Vadodara
Gaekwad rulers funded Ambedkar's education—enabling India's constitutional architect. Free compulsory education introduced 1906, decades before British India. Petrochemical hub (IPCL, Reliance). Laxmi Vilas Palace larger than Buckingham Palace.
The Gaekwad dynasty ruled Vadodara (Baroda) as one of India's wealthiest princely states, and their most consequential decision had nothing to do with war or trade: Sayajirao Gaekwad III funded B.R. Ambedkar's education abroad, enabling the man who would write India's constitution. A single scholarship changed a nation.
Vadodara sits on the Vishwamitri River in Gujarat, positioned between the commercial powerhouses of Ahmedabad and Mumbai on the Western Railway corridor. The Gaekwads (1721-1949) invested in education, libraries, and administration with an intensity unusual for princely rulers. Sayajirao III introduced free compulsory education in 1906—decades before British India attempted anything similar. The Maharaja Sayajirao University (1949) continues this legacy with over 100,000 students.
Industrialization came through petrochemicals. The Indian Petrochemicals Corporation Limited (IPCL) plant at nearby Vadodara established a petrochemical cluster in the 1970s that now includes Reliance Industries, GSFC, and dozens of downstream processors. Gujarat's refining corridor—the world's largest single-location refinery complex is at Jamnagar—creates spillover demand for Vadodara's chemical engineering talent.
The city also hosts a significant defense manufacturing base. The Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) division in Vadodara maintains Indian Air Force aircraft. The combination of petrochemicals, defense, education, and dairy (Amul's cooperative network radiates from nearby Anand) creates an unusually diversified economic portfolio for an Indian city of its size.
Vadodara's cultural identity mixes Gujarati business pragmatism with the princely state's artistic patronage. The Laxmi Vilas Palace (1890) is larger than Buckingham Palace. The Navratri festival draws millions, and the city's garba dance tradition is both cultural expression and significant economic activity.
Vadodara demonstrates that enlightened patronage—one ruler's investment in education and institutions—can compound across a century in ways that military spending never does.