Having lived in 2 countries that have a similar form of government and somewhat similar interpretation of a human being’s ultimate objective, I cannot but compare the similarities and look at the differences with a magnifying lens.

Of course, I am talking about India and USA. I will limit my differences to politics and our social structure I have heard the term that India is a 50-50 democracy, I will leave that to the wisdom of the reader to judge, but personally ,I subscribe to this viewpoint in relation to a more mature democracy vis a vis the US of A.

India’s founding fathers had lofty ideas, when they set out to create the constitution, a book that prescribed the modern India’s way of life , for the most part . I will leave the history out of this . cut to 2020, 73 years since Independence, our country has still not reached the peak when it comes to individual freedom, rights ,equality and  liberty for all. If we are to look in terms of % growth, of course, we have made tremendous progress over time, but when it comes to individual liberties and freedom, we are not yet there.

Digressing , I do not subscribe when people compare India to countries that are not on par with it in terms of human rights and or even way of life  today, in a social sense. We should aspire to have better individual liberties and more individual freedom, not remain self-contented by comparing ourselves to someone behind us. So, when someone is happy and satisfied with India’s progress in terms of the status of human rights, access to basic needs, law and order  my answer is NO.  Our progress has been slower and if our goal is to have individual liberty in line with advanced democracies, we are not there yet.

So in addition to GDP, Indians should aspire to see our numbers go up in the global HDI index , developed by the United nations. We should aspire to increase our GDP and HDI numbers rise at the same % increase year on year.

If we want to become a “developed nation” , we will have need a report card we can compare ourselves against (school 101 ,anyone?) that can grade and differentiate one country from another on various aspects. GDP  is something a lot of us are aware of. I would vote for us to also look at HDI index in addition to GDP.

Is HDI better ? There seems to be another index called the “world happiness report”. That one is not bad either. Having a reference point , such as these indices give us a goal , a target to achieve rather than being abstract.