India, Sept. 22 -- What we parade as growth is, in truth, liquidation. Like a company selling its last assets to dress up quarterly profits, we are liquidating the only deep asset we possess: the planet. Forests, aquifers, soil, and biodiversity: all depleted, none accounted for. Balance sheets never record what is lost; they only record the illusion of gain

Each time GDP numbers are announced, the country is asked to cheer. News anchors beam, markets rise, and the political class proclaims that the nation is advancing. Growth has been turned into a secular god: the symbol of collective hope, the proof that tomorrow will be better than today.

Yet beyond the statistics lies a harsher truth. The air has grown poisonous, rivers undrinkable...