century, economic historians tell us, India's wealth sustained more than a hundred million people. With plenty of arable land, its agriculture was vibrant with productivity comparable to the best in the world. There was a vigorous and large skilled artisan workforce that produced not only cottons but also luxurious products for the zamindars and the courts. The economy produced a great financial surplus, and the annual revenues of the Mogul emperor Aurangzeb (1659-1701) were more than ten times those of his contemporary Louis XIV, the richest king of Europe. This surplus supported the vast and growing Mughal Empire and financed spectacular monuments like the Taj Mahal. When the English later got to this wealth they found that India produced the world's best cotton yarn and textiles. To this huge industry they provided the powerful stimulus of European demand, and made it even richer. Thus, by the end of the seventeenth century India had a sophisticated market and credit structure and controlled a quarter of the world trade in textiles, according to Paul Bairoch. It had 22.6 per cent share of world GDP (or roughly America's share of the world's wealth today), confirms Angus Maddison. Indian cottons transformed the dress of Europe, and cotton underwear changed the standards of cleanliness and comfort in the West. The Indian peasant, however, was very poor. Francois Bernier, a French physician who spent twelve years in India, wrote about the decrepit houses of the poor, their humiliating lives and the dramatic inequality between the tiny rich and the impoverished many. Because the rapacious Mughal State took away something like half the agricultural product there was little incentive to improve the land. The merchants hid their wealth for fear of the tax collector. There is no easy answer to the problem that the country was prosperous and the people were poor. Lest we forget, 250 years ago peasants everywhere were poor and today's great disparities in income between nations did not exist then. The difference between Europe and India (or China) was 1.5 to 1 versus 20 to 1 today. The English, who learned about textiles from India, soon turned the tables in the late 18th century. They began making textiles with machines and this began the West's industrial revolution, and brought it amazing prosperity. As a result, handloom weavers were destroyed all over the world, including India. We blamed the Britain for impoverishing us, but the question is why did India not experience an industrial revolution? The truth is that pre-British India was significantly behind Western Europe in technology, institutions and ideas. A scientific revolution had not occurred. How to make a poor nation prosperous is a more difficult question. The answer seems to lie in technology and institutions. Since Britain's industrial revolution there been for the first time in recorded history a continuous flow of inventions. Moreover, these have been absorbed commercially as profitable innovations. History teaches that a nation's ability to absorb these innovations and create an industrial revolution depends on having the right institutions in place--for example, property rights, schools, and stable governance. In the second half of the twentieth century, the Far East nations demonstrated that it can be done--a poor nation can become rich, and very quickly. They took less than thirty years to transform their societies, whereas the West needed a hundred. After the reforms India too is poised to do it soon--as long as we keep vigorously reforming our damaging socialist institutions and investing in education