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Every now and then, a news channel or a news paper will have a piece on Economy – Recession, Bears, Bulls, Revival and other such economic mumbo-jumbo. But how many of us truly understand the Economy? It is not a thing that we can bind in rules and theories. Every Economics paper ever  presented is basically based on the experiences and learnings of an individual, and how he or she feels while understanding the philosophy of economy. Economicsis not mere mathematics, it’s a spontaneous reaction of human kind to the situations they have created for themselves, knowingly or unknowingly, for better living, or for what their perception of better living is.

A question often debated these days is, “Has the Indian economy grown?”

A lot of hands will quickly go up in assent. But, I, humbly beg to disagree. A section of people, economists included, will say: “Why not, it has grown over the past few decades!!”

But I have my doubts. I know will have to elaborate my point here, but before I do, I will say that all I write here is based on my take on the economy – you are welcome to agree, or disagree. So, without further ado, here goes.

If we take our base yeasr as  post-independence, then we can easily see that we have grown as an economy. But why don’t we go back in time and take the base as the Harappan civilisation?

Harappan civilisation was the time when India was better than any other civilisation of the time. In fact, I feel compelled to emphatically say that it was the best civilization of all time. May be it was less capable technologically, but in terms of human prosperity, it was far ahead. Technology and Economy, anyway, are two totally different things – technical capabilities, although, may be the best weapon to become economically prosperous, provided they are utilized properly. Russia, in its heydays, was the best example of economy moving hand-in-hand with technology.

Coming back to Harappa, the percentage of poor people in the civilisation was far less than any other modern mega city of the present world. The measure of nation is not how far the head has gone,  but how much the head has been able to take the load off the tail to bring it at par with itself. In this aspect, Harappa was unmatchable. The kind of drainage system they had was much better than what we have in the national capital today; other cities are not even worth mentioning. The public administration also must have been far better than that of modern India. Even, the overseas business was dominated by the Harappans.

Have we been able to be the successors of the Harappans? I am afraid not – not in any field.

All the cities of the Harappan civilisation were systematically designed, quite unlike our cities, which seem to be a by-product of the race for urbanisation. We are just destroying our natural environment to make huge, high rise apartments – filling the surface of earth with concrete. Now, even if we get a lot of rain, it does not add to the water level, as most if it runs off the concrete surface, resulting  in floods even if it has rained for a few hours only. Nature finds itself incapable of helping us now, as we have managed to suck it dry all of its resources.

But who will be the true sufferers? Our next generations. We are taking away their future!

Massive urbanisation, as we are underatking at present, will lead to chaos and will break the backbone of our Economy. Remember, agriculture was, is and always will be the backbone of our Economy. If we fight shy of this very basic and most important fact then we are just fooling ourselves.