"GDP" & Other Gods We Worship

Pam Bondi, the United States Attorney General, while appearing before a Congressional hearing on the Jeffrey Epstein case, invoked the Dow Jones, the S&P, and the Nasdaq, claiming they were touching new highs. She admonished the hearing committee that rising stock indices should be the prime focus of Congress instead of discussing the dead financier’s immoral life and its consequences.

In Pakistan, television journalist Nusrat Javed reported another small but telling story with admirable calm. Electricity consumers were to pay a new levy—between Rs 200 and Rs 650 per household—so that industry could be subsidised in the name of competitiveness. Ordinary citizens would underwrite industrial growth. The burden would travel downward; the benefits upward. This, too, was justified as economic necessity.

Back home, we are told almost daily that India is on its way to becoming the world’s third-largest economy. The declaration is repeated with such fervour that it has begun to sound like a patriotic duty to believe it. Meanwhile, economists—some of them in institutions as sober as the IMF—have raised questions about both data and methodology. At the same time, we have normalised “bulldozer justice,” televised “encounters killing” and encouraged a growing impatience with due process. But never mind. The GDP graph is trending upward.

Three different countries. Three different contexts. One familiar refrain: growth is the answer to everything. It was Bill Clinton who immortalised the line, “It’s the economy, stupid,” in 1992. It was meant as a sharp campaign reminder that voters care about livelihoods. Over the decades, it has mutated into something more troubling. For too many leaders, it has become a governing doctrine. Win elections. Keep the numbers up. Everything else can be managed, massaged or ignored.

This narrowing of vision is not accidental. It is politically convenient brought to fruition by the new political opium “Polarisation”.

Divide citizens into tribes, feed them a steady diet of outrage, and they will happily fight each other while ruling dispensation rearranges the furniture of the state. When politics is reduced to identity wars, governance becomes theatre. Institutions can be bent. Rules can be sidestepped. The faithful will forgive almost anything so long as they believe their tribe is winning.

Donald Trump once boasted he could shoot someone in the middle of Manhattan and not lose support. Hyperbole, perhaps. But it captured a deeper truth: in a polarised society, loyalty can trump law. ICE agents can overreach, bulldozers can roll over homes without due process, extrajudicial shortcuts can be reframed as efficiency—and all of it can be excused so long as the stock market is buoyant or GDP ticks upward.

Polarisation simplifies the political agenda. It reduces governance to a binary: “Are you with us or against us?” Once that frame is accepted, inconvenient questions about institutional decay, ethical conduct, or social justice can be dismissed as partisan attacks. Incompetence hides behind outrage. Failure is reframed as persecution.

But governance is not a quarterly earnings report.

An economy is vital, yes. Growth creates jobs, funds infrastructure, and expands opportunity. Yet governance is a far broader enterprise. It is about the rule of law—ensuring that justice is blind, not bulldozed. It is about building institutions that outlast leaders. It is about protecting the vulnerable, regulating markets fairly, and ensuring that competition is free but not feral.

A nation is not a balance sheet; it is a living social contract.

Any serious government must prioritise at least five pillars.

First, the Rule of Law. Without it, markets become monopolies, power becomes arbitrary, and citizens become subjects. Investors may chase returns for a while, but capital ultimately flees uncertainty.

Second, Human Development—education, healthcare, and nutrition. A malnourished child cannot power a superpower. Literacy and public health are not social luxuries; they are economic multipliers.

Third, Institutional Integrity. Independent courts, professional civil services, credible statistical agencies, and a free press are not inconveniences to be managed; they are the scaffolding of trust.

Fourth, Economic Fairness and Market Regulation. Growth that concentrates wealth while eroding competition breeds oligarchy. Crony capitalism is not capitalism; it is patronage with better branding.

Fifth, Social Cohesion and Civic Safety. A society permanently at war with itself cannot innovate, cannot collaborate, and cannot sustain prosperity. Stability born of fear is brittle.

Failure in any one of these cannot be covered up by projecting GDP growth. A rising index cannot compensate for collapsing institutions. A glowing growth rate cannot mask poisoned air, hollowed classrooms, judiciary under siege, or a stifled press. History is littered with examples of economies that boomed briefly while their foundations rotted quietly.

Consider China. As an authoritarian state, builds power faster than a village wrestler on an imported protein shake. It commands near-monopoly positions in certain technologies and dominates critical supply chains. Its infrastructure dazzles; its manufacturing prowess is formidable. If scale were sovereignty, the matter would be settled.

But projection is not proof. Like Germany before the Second World War, it displays industrial and military muscle with admirable confidence. The difficulty is that the Nazi might was never tested, and rest is history. A state that never quarrels with itself may mistake silence for strength.

Authoritarian efficiency can mobilise resources swiftly. But it can also suppress error signals. When dissent is muted, feedback loops weaken. When institutions answer upward rather than outward, blind spots grow. The lesson of history is stark: concentrated power may accelerate ascent, but it also magnifies miscalculation.

The tragedy of our age is not that politicians care about growth. They should. The tragedy is that many have reduced governance to growth—and growth to optics. They wield polarisation to lower the bar of public expectation. They promise greatness measured in rankings while neglecting greatness measured in justice.

“It’s the economy, stupid” was a campaign slogan, not a governing philosophy.

In the end, GDP cannot govern a nation. Only good governance can.

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