GDP and Business Social Responsibility

Traditionally, GDP/PCY is used by UN to rank countries to indicate their level of economic growth/ development. This way of ranking countries suffers from a number of limitations which arise from inherent shortcomings in GDP/PCY. GDP/PCY does not capture inequalities of income, leisure, regrettable necessities, services rendered by house wives and other institutions out of love and affection, availability of clean and healthy environment etc,. To get a better measure of well-being Human Development Index, Measure of Economic Welfare, Index of Well-being, Gross National Happiness, Wealth Index, National Prosperity Index, Genuine Progress Indicator, Physical Quality of Life Index and Index of Sustainable Welfare are suggested. The problem with the alternatives to GDP/PCY is that all of them, except HDI, are not quantifiable to be expressed in one figure. For a country to achieve a certain level of well-being, businesses have to reorient themselves from pure business activities to Socially Responsible Business activities. How to make business socially responsible is a problem by itself. Should we leave it to businesses or government should play a Proactive role in this remains an issue.