Why Bharat should use TALLI instead of GDP to measure prosperity
Since the early part of the last century, especially after the Bretton Woods Conference, GDP (Gross Domestic Product) has been adopted as the main tool to measure any country’s economy. While several modifications were made to the definition and computation of GDP, the real measure of a country’s economy is not reflected in the GDP numbers. By definition, GDP is a measure of the total monetary value of finished goods and services. Whether a nation adopts the production approach, the income approach, or the expenditure approach, the focus of the GDP calculations is purely quantitative and material. Seemingly rich nations with high GDP numbers are running unsustainable debt, like in the case of the USA, whose GDP is claimed to be 27 trillion USD, whereas it has a debt exceeding 37 trillion USD; in accounting parlance, this amounts to a bankruptcy. While nations cannot go bankrupt, such GDPs that are dependent on higher debts are eating away at the future of generations to come.
In the mad race for GDP growth, several countries have resorted to data manipulation and also ignored crucial aspects of the well-being of their populations. Matters related to human health, quality of life, happiness and contentment, educational aspects, unpaid work, environment, volunteer services, barter transactions, and social services are some of the important aspects that don’t resonate in the GDP number. The quality of assets the country possesses, both in physical and non-physical terms, are ignored. Countries that are corporate tax havens may not have much to show about the status of their own citizens, but would reflect disproportionately high GDP numbers. Several informal economies lose out of the GDP calculator.
Professor Angus Maddison, Emeritus Professor at the University of Groningen, Netherlands, and Honorary Fellow at Cambridge University, had done a study of the world economy of the last 2000 years. His report concluded that for the good part of the 15th century, Bharat was the number one economy in the world, accounting for between 30-35 percent of the global GDP. Bharat’s share in the World economy started declining from the 15th century as the exploitative Mughal rule started squeezing the country. While China became the number one economy since then, Bharat’s economy was still the world’s 2nd largest economy, accounting for 20-25 percent of the global GDP. After the British colonial takeover, Bharat’s GDP fell to less than 3 percent of the global GDP. The devastating fall of the last two hundred years has dealt a crippling blow on Bharat, which was once considered a golden bird (Sone ki Chidiya), which attracted invaders to loot and businessmen to come and trade for hundreds of years.
As Bharat emerges from the ashes of its colonial past and shakes off the shackles imposed on its mind by its former colonial masters, it is time for Bharat to define itself from its own lens rather than the lens of the soulless, exploitative, materialistic interests of the West. For thousands of years, the concept of wealth defined by Bharat’s civilization was far beyond materialistic aspects. The concept of wealth has been evolving over the centuries, but was inspired or aptly encapsulated in the concept of Ashtalakshmi’s – Dhanalakshmi, Dhanyalakshmi, Gajalakshmi, Santanalakshmi, Vidyalakshmi, Dhairyalakshmi, Vijayalakshmi, and Adilakshmi. Bharat’s wealth on all these fronts has been steadily growing since the British left the subcontinent. As the nation started electing leaders born after the colonial period, the nation is accelerating its growth on several fronts and dumping its legacy baggage. The last ten years’ growth has been spectacular, to say the least. Let us examine the wealth of Bharat through the lens of Ashtalakshmi.
1. Dhanalakshmi
A few years back, Bharat overtook its past colonial master United Kingdom, and this year it is likely to overtake Japan and become the world’s 3rd largest economy as per the Western way of calculating GDP. It now has the world’s fourth-largest forex reserves, close to $ 700 billion. Gold reserves, which have almost doubled in a decade to around 805 metric tons, have become the world’s 9th-largest state-owned gold reserve. In Spite of hundreds of years of looting by the Arabs, the Turks, the Persians, the Afghans, and the Europeans, Bharat still holds 25,000 metric tonnes in the private ownership of its citizens, especially its women. Unlike the West, which treats gold as a commodity, Bharat treats gold as an asset. No other country comes close to such wealth distributed as Bharatiyas possess. This private wealth held by the citizens of Bharat is almost three times the gold reserves of the USA, which has the world’s highest state-owned gold reserves at 8,134 MT. A genuine question to ask would be, should Bharat consider the 805 MT with the Reserve Bank of India, or consider the 25,000 MT that its citizens collectively hold? If the latter is considered as a measure, Bharat would even now be the No. 1 economy in the world. As per revenues of the country, in the last ten years, the formal revenue collections have tripled from Rs.11.39 lakh crores in 2014 to Rs.42.53 lakh crores in 2025. Should this massive revenue-generating capacity not be considered to determine its economic status? The concept of wealth is divine and worthy of respect in Bharat, unlike the concept of wealth being a tool for personal pleasure, aggrandizement, and power in the West. The wealth of this nation has to be measured by applying this concept of Dhanalakshmi to give a true measure of Bharat’s economy.
Dhanyalakshmi
Bharat had the world’s largest cultivable land for many centuries. While the Chinese economy was running a close second to Bharat’s economy for 1500 years, or even becoming the No. 1 economy for the next 400 years, and in spite of China expanding by conquests, its net cultivable lands have remained confined to the traditional Han Chinese territories. It has consistently imported food for a very long time. Even now, food security troubles them. Till the Islamic rulers devastated Bharat’s economy, agriculture, and irrigation, Bharat was always a food surplus civilisation. This stems from the concept of Dhanyalakshmi, reflecting the respect for agricultural production. From the days of starvation artificially created by the British during the world wars to the days of the humiliating PL-480 programme of the USA during the 1965 war with Pakistan. Bharat saw its worst days in food security in the last two thousand years, but has been steadily becoming self-sufficient over the decades and has come to a position of being a net exporter of agricultural produce to the world. In the last ten years, rice production has reached 151 million metric tons in 2025, compared to 106 MMT in 2014, becoming the world’s number one producer of rice. Wheat production increased from 89 MMT in 2014 to 117.4 MMT in 2025, becoming the world’s No. 2 producer. Bharat produces 30 MMT of sugar and is only next to Brazil as the number 2 in the world. It also produces 115 MT of fruits and is ranked number 2 in the world. As for dairy products, from 146.31 MT in 2014, Bharat produced 300 MT in 2025, becoming the no 1 milk producer of the world with production numbers almost close to double the numbers of the USA, which stands in the 2nd position. Having abundant stocks of essential food commodities, having sufficient cultivable lands, and consistently improving the yields is a great wealth that needs to be factored into the way we judge Bharat’s economy. The concept of Dhanyalakshmi resonates in food sufficiency, food abundance, and the ability to feed many nations where millions are starving.
Gajalakshmi
Gajalakshmi is symbolic of animal wealth, especially cattle, and also symbolises powerful assets during war. Bharat always was rich in its cattle wealth as reflected in the concept of Gaumata and Gopala, etc. Killing cattle was considered a sin, and eating the meat of the cow was considered the worst sin that could be committed. No wonder Bharat has 307 million heads of cattle, standing in the world’s number 2 position. Bharat also has some of the largest populations of Asiatic wild animals, including the tiger, the elephant, and the rhinoceros.
Gajalakshmi also symbolises the might of the army that used elephants in those days. In modern parlance, the Gaja or the elephant can be substituted with military assets like the tanks, fighter jets, ships, submarines, and other artillery equipment. While for many decades Bharat was importing the majority of the war assets, the last ten years have seen a major shift in the Nation’s approach to Atmanirbharta or self-reliance. While the overall numbers increased in the last ten years, that these assets were made in Bharat gives a qualitatively different weightage to the strength of our forces. Bharat is one of the few nations that constructed its own aircraft carriers, its own naval fleet, its own fighter jet, Tejas, all of which don’t really reflect in the GDP and the firepower indexes. Bharat has also overtaken Japan to be the world’s third-largest automobile producer. Gajalakshmi symbolises all such civilian and military assets, and so the nation’s wealth and economy have to be judged through the lens of Gajalakshmi as well.
Santanalakshmi
A couple of years back, Bharat overtook China as the world’s number 1 nation in terms of population, with more than 146 crore people. More than 50 percent of the population is below the age of 30, a demographic that the world envies. Since the transfer of power in 1947, life expectancy has more than doubled in the last eight decades from 32 years in 1947 to 72 years in 2024. Bharat always treated his progeny as wealth. That is why it could withstand several massacres and genocides, several waves of outward migrations, and yet continued to grow for centuries because of this concept of Santhanalakshmi. Family planning and producing lesser number of children was a conspiracy unleashed by the deep state of the USA with backers like Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, and others. The forced sterilization and the family planning measures of the Indira Gandhi government was antithetical to the concept of Santhanalakshmi. Scientific studies tell us that a TFR (Total Fertility Rate) of at least 2.1 is needed for maintaining a stable population, called the replacement rate. If the rate falls below 2.1 TFR, the population tends to decline. If it goes below 1.4 TFR, it can never be reversed. Most of the so-called developed, advanced, rich Western nations have abysmal TFR, forcing them to allow immigration, legal or illegal, thus endangering the very survival of their civilization. Of what use is a high per capita income, high GDP, and expensive lifestyle if there is not going to be any future generation to carry this on? What happens to nations with high life expectancy where the unproductive elderly population cannot be sustained by a dwindling productive younger population? That is where the reverence for population growth and children is important and is a very critical wealth a nation should have, as we can understand from the concept of Santhanalakshmi.
Vidyalakshmi
The concept of Vidyalakshmi is enshrined in the ethos of Bharat, which has always been a nation of knowledge seekers. The very term Bharat translates to someone who seeks the truth. A civilization of more than 5 to 6 thousand years has retained the collective knowledge, experience, and wisdom that has been passed on for generations, and is considered as wealth in Bharat. As Bharat emerges from its period of subjugation and starts to reclaim its true civilizational knowledge, the nation starts to leapfrog to reclaim its rightful position of being Vishwaguru. Even in numerical terms, the number of educated youths that are coming out from the educational institutions of the country has been steadily increasing, and Bharat ranks among the top nations in terms of numbers and quality. 15 lakh engineers are produced every year, there are 21 lakh registered doctors, more than 4 lakh chartered accountants, and more than 35 lakh nurses who are manning the growth engine of the nation’s economy. From 16 IITs in 2014, Bharat now has 23 IITs, a growth of 40 percent in one decade. From 12 IIMs in 2014 to 21 IIMs in 2025, the nation has added 60 percent more IIMs in one decade. Bharat’s educational system is also fueling many nations across the globe, from the construction workforce in the Gulf to doctors and nurses, and IT professionals in the West. The qualified and trusted workforce of Bharat is the backbone of many countries. The Nation also produces great corporate leaders like Sundar Pichai of Google, Satya Nadella of Microsoft, Shantanu Narayan of Adobe, Vasant Narasimhan of Novartis, Arvind Krishna of IBM, Ajay Banga of the World Bank, and scores of others. It is this reverence for knowledge epitomised by Vidyalakshmi that is able to create the backbone of Bharat’s economy, but also provide this knowledge to several other nations of the world. Sadly, this capacity-building ability of the country does not get reflected in the GDP numbers. This ability to produce a skilled workforce to power the overall health of an economy should be factored into the definition of wealth.
Dhairyalakshmi
A nation that was subjugated for almost a millennium, whose identity and self-esteem had been severely damaged, whose sense of inferiority complex in comparison to the more aggressive West is slowly giving way to confidence, self-esteem, pride, and the ability to stand up to anyone in the world. The fear of the Chinese haunted the nation for almost fifty years after the 1962 defeat, but has now been wiped out after the robust response post the Galwan incident. Confidence, not just in the armed forces but in the entire nation, has seen a dramatic upswing. Our cricketers and our Nation used to dread facing the Pakistanis or the Australians; no more. In the last two decades, the Indian cricket team has lost to Pakistan only once. And the boys don’t give respect to the reputations of these nations that we once feared. The confidence that Gukesh, Praggnanandhaa, and other 20+ something youngsters are showing while taking on the giants like Magnus Carlsen is a result of the Dhairya, or the confidence the nation is waking up to. When EAM Dr. S. Jaishankar exposes the hypocrisy of the west on their face on their platforms and when PM Modi could tell Vladimir Putin on his face that this is not an era of war and when we could take on a nuclear powered Pakistan calling their bluff and thrashing and humiliating them in Operation Sindoor or when PM Modi told the President of USA that he had no role to play in the ceasefire of Operation Sindoor, the confidence of this Nation has gone up many notches, contagious and is not just confined to the ruling elite but can be seen in the common public who voluntarily boycotted Maldives, Turkey and Azerbaijan for their anti Bharat stance and that too without any suggestions or directives from the government. A nation that could halt wars to evacuate its citizens from Ukraine and Iran, a nation which values its citizens and pulls them out from troubled spots like Syria, Yemen, Wuhan, etc, the Dhairya of this nation is returning back. While the USA could not and refused to evacuate its citizens from Kiev in the initial days of war, Bharat not just evacuated its citizens but also helped countries like Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and others to evacuate their citizens. Even Pakistanis used Bharat’s flag to escape from such war zones. Does this Dhairya or confidence reflect in the GDP assessments of Bharat’s economy? Whose passport guaranteed an evacuation in Ukraine, the USA’s or Indian? Yet this Dhairya of Bharat is not factored in assessing its economy. It is time that the wealth of our nation is also assessed through the lens of Dhairyalakshmi.
Vijayalakshmi
In 1987, Bharat reached the final of the Davis Cup against hosts Sweden. On reaching Sweden, Vijay Amritraj was asked about their chances of winning against Sweden. His reply was that they came there for shopping. That reflected the overall mindset of the nation, which had no fire to win and which was contended to be defeated most of the time. Compare that to the way ISRO chairman K Sivan got emotional and PM Modi had to console him when the Vikram lander was a partial failure reaching the moon. That emotion shows the hunger to succeed, which later resulted in successfully landing on the southern pole of the Moon. In Operation Sindoor, Bharat had to fight its own battle with no support from anyone and yet defeated three nuclear powers, Pakistan, China, and the USA, and also defeated a NATO member, Turkey. The hunger to take on any adversary and win, and not willing to compromise on its sovereignty and red line, stems from this concept of Vijayalakshmi, victory based on Dharma is wealth.
Adilakshmi
Bharat’s civilization is the only guidance and solution to most fundamental and deep questions humanity can ever raise. Questions like, why creation? Why are we born? What is all this creation for? Who created all this? What happens to us in the future? Are we alone in the creation? and so on is long answered in Bharat’s knowledge traditions. Approaches to the truth could be different, but the truth has been realised and passed on in this great civilization. The ultimate aim of every Atma is to be liberated, called by different names like Moksha, Nirvana, etc., while maintaining a balance of individual, society, creation, and the primordial ultimate (Vyasti, Samisti, Shrusti, Paramesti). This concept of the seeker of the ultimate truth is embodied in the concept of Adilakshmi. Bharat’s great spiritual and civilizational wisdom is its wealth and can never be quantified in the mundane, material formulas of GDP. It is this wealth of Bharat, a Vishwaguru, which can give directions to humanity as a whole and has to be factored into the way wealth and prosperity are assessed.
When we start applying the concepts of these Ashtalakshmis, many nations that appear rich today will turn out to be not so rich or hollow in reality. Many nations that may not do well on GDP numbers may end up at a much higher scale on the index of Ashtalakshmi, like in the case of Bhutan, which has the highest carbon positive footprint as well as the world’s best Human Happiness Index, but whose GDP is somewhere at the bottom of the list. It is time we replace GDP with TALLI as a measure of assessing the nations of the world. TALLI stands for The Astalakshmi Linked Index. Talli is also a word for mother in Telugu. Ashtalakshmis are the mothers of all wealth. Let us shift to TALLI and abandon the spiritless, cold, materialistic formulas of GDP to measure the true worth of nations.
Note:
1. Text in Blue points to additional data on the topic.
2. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of PGurus.
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He has visited 30+ sites associated with the Mahabharata and Vedic period, especially Harappan sites in India. Of special interest is traveling along the course of the extinct River Saraswati. Understanding and rediscovering the forgotten Hindu past of Kashmir has been an abiding interest and he has extensively visited kashmir including militancy affected areas.
Giridhar Mamidi is a trained Chartered Accountant with an additional degree in Law. In his long career, he has worked as CFO in Punj Lloyd Saudi Arabia, Unibeton Ready-mix UAE, as group head at ERP Al Faraa group and in DLF Offices and IT Parks Delhi. Prior to that, he has worked as Finance Head in Google India and ADP India.
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