RUDRANIL SAHA
UG – Student
Christ University
Bangalore
Is Economic Growth Becoming More Important Than Human Well-Being
For decades, GDP has been the scoreboard of success. A government puts up a campaign around GDP, an agency rates countries based on their GDP, and a global comparison ranks countries according to their GDP. But GDP is an output measure and doesn’t tell us how it was produced sustainably or what the cost of GDP in human terms was. A nation can become a great nation without growing wages for the majority and without a few becoming far richer. No inequality ever appears in GDP numbers. GDP even includes expenditure on disaster cleanup and pollution-initiated health care as “growth”, failing to recognise that what counts is whether or not the activity enhances social welfare.
Growth Without Well-Being
This lack of connection is reflected in patterns. Leftover unmet gains in life satisfaction have been found in many high-growth economies. A phenomenon which economists have called the Easterlin Paradox, meaning that after a certain point, positive increases in earnings do not correlate to happiness. As GDP has increased, so has burnout, anxiety and loneliness, with forces promoting growth such as long hours, gig economy insecurity and a decline in community life. Changing the conversation about inequality in the United States.
Inequality by the Numbers
This gap is quantifiable. The share of the top 1 % has increased by a fifth since 1980, while the share of the bottom half has remained essentially unchanged over the past decades globally. India shows this clearly: Top 1 income share increased to 22.6 % in FY2022-23, the highest in 100 years, compared to South Africa, Brazil and the US. The top 10 % of the population control 65 % of the total wealth and the top 1 % around 40 % whilst the bottom 50 % control 15 % of the national income. One gap, which researchers report has changed very little in the last decade. These are not disparities, but rather indications of growth at the very top and a leveling-off experience of prosperity in the median. Also, GDP does not account for cost: Even deforestation, resource depletion and emissions are not deducted from the numbers and the act of extraction is itself included in GDP. The nation can “grow” or borrow prosperity from its future. The alternative indices, such as the Genuine Progress Indicator, or Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness, were created to redress.
Why It Persists
However, GDP is simple, standardised, and easy to compare, while metrics of well‑being are more difficult to standardise and compare. GDP is also an incentive provider. It’s easy to campaign on a single growth number per election cycle, whereas gains in well‑being take time and are more difficult to link. Financial markets support these growth signals and acknowledgement of privately limits GDP.
The Indian Context
India makes this disparity real. The government has been relying on its status as one of the world’s fastest-growing economies to present the country’s progress on the outside world. Yet ahead of the September 2023 G20 Summit in New Delhi, slum clusters between the airport and the delegates’ venues were covered with iron sheets and green netting and an entire colony in south Delhi’s Vasant Vihar was curtained off behind a green cloth screen carrying G20 posters. The purpose was obvious, residents said, referring to opposition leader Rahul Gandhi who had said that there was “no need to hide India’s reality from our guests. One of the traders in the colony, who found himself without any money to make a living on, expressed it more directly. There are 20 countries, G‑20, behind this [screen] because of the G‑20 summit; they are hiding us. Free Press Journal + 3 This is the GDP fantasy lived out in reality. India’s growth rates do not account for the fact that there are still significant sections of the Indian population that do not have secure housing, sanitation facilities or access to clean water, nor do they reflect the difference between the growth story of infrastructure and the reality of the poor and many of the rural population in India, who continue to suffer from inadequate access to health services, education and decent livelihoods. When the state’s instinct during a moment of visibility is to physically conceal poverty rather than confront it, this shows how far growth‑as‑image has displaced well‑being as the real policy goal.
Conclusion
Growth isn’t supposed to be the end goal itself. Growth was supposed to bring societies happiness, health and equity. That’s the process the people have misunderstood as the result. Correcting this doesn’t mean it is necessary to give up growth and instead have it refuse to give up what growth was supposed to bring. Success of a nation should not be judged based on the production made. By its way of living.
References
In India, Wealth Inequality among highest in the world, top 1% holds 40% wealth: Study | SabrangIndia
G20 Summit 2023: Slums & Construction Sites Curtained, Dogs Captured In Delhi Ahead Of Dignitaries’ Visit
‘We have been made to vanish’: Hidden by screens, Delhi’s poor feel pinch of G20 curbs
No Need To Hide India’s Reality From Guests, Says Rahul Gandhi As Centre Covers Delhi Slums For G20 Summit | Outlook India
