For a new paradigm of growth

Arun Maira

Chairman, HelpAge International

ARIZONA is racing to its last drop of groundwater — this was the headline of a report in the New York Times (December 29, 2022). It reminded me of Punjab. The report said: “Arizona’s water is running worrying low. Amidst the worst drought in more than a millennium, which has left communities with barren wells, the state is depleting what remains of its precious groundwater. Much of it goes to private companies nearly free, including Saudi Arabia’s largest dairy company.”

The pursuit of relentless growth of global and national GDP has become a cancer that is sucking water out of the Earth.

Arizona draws most of its water from the Colorado river, which it shares with seven other states that are unable to come to an agreement for sharing the resource fairly. Punjab shares river waters with Haryana, Rajasthan and Delhi, and they too have been unable to come to a satisfactory agreement. Like Arizona, Punjab’s groundwater has been overdrawn to support farms producing crops for export. Punjab’s wheat and rice are exported all over India and to other countries. Alfalfa, grown in Arizona, feeds cows in the US and even in water-scarce Saudi Arabia.

Both Arizona and Punjab are suffering from the globalisation and corporatisation of agriculture. Punjab’s Green Revolution was propelled by US agricultural technology. The US also provided modern dairying technology to Saudi Arabia, spawning the giant Saudi agricultural company, Almarai. Needing more fodder and more water to feed its cattle, it looked for sources in the US. In return for a large investment of FDI, Arizona state leased 3,500 acres at a very low price to Almarai to grow alfalfa, and water usage charges were one-sixth the market rate. Almarai’s “ease of doing business” has turned into difficulties in ease of living for citizens of Arizona who are running out of water for their own needs.

The technologies of the US and the size of its economy made it a global power. Its economy grew very large in the 20th century with the mechanisation of its farms and industries. Its citizens’ ease of living improved with the ownership of automobiles and home appliances. The growth of the US economy and improvement of its citizens’ lives was powered with hydrocarbon energy. The US way of life became an aspiration for people around the world.

The problem with the US way is that it does not sit well with nature. Scientists estimate that if all citizens of the world were to attain the standards of consumption of the average of an American, humanity would need three Earths to provide sufficient resources for everyone. We have only one Earth, and it is running out of water, which is fundamental for life for everyone, even in the US. We clearly need a better model of what a good life is, and a better way of enabling everyone to live good lives wherever on the planet they are.

Change is essential in fundamental concepts driving economic policies. One is the measure of productivity. The productivity of enterprises, and the entire economy too, is measured as the output of a unit of labour. Therefore, when the amount of human effort used in an enterprise, and for overall economic growth is reduced, productivity thus measured is improved. To improve the productivity of the agriculture sector, fewer persons should be employed in the sector. They should be replaced by machines (which requires financial capital), and their energy should be replaced by other energy sources —hydrocarbons being the most efficient so far. Humans displaced from agriculture to improve “productivity” must find employment in manufacturing or services. When human effort in those sectors is also replaced by machines and artificial intelligence (which requires other sources of energy and investment of capital), no wonder the economy will have an overall employment problem.

The second concept is value. When the value of an enterprise’s output is measured purely in terms of money, and decisions made about fairly sharing the value amongst contributors to it, it is convenient to measure contributions in financial terms too. Therefore, the intrinsic values of human labour (and environmental resources), which are qualitative in nature, are stripped off for the ease of mathematical calculations. Qualitative values become ‘externalities’ to the economy; and money becomes the only currency for evaluating the worth of human beings and nature.

The third concept is efficiency, which business managers and economic policymakers strive to improve. Efficiency (like productivity) is the ratio of the output produced by an input. The philosophical question is: what is the outcome that people within a society value the most? Can workers value the stock market valuation of a business enterprise as much as investors and senior executives whose compensations are directly tied to it? What worth is growth of GDP to common citizens when they cannot earn enough to provide for their family’s needs for shelter, nutrition, health, and education?

The fourth concept is equity — a measure of fairness in sharing the outcomes. Economists and managers duck this question, as mentioned before, by their mathematical computations of the inputs and outputs of an enterprise in money terms. Fairness and trust are essential qualities of good enterprises and good societies. They enable enterprises to perform more efficiently and become more productive, by reducing costs of supervision, policing, and dispute resolution, which do not add any intrinsic value to the production of the desired outcomes.

The fifth concept is growth. Growth is good, provided it is not a cancer that saps the life out of its host. The pursuit of relentless growth of global and national GDP has become a cancer that is sucking water out of the Earth and life out of the planet, as the stories of Arizona and Punjab illustrate.

Humanity needs a new paradigm of growth: growth of equity and social trust along with the growth of environmental sustainability. The curriculums of schools, as well as models of business and the economy, must be changed urgently. They must be built upon new foundations: with new concepts of productivity, value, efficiency, equity and growth.

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