The gross deprived parameter

WHAT IS GDP?” Sukru Ojha, a resident of Koraput town in Odisha, asks in response to my question: “Do you know India’s GDP will soon surpass Japan's?” I have been following Ojha's life since 1996, when I first met him during a reporting assignment covering the severe drought that had gripped the region, one of the poorest in the country. Now 60, Ojha still lives on daily wages, and does not bother to know what GDP is all about.

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GDP as an acronym is as common as a PIN or PAN. Ojha knows what PIN is, even though he does not know its full form. After carefully listening to my explanation of GDP—that it is the Gross Domestic Product, the commonly used measure for an economy, capturing monetary values of all goods and services produced in a country in a specified duration—Ojha gives a jocular response, which is a serious comment on this method of measuring a country’s economic well-being. “It doesn’t contribute to my life. I remain as poor as I have been since birth,” he says. “Nor do I contribute to GDP. My economy is zero.” Ojha had fled his village in Koraput district after his parents died of starvation during the 1996 drought. Earlier, during a conversation at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, he had said: “I have seen more hunger than food. Hunger is an adaptation method for me.”