The false promise of endless economic growth

India's pursuit of GDP expansion fuels inequality, environmental collapse, and spiritual crisis.

- ACHARYA PRASHANT

Walk through any Indian city and the signs of “progress” appear unavoidable: towers pushing into the sky, shopping complexes lit through the night, and highways crowded with cars.

The GDP chart rises, and we are told this is proof that the nation is advancing. Growth has become our chosen proof of destiny.

But as we step closer, the contradictions surface. The air that fills our lungs is unbreathable, rivers that once nourished are now heavily polluted, and summers burn with a once unimaginable ferocity. Inequality, too, has grown faster than prosperity. Since liberalisation, India’s economy has expanded, but so has the gulf between rich and poor, to levels unseen since the early decades after Independence. Growth dazzles at the top, while hollowing out the base.

THE UNEQUAL ENGINE OF CONSUMPTION

GDP is often treated as a synonym for development. Yet it is an aggregate, and as an aggregate, it conceals more than it reveals. For those at the margins, extra income means food on the table, medicine within reach, and school fees paid. But beyond that modest threshold, the welfare curve flattens. The second car, the third house, and the fifth luxury gadget add little to human well-being. But what they add in abundance is carbon.

The injustice is global. The richest 1% of people produce nearly a quarter of the world’s emissions; the top 10% account for more than half. The poorest half of humanity, billions of people, contribute barely 7%. Yet it is they who are first to be battered: by droughts, by floods, by heat that pushes beyond human endurance. Growth, in practice, often means excess for the few and exposure for the many.

DEVELOPMENT OR IMITATION?