India, Dec. 6 -- Global indices have never carried as much influence as they do today. Rankings on development, hunger, democracy, the environment, happiness, and peace shape how nations are perceived, how policies are debated, and how investments flow. In moments of uncertainty, the world turns instinctively to these numerical summaries to make sense of global progress. Yet this dependence has grown precisely when the world itself has become more fragmented, more unequal, and more difficult to measure with conventional tools.

The backdrop to this reliance is a world in crisis. Humanitarian disasters from Gaza and Sudan to the Sahel and Myanmar have pushed global displacement to its highest levels since the Second World War. Conflicts in...