Murli Manohar Joshi, a respected figure in Indian politics, recently raised thought-provoking questions about India’s continued reliance on GDP as the primary indicator of national progress. At a significant meeting, Joshi expressed his concerns that the world’s obsession with GDP ought to give way to a broader, more inclusive understanding of growth. He reflected on how India’s economy is often lauded for its impressive numbers — India became the world’s fourth-largest economy — yet these figures alone provide an incomplete picture. Joshi drew attention to a troubling reality: the top 10 per cent of the Indian population controls around 65 per cent of the national wealth, while a significant portion of the workforce remains locked in subsistence-level agriculture. He suggested that this overemphasis on GDP has led to the neglect of uneven income distribution, rising inequality, and social vulnerabilities, echoing broader academic criticisms of GDP-centric growth narratives.
Joshi’s views resonate with global discussions on the failure of GDP to capture the essence of human development or well-being. GDP, since its inception, has been attractive for its simplicity — it sums up the monetary value of all goods and services produced within a country. For decades, this single figure has steered economic policy and international rankings. However, as Joshi and numerous economists underscore, GDP’s shortcomings are manifold. It fails to address how income and wealth are distributed among people. It overlooks unpaid but vital labour, like caregiving within families, as well as education, health, happiness, and social cohesion. GDP makes no distinction between activities that promote societal welfare and those that might cause harm if those activities increase economic output. Pollution, deforestation, and crime, for example, perversely add to GDP if they stimulate more economic transactions, making the economy “look” healthier on paper than it truly is in practice. In doing so, it can foster policies that inadvertently prioritise expansion over equity and sustainability, potentially deepening the very disparities Joshi cautioned against.
Recognising these flaws, Joshi called for India to embrace other models for measuring progress — an appeal increasingly echoed worldwide. One of the most widely accepted alternatives is the Human Development Index (HDI), which, rather than just counting money, gives equal weight to life expectancy, education, and per capita income. The Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) goes a step further by subtracting environmental and social costs from GDP to yield a more realistic assessment of societal advancement. Other indices like the Happy Planet Index (HPI) measure success by looking at sustainable well-being: are people living long, fulfilling, and ecologically responsible lives? The Better Life Index, developed by the OECD, uses a basket of metrics spanning health, job quality, civic engagement, and the environment. Meanwhile, the Inclusive Wealth Index takes stock of natural, human, and produced assets to reflect a country’s real long-term prosperity.
Each of these approaches signals a move towards multidimensional evaluation — one that asks not just how much an economy produces, but whether quality of life is improving for most citizens, and whether the gains are sustainable. If India began to take health or educational outcomes as seriously as it does GDP figures, policy attention, resource allocation, and political discourse would inevitably shift. A broader metric would require government to focus more closely on the pressing issues that GDP ignores: whether access to health and education is genuinely improving, whether environmental degradation is being stopped, whether citizens feel secure, fulfilled, and part of a just society, or if prosperity is limited to a privileged minority. Transitioning to a post-GDP paradigm would carry significant implications. Policymaking would move beyond industrial output and financial flows to prioritise investments in social infrastructure, public health, and education. Internationally, India would join a growing club of nations rethinking how they measure — and thus actually foster — progress.
Of course, embracing new metrics will not be easy. GDP’s institutional dominance is deeply entrenched, and it will take time, debate, and political will to replace it with broader measures. Building public consensus, developing robust statistical systems, and overcoming ideological resistance will be essential. But as Joshi insists, the stakes are too high for complacency. Exclusive reliance on a single, incomplete indicator is not only analytically lazy but ethically fraught — risking policies that deepen inequality and ecological peril.
Joshi’s critique, then, is not a rejection of economic growth itself, but a call for more meaningful measurements and a richer understanding of what growth should achieve. For a nation as large and diverse as India, success must be measured by the well-being of the many, not the fortunes of a few. India’s future lies in aligning its metrics of progress with its aspirations for justice, dignity, environmental balance, and sustainable prosperity.
The writer is Ex Additional Secretary, Director General of Trade Remedies, GOI. Views are personal