Wednesday 30 Oct 2024

What does GDP mean to majority of our workforce?

ROBERT CASTELLINO, Calangute/Mumbai | SEPTEMBER 18, 2023, 07:11 PM IST

India is well on course  to becoming the 3rd largest economy in the world, surpassing the economies of Japan and Germany, by 2027-28. This will put the country among the coveted top 3 economies of the world, a podium finish of sorts.  In India, 92.4% of our workforce is  employed in the 'informal sector', with no written contract, paid leave, weekly off, Provident Fund or other benefits . They include all small factory workers, shop workers, construction workers, farm workers.  They include your electrician, painter,  plumber, barber,  carpenter.  your bhajji-wala and macchi-wali. They also include your house maid,  watchman, gardener and  delivery boy. So how is our GDP growing and overtaking  highly industrialized countries like Germany, Japan, UK, France,  Netherlands etc?   The reason is our burgeoning  population.These people  need a huge amount of  food to eat, so we need to produce more food. They require houses, so we build millions of houses. They require clothes,  saris,  shoes, chappals, etc so we  produce huge amounts of these items. That's GDP. They need to travel to their work place  so we have more scooters, cycles, trains,  buses,  taxis, rickshaws.  So we produce more of these. All of them  are responsible for pushing the GDP, which is totally meaningless  to them.


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