The Repercussions Of An Indian Historical Event: After The GDKP India – OpEd

The central point is the introduction of a concept, the calculation model comes later, as the secretary of MoSPI rightly says, who has created a historic innovation in economic theory for India

On February 10, 2025, an event occurred that is right to call historic for the economy. India became the first nation in the world that decided to use the knowledge produced as a measure of national wealth. The acronym GDKP (Gross Domestic Knowledge Product) indicates an authentic historical revolution that from the economy, with implications ranging from social structures, goes to all business, to even open new horizons of diplomatic activity for war and peace. The acronym GDKP (Gross Domestic KNOWLEGE Product) India marks the transition from a vision of the wealth of nations based on the production of material goods, to one of wealth based on the most precious wealth of humanity: knowledge. 

This step was carried out by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation of India (MoSPI) Secretary, Dr. Saurabh Garg who is leading the reform process of the Indian Statistical System, which includes coordinated development of the official statistical system at the Centre and the State level, but goes much further. 

Dr. Garg, secretary of MoSPI has taken this historic decision of introducing GDKP India, and to organize brain storming sessions with the most important Indian statistical technicians and all the departments of Indian economics. In a stimulating assembly of over 70 members, formalized the birth of this new way of calculating the wealth of nations. 

GDKP Will Replace GDP

To better grasp the importance of this innovation, it should be remembered that the GDP is violently accused – by the United Nations itself – of leading humanity to the sixth mass extinction, but until the birth of the GDKP no alternative way of calculating wealth had been implemented. 

Some criticisms: GDP does not actually measure the well-being of a nation: it does not take into account aspects such as the distribution of wealth, quality of life, health and education. It does not take into account depleted natural resources or the long-term sustainability of economic development. The GDP equates the production of a prison with that of a hospital, making a synthetic drug with that of a medicine, of a gun with that of a vaccine and destroys cultural, historical, even religious values in order to massify consumption. Finally,  it does not consider the environmental impact, which has led the United Nations to declare that “GDP will become the cause of the 6th mass extinction of the planet”. Allow me to add, the most ignorant produced by those who will suffer the consequences. It is worth quoting Brecht “the mother of stupid people is always pregnant”.

The Conceptual Change Of GDKP India Of Immense Scope

The passage from the pure and simple material vision of the wealth of a nation to an intellectual one is so FUNDAMENTAL that it has completely PRIORITY over the same method of calculation. Having first conceived this concept myself, its introduction is the actually the key personal success of Dr. Grag’s decision. 

Of course, the personal satisfaction of having conceptualized the GDKP replacing the GDP first is all the greater as I have always tried to make it for the first nation in India. India was for me the nation where I first wanted the GDKP to be implemented and so it is. Culture, immense. Traditions, most fascinating. The possible result; GDKP India the highest in the world. 

The Single Number For GDP And Single Number GDKP

The first real great genius of the Kutznets GDP, which is often not evaluated even by technicians, is that the wealth of the nation is represented by a single number !. It almost seems trivial, but it is not. Is the production of houses wealth? Yes. That of car? Yes. Of clothes? Yes. One can make an endless list of consumer goods that are wealth, but Kutznets’ gemiality is that GDP reduces them all to a single final number. Increases? We are richer: Is it decreasing? Is it stable? Let’s do something to fix it. 

This is the GDP’s powerful communicative power: the fact that it is a single number. 

The same is true for the GDKP. Is knowledge produced by creating schools? YES, Creating patents? YES. By producing vaccines? YES. Here too the list of individual knowledge that can be produced is endless, but even here the real strength of the GDKP is to bring the production of knowledge into a single number. The production of knowledge has increased, decreased. But here there is a new political component compared to GDP: knowledge can be produced by any nation. Therefore. The governments are directly responsible for the success or not.

If, as already mentioned, the truly historical fact is the introduction of this concept, the problem of the model to be used for its calculation is subsequent.  

Obviously, since GDKP India was introduced by Dr. Grag, is a real revolution in economic theory, the nation’s most talented statisticians explore the most diverse ways to achieve that result. He properly did so. 

The Implications Of The Model 

After reiterating that the main theoretical achievement on the part of the undersigned is to have the most populous nation in the world, as well as the fifth world economy, produce a totally new concept for the wealth of nations, it can be said that the method for its calculation is linked to the desired implications.

This is where the model counts. And the proposed model is linked to the 3Ms, which in my model characterize GDKP: M = Market; M = Mass; M= Mind

These are the characteristics of the model whose possible implications would lead India to reach the highest GDKP in the world, with enormous impacts on the GDP itself. 

Utopia And Reality Of GDKP India

A historical change of this conceptual magnitude evidently opens the door to considerations of such innovative scope that the perspectives must be studied specifically. But in short, in my opinion, they are essentially of two types.

The GDKP adopted leads to the realization of a new international order. New hierarchies. New relationships of dependence and superiority. New wealth. 

But the absolutely new fact with respect to fossil materials is that each nation is now able to draw its own profile of growth in national wealth by directly producing the raw material that is fundamental for development. The birth of the Internet, the growing world interconnectivity and the constant reduction in the costs of the tools of knowledge production (digital economy) bring the production of the fundamental raw material of development under the autonomous control of government authorities. Every nation, thanks to the internet, can produce knowledge, and if it does not produce it, it is personally responsible for its failure. 

The second absolute novelty, is actually a wish, which is of a diplomatic nature. Traditional military diplomacy has increasing limits precisely in the spread of the internet. Like it or not, thanks to the internet we have become a family, and this makes everyone’s experience more and more indivisible.  So it is worth commenting on the birth of the GDKP India also as the birth of a utopia: the production of knowledge will take a decisive role not only for the wealth of nations, as the example of India, but also for the birth of a new diplomacy for war and peace of the peoples The GDKP India can demonstrate this.  India is perhaps the country in the world that has the most chance to do so. At least I always thought so.