Landlocked India catching up with peninsular India?

Ever since colonial times, peninsular India has led the nation in terms of economic, social and human development indicators. The British and other colonial powers entered India by the sea route and their new-fangled European ideas shaped by the Industrial Revolution first struck root in the peninsular part of the country from where they worked their way up till they established their capital in Delhi, the seat of power for many northern empires since at least the medieval times.

Both the Northern and Southern (corresponding with peninsular India) parts of India had their fair share of empires and kingdoms down the ages, each of them contributing in their unique ways to the social, political and cultural landscapes of the vast Indian sub-continent. The coming of the Europeans upended centuries and even millennia-old ways of living that had developed and evolved locally in all parts of the country. The various regions of India interacted with and were influenced by one another and there was a lot of travel, trade and cultural exchange on the subcontinent that led to its forging a unique identity that nations and peoples around the world recognized as the Indian nation with its many Indian people.

The East India Company first marked their presence in Bombay, Madras and Calcutta, cities that they founded where they set up factories and trading posts that let them export cotton textiles from India to a ravenous West which had an insatiable demand for these products. It is no coincidence that these…