Copyright (c) Kyra Choucroun

Despite years of thinking about the traditional model of economic growth, it wasn’t until I drove through rural Ghana that it truly hit me just how spectacularly it has failed to deliver on the promise of global prosperity.

In my last blog I challenged the widely held belief that infinite growth is both necessary and viable. That piece generated a flood of responses, from howls of protest at one extreme to speaking invitations at the other. And it was one of those invitations that led me to Ghana in the first place, to share my views on how Africa can play a part in tackling the world’s most complex challenges at a youth-led conference in Kumasi.

A particular remark has been ringing in my ears for two weeks: “We have an economy where we steal from the future, sell it in the present, and call it GDP.” Those are the words of Paul Hawken, who, in my opinion, has come up with the most accurate definition of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) so far.

When I heard it at TEDxOxbridge, I thought: Bingo! We’re finally weaving growth into the debate, and acknowledging that our obsession with stellar GDP and economic growth is simply an “intergenerational Ponzi scheme” biding its time.

Photo: Flickr user Meena Kadri

A week ago, as I waited at a traffic light in Mumbai, I witnessed an incident of grand theft auto—well, perhaps it was not grand, but something was stolen, and it involved an automobile. Here’s what happened: A barefoot woman in a grubby green sari scurried into the street, carrying a big empty water jug under her arm. Without shame, she went straight to the back of a brightly painted water tanker truck which was waiting for the red light to change. On the back of the water tanker was a large faucet, and when the woman turned the valve, water spurted everywhere, soaking her sari and filling her jug within seconds. The woman’s children and husband watched by the side of the road as she stole the water

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