Economic growth is celebrated as an obvious solution to the problem of individuals and nations. Those in power always make reference to it as a last resort in the explanation of most of their sweeping reforms. It seems to many that on the altar of economic growth everything is worth sacrificing; even the lives of some ‘expendable’ citizens. It always appears economically wise, at a not so close rational scrutiny of the issue, to be able to produce more using the same resources or even less. Like the biblical Pharaoh, to allocate more productive expectations, even without providing the bricks. Really, if the national and individual pride of the citizens must be insisted on; if social security should have a strong footing, the economic must grow.

On this conclusive premise and subtle political programming, the world has been transformed to a trade driven tournament, solely fuelled up with a rash infinite rush to accumulate currency. Everything is presently evaluated on the scales of productivity. In this criss-cross of extensive growth devoid of intensive growth, unruly exportation of necessity, internal colonisation of the citizenry, economic growth without economic development, corrosion of the global climate, pruning up of business and investing image at the expense of the poorest; we need to re-ask and rethink the central question of relevance.

What is the point anyway? If man stands as the reason and apex of economic growth, why put him on the line for its attainment? If only the rising lines of economic productivity is considered, while leaving out the majority of world’s population in search for meaning, function and choice to waste away; then economic growth is a policy whose costs outweigh her benefits. It will only amounts to covering up the deep sores of the poor and abandoned; in fact, of all, with unsterilized fine bandages. The first and lasting step to the solution of the urgent problems of poverty, inequality and exclusion is the abrupt censure of this distracting concept of gross competitiveness and productivity devoid of humanity in the name of economic growth and a re-focus of attention on the problem. Policies should be re-centred on the developmental empowerment of man.