Subrahmanyam Jaishankar Quotes

One industrial age belief is that GDP or GNP is a measure of progress. I don't care if you're the President of China or the U.S., if your country doesn't grow, you're in trouble. But we all know that beyond a certain level of material need, further material acquisition doesn't make people happier.

Economic growth and human development need to go hand in hand. Human values need to be advocated vigorously.

We are not out to boast that there is so much percentage of growth per year. Our real concern is how it affects the lives of people, the future of our country.

Above and beyond the question of how to grow the economy there is a legitimate concern about how to grow the quality of our lives.

Bend everything toward improving the standard of living of the people.

States and nations do not build wealth by storing cash in a bank vault. They build wealth by expanding human solutions to human problems in order that more and more of her people — living and yet to be born — are able to enjoy a higher quality of life.

I'm pleased that some economists and sociologists are beginning to talk about, for example, alternative measures of human well-being - alternative, that is, to GDP, on which the world runs.

The ultimate test of the value of a political system is whether it helps that society to establish conditions which improve the standard of living for the majority of its people.

That is now my mission: to provide a European vision of growth, employment, prosperity - in one word, our future.

India, China, and Latin America have a tremendous stake in the people's century. As their masses learn to read and write, and as they become productive mechanics, their standard of living will double and treble.

No single number has become more central to society in the past 50 years” than gross domestic product.

What separates developing countries from developed countries is as much a gap in knowledge as a gap in resources.

Growth is not an objective in itself; we should be concerned with standards of living.

Africa is experiencing rising rates of growth, but will growth get translated into development?

Our system works. Over time, people will live better and better. We have a system that unleashes human potential, and now China has a system that unleashes human potential. We will have interruptions. We overshoot and undershoot sometimes, but your kids and grandkids will live better than you. Over time, we move ahead at a pretty damn rapid rate.

We have spoken on many occasions of the need to achieve high economic growth as an absolute priority for our country. The annual address for 2003 set for the first time the goal of doubling gross domestic product within a decade.

We don't measure whether an economy is developing. We just measure whether companies are selling more, whether inventories are up or down, not whether the health, safety and economic well-being of people are being advanced.

Our vision is not just of economic growth, but also of a growth which would improve the life of the common man.

Increased means and increased leisure are the two civilizers of man.

You tell me which society is going to be the winner in this 21st Century: One that worries about how we feel or the one that worries about making sure that the next generation has the capacity to eat everybody's lunch.

Until the last great war, a general expectation of material improvement was an idea peculiar to Western man. Now war and its aftermath have made economic and social progress a political imperative in every quarter of the globe.

Most people believe, mistakenly, that wealth in a human society has something to do with money, but that's not true. Money is simply a medium of exchange. Prosperity in a human society is the accumulation of solutions to human problems that we create for ourselves.

G.D.P. is not a measure of how much value is produced for consumers. Everybody should recognize that G.D.P. is not a welfare metric.

We know from hard research that educated populations have lower growth rates, are more peaceful, and add to the global economy.

People understand what is good for them in the long run. In the long run, what is good for people is that India's economy continues to grow at clipping pace, 8% and above, that itself brings host of benefits to the people. It brings better roads, it brings better schools, brings more money to the communities, it brings more jobs.