By Anil Netto
When people talk about development and progress, the usual measures bandied about are economic growth and per capita income. Thus, the conventional thinking goes, the higher the growth rate, the better for a country — and even better if the stock market index rockets up and per capita income rises in tandem. The hope is that some of this growth in wealth will trickle down to ordinary workers and result in higher incomes for them as well.

But such thinking is seriously flawed especially in this era of climate chaos and depletion of natural resources and environmental damage.

Economic growth is measured by the the change in a country’s output of goods and services from one year to another. The higher the output, the greater the GDP or economic growth.

The problem is, with each passing year, economic growth comes at a very heavy price.

For one thing, it comes at a heavy cost to the environment as rainforests are cleared, seas overfished, rivers polluted, hills chopped, and air polluted. How can we ever hope to measure the cost of achieving such economic growth? Because the environmental costs are not factored in, corporations show huge profits, which are then either re-invested or distributed to wealthy shareholders.

The damage to the environment will be heavily felt by future generations while the financial rewards are reaped now for the benefit of the privileged shareholders or those with access to capital. In the process of chasing economic growth, natural resources are being rapidly depleted. It is scary to think how many ‘earths’ will be needed to supply the resources so that all countries can achieve the level of consumption of the United States and other developed nations.

We also forget that most of the wealth generated by the output of goods and services tends to go to those with access to capital, thus widening the gap between the rich and the poor. Not surprisingly, after so many years of industrialisation and economic growth, this gap appears to have grown wider instead of narrowing. And let’s not forget that industrialisation has also exacted a heavy price on our sense of community and family. It has also placed an enormous burden on workers, many of whom are struggling to make ends meet.

With the overemphasis on GDP growth and financial wealth as measures of progress, other indicators of real human development are sidelined. Such indicators would include the general level of compassion in society, its inner humanity, its ability to empathise with the weak and the suffering and its willingness to express solidarity with them through subsidies and programmes of empowerment for those in most need.

Other measures that are currently overlooked include the state of cleanliness of our rivers and seas, the level of biodiversity which indicates how much we value creation, the air pollution index, the number of acres of permanent forest reserves, and the stock of natural resources such as water and oil, the state of mental health of the population, the level of social ills and the overall crime rate.

There is no valid reason why we are obsessed with measuring human progress using the benchmark of GDP growth and other monetary indicators while sidelining non-financial, qualitative or subjective indicators.

Because we are so accustomed to using monetary indicators to measure human development, we have reduced ourselves to evaluating almost everything in life in terms of ringgit and sen.

How different it was during the time of Jesus, who abhorred the love of money because he knew how far that would take us away from the love of God.

There are so many things in life that you just cannot place a monetary value on. There are other measures of growth. For Christians, the chief measure would be in the growth of the kingdom of God, which starts off like a mustard seed and then sprouts and grows and permeates itself across the world, bringing about its fruit of love, compassion, generosity, courage and solidarity with one another and with creation. Where the values of the kingdom are in sync with our own values, therein lies true contentment. For sure, money cannot buy happiness.

So why not take a closer look into how far we have come in promoting the values of the kingdom, which is what Jesus wanted us to do in the first place? For that, ultimately, is the real measure of human progress.