Limited planet, unlimited ambition

A significant conversation about degrowth is gaining currency among scholars such as Tim Jackson. It’s about wisely choosing the path of economic growth to prioritise equity and sustainability. India, with deep philosophical roots to such thinking, needs to find its own middle ground
Prof Tim Jackson
Prof Tim JacksonWikimedia Commons
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In India’s economic imagination, GDP growth occupies the status of an unquestioned national obsession. Every quarterly number is awaited with bated breath. Reports that our GDP grew 7.4 percent year-on year in the last quarter of 2024-25 were met with predictable celebration. Policymakers remain fixated on the dream of a $5-trillion economy by 2027-28, and a ‘developed’ India by 2047. Growth, in this narrative, is a panacea—a promise of prosperity, employment and uplift for all.

But, what if the relentless pursuit of higher GDP numbers, without reflecting on what is growing, for whom, and at what cost, risks deepening India’s ecological, social, and economic vulnerabilities? And what if India is ignoring a conversation the rest of the world is beginning to take seriously—degrowth?

In parts of Europe and North America, a quiet but significant debate is underway questioning whether high-income economies should deliberately reduce material production and consumption to achieve ecological sustainability, lower inequality, and better quality of life. Scholars like Jason Hickel, Tim Jackson, and Giorgos Kallis have argued that endless GDP growth on a finite planet is not just impossible but undesirable. Climate breakdown, biodiversity collapse, and rising inequality have exposed the limits of the growth-at-all-costs model.

At first glance, this debate may seem irrelevant to India—a country still grappling with poverty, underemployment, and unmet basic needs. Our policymakers have long argued that while degrowth might be a necessity for advanced economies, India has neither reached nor caused the ecological and material excesses of the West. Growth, for India, is an ethical imperative to improve lives and expand opportunities.

And yet, can India afford to stay disengaged from the underlying questions the degrowth discourse raises? The truth is, even as India grows at the fastest rate among major economies, environmental degradation is accelerating, inequality is deepening, and the benefits of GDP growth are failing to meaningfully improve well-being for large sections of the population.

Consider this: as per IQAir’s 2024 World Air Quality Report released earlier this year, India is home to 13 of the world’s 20 most polluted cities. Groundwater levels in several states are dangerously low. Heatwaves are becoming deadlier each year. Meanwhile, inequality is surging, as estimated in several recent reports.

The GDP numbers also conceal deep regional, social, and ecological disparities. Growth has been concentrated in financial services, digital platforms, and capital-intensive industries, while job-intensive sectors like manufacturing and labour-intensive services have lagged. Public health, affordable housing, ecological restoration, and social security—sectors that improve well-being and generate inclusive employment—remain underinvested.

This is why degrowth thinking deserves engagement. To be clear, degrowth is not about impoverishing countries like India or halting development. Rather, it asks: what kind of growth matters? Can we pursue economic activity that improves health, education, housing, gender equality, and ecological restoration without endlessly expanding material throughput? Can India grow differently—not just faster?

India has a philosophical and intellectual tradition of questioning material excess. Gandhian economics and the principles of sufficiency and frugality in Indian village economies all resonate with degrowth ideas, long before they acquired academic currency in the West. What India lacks today is a contemporary policy conversation that connects these ideas with the demands of a modern, urban, climate-challenged economy. Rather than transplanting the degrowth doctrine, India could evolve its own 'postgrowth’ or ‘equitable growth’ model—one that prioritises human well-being over headline GDP. This would mean complementing GDP with well-being indicators, as it is done in New Zealand and Bhutan. It would involve shifting investment towards public healthcare, education, renewable energy, affordable housing, and the care economy, all of which improve lives and generate dignified jobs. It would demand serious wealth redistribution—through progressive taxation, universal social security, and targeted rural and urban job programmes.

India’s cities could be made more livable through compact, green, walkable neighbourhoods. Agriculture policy could focus on sustainable farming rather than chemical-intensive cash crops. Industrial policy could encourage decentralised, labour-intensive manufacturing clusters over capital-heavy industrial corridors.

India may also take a leaf out of China’s recent policy evolution. Recognising the destabilising effects of inequality and ecological damage, China’s 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025) prioritised expanding the middle-income group. In 2022, President Xi Jinping committed to “substantially grow” this group by 2035. China has since pursued policies that include wage hikes, social security expansion, subsidised housing, and improved access to credit for asset creation. India, despite rapid growth, has no comparable middle-class strategy.

The world’s ecological limits are tightening. Global carbon budgets, biodiversity treaties, and environmental, social and governance standards will increasingly shape India’s growth options, whether it likes it or not. By ignoring the principles underpinning the degrowth conversation, India risks being forced into reactive, costly adjustments later. This is not a call for India to stop growing, but for it to grow wisely, fairly, and within planetary limits. A middle path between growth fundamentalism and degrowth fatalism exists—one that India must define for itself. We cannot afford to be a passive observer in debates about the future of development. It’s time to ask: not how fast we grow, but what, for whom, and at what cost.

Tulsi Jayakumar | Professor, Economics & Policy and Executive Director, Centre for Family Business & Entrepreneurship at Bhavan’s SPJIMR

(Views are personal)

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