Why Oxymorons Win

The drums beat out loud when India became the world's fourth-largest economy. But the average Indian needs a lot of 'lifting' before we can claim national victory

- RAJEEV NARAYAN

"There is a false modesty, which is vanity; a false glory, which is levity; a false grandeur, which is meanness; a false virtue, which is hypocrisy; and a false wisdom, which is bordering on prudery." — Jean de la Bruyère

Someone once told me that absurdity often stems from a tragic impulse—the attempt to mimic those we cannot resemble or match. It resembles the pathology of an insecure mind, clawing for validation not through substance, but spectacle. Therefore, our ceaseless trumpeting about being the 'Fourth-Largest Economy' sounds less like an achievement and more a staged performance. What use is it to be fourth in a race where the runners—India's Janes and Joes—are impoverished, unhappy and future-less, with ground-level metrics fuzzy, starting lines uneven and finish lines getting further away? Where is the grandeur in imitating symbols like GDP numbers, global summits and space launches when clean water, humane cities and schools, steady jobs, true justice and basic dignity are hard to come by?

India recently became the world's fourth-largest economy, surpassing Japan in nominal GDP, says the International Monetary Fund. With India's economy at nearly $4.2 trillion, this was acclaimed as a moment of national arrival, with the economic reforms of the early 1990s finally bearing just fruit. In actual terms of living and loving, though, India trails Japan. "The Land of the Rising Sun" leads in per capita income, human development, health outcomes and environmental norms. The average citizen in Japan enjoys a quality of life that is well out of reach of most Indians.