NOVEL WEB Chapter 923: Unexpected!
5th February 1674
A lot of things happened in the last few months. Vijay was overwhelmed by the good news he was continuously getting, overwhelmed to the point of becoming uneasy.
He tapped the table with apprehension,
For one, the first shipment of arms sold to the Russian Empire had reached Western Russia, and into the city of Tsaritsyn (Stalingrad) through the Caspian Sea, and the Russians have requested more arms to be transported through the Middle Eastern route, and have placed more orders as well.
For two, his son had successfully constructed his first naval vessel all on his own, BNV Rakshak, and it is about to be commissioned into the military. Consequently, Agni's achievements were spread throughout the empire in the various newspapers, and people had already given Agni a nickname called the Little Emperor, as his achievements were very similar to their beloved Emperor, that is, him.
For three, the civil war started in the Qing Dynasty, making the Southern Ming Dynasty even more dependent on the Bharatiya Empire. Even though this news was not completely good news, since there is a good chance that the Southern Ming Dynasty will completely unify the Chinese and will no longer require the support of the Bharatiya Empire, in the grand scheme of things, it is still good news because even if the unification happens, the Southern Ming Dynasty is most likely to be an ally of the Bharatiya Empire.
And now, sitting in his office in the Simhasana Bhavana reading the reports, Vijay couldn't help but frown, not because something bad had happened, but because he received two more good news.
One is about the successful research of the next iteration of the Kesari steam engine, where all the small problems left by Heyram had been accounted for, and its total reliability, efficiency, and productivity have increased by 10% or more on all parameters.
This news came at a very good time because the spies in the empire seem to be getting impatient due to there being no movement in the Power labs. He was even informed that a few incidents happened in the mobility labs where Heyram is working due to the spies snooping around in other facilities, fortunately, the cover of developing a new bicycle worked wonderfully, and the research going on to build next generation steam engines was not discovered, but it was not a permanent solution. Thankfully, with the news about the improved Kesari engine, the attention of the spies will once again be attracted to the power labs like a magnet.
Vijay quickly passed an order to Sriranga Industrial Tools to pause the production of the current Kesari engine and manufacture the new variant codenamed Kesari K1.
The other good news is that, due to the civil war in the Qing Dynasty, a lot of refugees were flooding into the provinces controlled by the Southern Ming Dynasty, and Zhu Yu Lang has personally sent him a message asking him whether he could take over these people.
Vijay felt like it was a very good opportunity to increase the population of the overseas territories of the Bharatiya Empire, especially the population in Suvarna Dwipa.
Out of all the overseas territories of the Bharatiya Empire, Suvarna Dwipa got the least amount of population directed towards it.
This is because Suvarna Dwipa is less developed compared with other overseas territories of the Bharatiya Empire, which although less developed than the mainland, there was at least some semblance of civilization and society which the settlers found it easy to build upon, but such a thing did not exist in Suvarna Dwipa, everything had to be built from ground up, and the amount of dangers in the Suvarna Dwipa was extremely high, especially the dangerous animals like snakes, spiders, crocodiles, out there to kill them.
Not to mention, animal husbandry was very hard since there was no native population adapted to the island, and the dairy products had to be constantly imported, making their price soar extremely high.
In recent years, the population problem became even more acute after the Kesari steam engine was developed and put on the market. With the number of jobs generated by the use of the steam engine, all of a sudden, there was a drop of 5% in the number of people deciding to settle in the overseas territories of the empire. And unfortunately, even though the 5% was only a minute in the total population outflow, it was a massive 25% in the population inflow of Suvarna Dwipa and its various states.
Now, if Vijay could come to a deal with the Southern Ming Empire to let the Chinese emigrate into the various states of the Suvarna Dwipa, he felt like it was a very good idea.
As for the fear of the Chinese becoming the dominant ethnicity? Vijay was not worried because it was not so easy.
It has been more than a decade since the immigration into the overseas territories of the Bharatiya Empire started, and even tho the six states of Suvarna Dwipa have received the least share of population from the mainland, the population kept adding up over the years and has already surpassed several million in each state.
Vijay was confident that no matter how many people he takes in, it will not dwarf the decade-long effort of the Bharatiya Empire.
Not to mention, just because the inflow of population from the mainland has been reduced and has always been less than other frontiers of the empire doesn't mean that the population did not grow, because just like the Bharatiya Empire, all the governors of Suvarna Dwipa have followed the policy of child encouragement, and it is in a sense more radical because, in a way, childbirth was tied to the amount of land a family can have.
A policy has been made: for every child more than two children, 30 acres of land will be granted to the family, and the cap will be at six children.
When this policy was proposed, Vijay was hesitating whether to accept it or not because this is definitely not beneficial to the women of the society, but the situation was not in his favour, and he had to make a decision, and in the end, he agreed to the policy.
Thankfully, it worked because now, there is a whole new generation of children in Suvarna Dwipa that have grown up and are growing up having never been to the Bharatiya Empire. They have already started to form their own culture, their own small societies, and their own norms. All of this is not so easily taken over by the Chinese, especially since Vijay will never allow the population of the Chinese to cross more than 20%.
Even in the case that the war drags on for a long time and the drainage of population in the Chinese region is more intense, he will simply distribute it all among the overseas territories of the empire. He is even ready to take on tens of millions of Chinese if the day comes.
The reason why Vijay is so eager for these Chinese is that each and every frontier has already started its own infrastructure projects like road construction, bridge construction, dam construction, water conservancy projects, canal projects, and other things. And this is even more serious in the frontiers of the Suvarna Dwipa with several mega continent-wide projects that he has approved, which have created an unlimited demand for human labour.
Turning a continent 10 million square kilometres wide, which is mostly barren in the central region, into a green continent is no joke.
It will take at least 4 decades or even 5 to complete all the objectives of the project, and Vijay simply wanted to quicken the process by bringing in the Chinese, whose human resources are as abundant as those of the Bharatiya Empire.
Since the Bharatiya Empire had already started the process of industrialisation and kicked the doors of the Industrial Revolution, he could tell that, for the next few years, the amount of population flowing out of the Bharatiya Empire would continue to decrease. The productivity is going to increase massively, and large amounts of workforce will be required in every aspect of society.
This gap can be filled with the Chinese so as to not slow down the momentum of the overseas territories of the empire, and when the Qing civil war ends, the number of Chinese coming in can naturally be reduced, and when the mechanisation of the empire hits a plateau, the people coming in from the Bharatiya Empire can naturally be increased.
In Vijay's mind, although the Industrial Revolution brought by the steam engine created millions of jobs for a short time, it will eventually hit a plateau where the demand for skilled labour will increase and the demand for unskilled labour will decrease. When the factories need to learnt workers proficient in machinery, when farms require educated tractor operators, when transportation no longer requires so many carriages but a single train operator, and when the labourers are no longer required to turn the water wheel, this is the time when unemployment will reach its peak.
At this time, the overseas territories are the perfect gateway as he could send away all the excess labour of the empire. This way, the empire's economy will be healthier, and the overseas territories will also quicken their pace of infrastructure development.
Compared to so many benefits, Vijay really has no considerable downsides to accepting the Chinese into the overseas territories. Not to mention, when considering belief systems and faith, the Chinese are very compatible with the Sanathana belief system, because all the Chinese beliefs are composed of either believing in their ancestors, believing in some deities based on geography like rivers, lakes, and the such, believing in Confucianism, Taoism, and believing in Buddhism, and all of those beliefs can easily be integrated into the beliefs of the Sanathana Dharma, as there is no conflict between both. Not to mention, Buddhism comes from the core philosophy of Sanathana Dharma.
The only major issue he saw was the personality of the Chinese; they tended to stick together, forming small Chinatowns wherever they went. But after some thought, Vijay felt it wasn't such a big problem. A similar tendency existed within his own empire, where people from certain states preferred to live among their own, and even within those groups, caste-based clustering was common.
This wasn't a serious issue in the empire anymore, primarily because he had forced people into cities, making them live together under the pressure of industrialisation and education. However, in the overseas territories, where those factors were still lacking, this problem had begun to surface.
Still, he believed that the overseas regions would eventually adopt the same development model as the Akhand Bharatiya Empire. With time, industrial growth and better education would naturally foster cohesion. The Chinese, too, would be assimilated through this same grinding process.
So yeah, this leads to his original worry; too many good things were happening at once, and he did not know if it was a good thing in itself.