NOVEL NEXT Chapter 11: 10. Renaissance
In 16th century, I decided it was finally time to give the empire a last push forward towards industrialization and renaissance.
The capital has already been shifted from Magadha to the current day Indore in the state of Madhya Pradesh. A truly beautiful city with wide roads, fixed market and living areas, every house has their own garden and still left with further room for expansion.
The city has a university as great as the Takshila and Nalanda along with great temples devoted to Shiva Parvati & family and to Surya Dev.
Due to countering Islamists invasion at the borders of the kingdom, none of our holy sites was damaged by invaders. Yes, many of the empires that emerged in my world didn't came into being, but I still manipulated my descendants and regional nobles through telepathy to build the temples which were some of the greatest architectural marvels.
Thankfully my descendants were not fools, unaware about the change in warfare brought by guns & cannons and soon implemented them as well. Due to close proximity and trade with China we soon discovered about gunpowder and cannons and guns.
Sensing the security risks they pose, a research drive began in the empire to find out the formula of gunpowder. I guided them towards the correct items but as I didn't know the correct ratios, I let them figure it out on their own.
They also made cannons and guns themself after importing a few pieces from China and reverse engineering them. Improving on them was not a big deal as Bharat has better grasp on metallurgy than any other country in the world.
But soon Europeans will start using their ill-gotten gains from their colonies to build their kingdoms and empires and will move into renaissance era and will destroy the economy of many countries through there cheap goods and faster production.
For that I have to push them out of the complacency they have. So, first standardization of weight and height measures all over the empire is necessary and then implementing specialization in business.
It was not hard to remove all the different measures and implement a standard one. But what was hard was taking away the nobles right of having a private army, but it was still successful because most of their private army has been stationed on borders of the country and the involvement of nobles in army rank is minimal as no favor is allowed in military and only meritocracy is the way to rise in it. So, even together they were not able to pool together enough resources to stand against me but still they arrogantly tried a last-ditch effort to end the dynasty but were unsuccessful and killed for their daring.
This left only around hundred families of the previous tens of thousands of families as I exterminated all the families root and stem, not even leaving women or children as I have become accustomed to this time and the cruelty needed here.
Extermination of nobles brought a huge wealth to the empire which I used to develop it further. First job was to implement standardization. As I can't force people to adopt it forcefully, I implemented it in military industry.
Seeing the outcome, as how it improved speed of production and quality of product, it soon spread to other industries as well. Next step was to implement machines and gears in industries.
For this I have to use the knowledge of science and mechanics I have gathered on my occasional trips to other civilizations like Kree, Skrull, Shi'ar and Nova, as no one on Earth has started much research in these concepts.
Slowly but surely, the renaissance came itself in the empire I just have introduce small things like military industry, shipping industry, chemical industry, how it can be used in different things like paper, mechanics, ships, and weapons etc. Soon Bharat developed enough that I don't have to worry about foreign powers.
For countering the growing lack of unemployment in the empire due to industrialization was easily countered by starting highway and canal joining Arabian sea and Bay of Bengal construction program.
Along with introducing several new fields of job like government jobs, as I made the government a constitutional monarchy due to lack of proper management without nobles. In this the emperor or empress will have the executive power, like military, police, research both civil and military, space, aeronautics and nautical science research and other important fields along with election commission. Other than that, most of the government structure was same as the modern-day Indian government.
Along with this, many new jobs showed up themself, like broker for selling rights of any new invention or device, sports, many of which was introduced by me like rugby, modern day chess, cricket etc. And while workers lost their jobs for a short while, but the jobs kept popping up with every new industry they were established, which seems to happen almost every month.
A ministry of Standards was also made, which is also under my direct control, which checks the quality of everything, from arms to civil products, from construction to medical industry and sets guidelines for them. They also set up a maximum prize bar according to their analysis. Anything that is harmful in the short or long run for the consumer is immediately banned.
A new law was also passed which is that all the industries will have to plant a fixed number of trees on their own land and take care of them according to the pollution caused by their factories otherwise the factory will be seized and closed by government. This was to reduce the carbon footprints of the country and promote horticulture as those smart enough soon figured out a way to profit out of it.
Along with that, I made it the task of Ministry of Agriculture to find new ways to increase yield, make the crops cheaper, increase the farmers profits all the while sticking to organic farming. Also, the agriculture ministry will be responsible for ensuring the affordability of things needed for agriculture like tractor in future. I don't want the case where taking a loan for a car is cheaper than a tractor.
The only thing that that needed me to involve in it seriously was introducing a new language that is made through merger of all the major languages spoken in Bharath with the Devanagari as base. It took many literatrian, monks, gurus etc. but in the end, it was done. I ensured strict adherence of this language so that no regional dialect emerges as that ultimately lead to a new language which will be opposite of what I want. It was made compulsory to teach it in gurukuls as a secondary language because I don't want people to lose their regional identity and pride but to put the country first.
So, I introduced the concept of modern schools in gurukuls, the most famous method of teaching in Bharat which even spread to Persian region, like teaching science, math but ensured they were to the point and simple and not big books explaining all their thoughts and how they came to the conclusion, along with their original teaching about spiritual and cultural thigs like modern gurukuls.
Along with the improvement in gurukuls I also started many more universities like Takshila and Nalanda, but I made them masters of a particular field like Takshila of astronomy and Nalanda of medical science and ensured that the exam will be more practical than theoretical where possible and the teaching method will be in such a way that arouses interest in the subject like showing science through practical application, letting children tinker with machines etc.
The professors and students at these universities are also tasked to conduct research on some government and private companies' projects, which is done as extra credit and practical experience under the professors by students and for professors to increase their name in the field and to earn some fame.
Along with the industrialization, a basic economics model of primary sector was also introduced in every state of the empire according to their natural resources, regional industries etc.