GDP and GNP: True Development or a Fake Show?
What is development? The definition of development has changed with time. These definitions were not made based on personal wishes or whatever is popular at the moment. Instead, in every era the powerful force has explained development in a way that proves them to be the most advanced. They focused on those aspects that would create a glorious and grand picture of themselves. They carefully avoided the aspects that could threaten their carefully made image.
Now let us look at the definition of development. As said before, the definitions of development were not made randomly, but were created based on time. So, let us learn what the definition of development was like in different eras.In Islam or the Islamic empire, development means the moral and spiritual development of human beings. In Islam, development is measured by parameters like Tawheed (monotheism), Taqwa (piety), Tawakkul (reliance on God), Tasawwuf (spirituality]and Islam itself. On the other hand, some civilizations measured development by parameters like the progress of knowledge, philosophy, and art. According to Great Britain when it rose as a colonial power, development meant naval power, fuel reserves, and similar things. After the First World War, America took the role of the world leader, and to them, development means the calculation of per capita GNP and GDP.
It is very important to see exactly what is used to define development. If development means the progress of philosophy, knowledge, or art, then societies must focus on improving these areas. Again, if development means Western culture, then everyone will try to copy it. For example, the current low-income Muslim countries are doing exactly that. Limiting development to the statistics of GDP and GNP means everyone gives you the scale of development through these numbers. Now a question may come to your mind: which definition of development should we choose? Why should we choose it? What is the benefit? Let us go deeper into this.
GDP / GNP
First, let us talk about GDP / GNP. As we know, the calculation of GDP / GNP is blind. Not only blind, it is also deaf, crippled, and completely disconnected from reality. To understand this strange trap of GDP let us take a low-income country, especially a low-income country named Bangladesh, as an example. Let us look at the present condition of Bangladesh. According to the blind and crippled economic notebook, after getting a place among developing nations, Bangladesh is now moving towards becoming a middle-income country. Thanks to unexpected improvement and growing growth rates, Bangladesh now holds the top position in the rate of increasing "ultra-rich" people. It is now a success story from what was once called a bottomless basket. This is truly surprising and very unbelievable. Just look at the facts below to see how unbelievable it is.In the country named Bangladesh, such development has happened that over a total of six years from 2010 to 2016, the income of the richest 5 percent of families increased by about 57%. Their monthly income is now around 90 thousand Taka. At the same time, the income of the poorest 5 percent of families decreased by 59 percent. From 1,791 Taka in 2010, their monthly income has now dropped to 733 Taka. What, is the calculation of development not matching? Let us quickly calculate the average monthly income of a rich family and a poor family together. Add 90,000 and 791, and then divide it by two to see what the result is. You will get the current average monthly income of these two families as 45,395.5 Taka.Did it match?Let me Explain With a example:-"If a person eats ten chicken dishes and his neighbor has nothing to eat, an average calculation says both ate five dishes each. This mathematical average completely hides the hunger of the poor man."This is how development is happening through the calculations of per capita income, growth, GDP, and GNP in that country. Our GDP is increasing even after becoming the first in South Asia in abusing government power, and the first among developing nations in loan defaulting. Our development is still happening even after being at the bottom of the index in areas like the rule of law, sexual violence, safety of life, and the destruction of the environment and rivers.
According to the United Nations, what does it matter if we rank 125th out of 156 countries on the happy countries list? In this developing country, people are spending their days with an unhappy mind while counting money from their fat wallets. Despite having epidemic-like corruption, decreasing employment, a youth unemployment rate that doubled in 7 years thousands of crores of Taka of small investors lost from the stock market, 800 crores disappearing from the central bank, 22 thousand 302 crores looted from the banking sector in ten years, and 6 lakh crores smuggled out of the economy, a stagnant industrial sector, shrinking agricultural employment, secret branches of big loans, and borrowing thousands, lakhs, and millions of dollars from the World Bank along with crores of dollars of interest—despite all of this, low-income, high-income, and developing nations are running fast on the highway of development. The per capita income of GDP and GNP is still rising.Many economists have made funny and sharp criticisms of this GDP-GNP scale that measures development. Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, Amartya Sen, and many others have said that calculating development in this way gives birth to wrong policies. Damage to natural resources and the environment, the breaking of society, poverty, education, health—many important things, especially the calculation of morality, find no place in this measurement scale. A question may come to your mind: what is the relationship between morality and development? Let us know more details.
Morality is the King of All Definitions of Development
As we know, development in the Islamic empire means moral and spiritual improvement, measuring parameters like Tawheed, spirituality, Taqwa, Tawakkul, Ikhlas (sincerity), and similar values.
Think about a scenario where you and a friend both have a good income. But you do a government job, and your friend runs a highly profitable business of gambling and drugs. Now, both of you have an income, and your friend's income is actually three times higher than yours. But, is your friend's income helping the economy of your country in a good way? Of course not. But in GDP and GNP, your friend's income will look much higher than yours because it goes into the economy as physical money, but the system will not look at whether the business is legal or illegal. As I said before, GDP and GNP are based on material things, luxury, and building huge amounts of wealth. But because of gambling and the drug business, thousands of people in a country lose their wealth, and because of drugs, many people are moving toward destruction. Yet GDP and GNP do not look at that. They only look at how much money was earned.
To explain it more simply, imagine an area where 100 people live. Each of them earns 30–40 thousand taka per month. Now, among those 100 people, if 10 people earn six times more than the other 90 people through dishonest activities, or if those 10 people use corruption, extortion, murder, or fraud to remove the other 90 people from their jobs or take part of their income, then the income of those 90 people will decrease. But the income of those 10 people will increase compared to the other 90 people.
As a result, GDP and GNP will calculate the income of all 100 people by mainly looking at the earnings of those 10 people. But in reality, there has been no improvement in the lives of the other 90 people. In this way, this measure of development is deceiving us.
Even if those 10 people kill the other 90 people, this development will still continue according to that measurement. In other words, this is a kind of development where inequality exists, or where people rule over others through inequality.
Besides this, before GDP and GNP became the main measures of development, there were other ways to judge development, such as knowledge, philosophy, energy resources, naval power, and many other things. These were also cannot keep a civilization alive for a long time. Because you may have knowledge, philosophy, energy resources, and power, but if you do not have morality and spirituality, then you will not be able to use those things for good purposes.
A real example of this, according to this view, is present-day Europe. Today, the countries of Europe may follow GDP and GNP as measures of progress, but before that they advanced through knowledge, philosophy, naval power, industry, and similar strengths.
However, when they moved away from Islamic development, decay began to grow within their societies. According to this perspective, that decline has continued and today is leading them toward final destruction through the GDP and GNP model.
There is almost no bad practice in the world that does not exist in Europe. Murder, robbery, prostitution, illegal relationships, family breakdown, treating women like products, large pornography industries, widespread interest-based business, worship of Satan, spreading satanic ideas through modern technology, moral decline through modern technology, gambling, alcohol, interest, harming people through black magic, immoral sexual behavior, homosexuality, pedophilia, transgenderism, and many other things can be found there.
Remember one thing: although these problems have become very serious today, the ideas and systems behind them grew during a time when knowledge, philosophy, industry, and power were being used as the main measures of development for the whole world.
Even then, people in low-income countries like ours often think that Europe is more advanced than us. One major reason for this belief, according to this view, is that they became wealthy by taking resources from poorer nations and from the lands of the Islamic civilization. Through military power, deception, corruption, and force, they took large amounts of wealth from regions such as the Middle East and made themselves rich.
It is also important to note that much of this happened before GDP and GNP became the main measures of development. At that time, development was judged by things such as naval power and energy strength. For example, during the period of Great Britain, wealth was taken by force from the Indian subcontinent and from many other small and large countries. This was done under their own model of development, which valued maritime and energy power.
In addition, from the past until today, many of the harmful practices that became established in society were developed during those earlier periods when knowledge, philosophy, and naval power were considered signs of development.In other words, morality is the most important thing. If you do not have morality, then no matter how much wealth you have or how knowledgeable you are, you will never be able to use that knowledge for good purposes. As a result, instead of doing good, you may gain great wealth through bad actions and live a luxurious life.
However, your civilization will slowly move toward destruction. This is because you will lose your purpose and self-confidence. You will become focused on luxury and comfort. History shows that those who became excessively luxurious and lost their morality eventually disappeared into decline.
The Islamic Empire is one example. Although morality was very strong in its early period, later it became influenced by Europe and gradually adopted a more luxurious lifestyle. As a result, it also experienced decline and eventually fell, just as I mentioned before When morality is violated, a civilization will decline or even disappear. So a question may arise in your mind: if that is the case, then what is the reason behind the decline of the current Western civilization, meaning European civilization?
The clear answer is Islamic civilization. Does that sound confusing? Let’s explore it in detail.
The rise of Islamic civilization:
The main reasons behind the rise of Islamic civilization were morality and spirituality—Taqwa (God-consciousness), Tawakkul (trust in God), and Ikhlas (sincerity). Today, after observing Western civilization, Muslims are beginning to realize that following their spiritual and moral principles blindly can lead to destruction similar to theirs. They believe that they are destroying not only themselves but also Muslims along with them go to a terrifying place like Hell. Along with the Muslim Ummah, the greatest Prophet of the world, Hazrat Muhammad (peace be upon him), said: “This world is a prison for the believers and a paradise for the disbelievers.” Through this, it is proven that the eternal paradise of the Hereafter is far more important than this temporary worldly paradise. One of the examples of the rise of Islamic civilization today is Iran. Iran, by maintaining its moral and spiritual foundation, is standing in a strong position and is in conflict with luxurious civilizations like America, Israel, and parts of Europe, and is succeeding.
Whereas in this war, the brave people are willing to give their lives, the luxurious European civilization is trying in every possible way to avoid war. Because they do not want to die Because they do not have belief in the afterlife or spirituality within them. In fact, Iran has used the economy as one of its weapons. That is the economy of digital gold or Bitcoin. Today, Iran has proven through its courage, war strategy, morality, and secure economic system using Bitcoin that the development of morality and spirituality is greater than luxury.
Therefore, always remember one thing in life: no matter how powerful evil becomes, it cannot survive for long in the face of morality and spirituality. This is the law of Almighty Allah.
Note: Some of the information here has been taken from the book “Chinta Oporadh” written by Asif Adnan.
