Is TATA really bigger than Pakistan's GDP?

And now we hear from more than one business publication, the incredible news that TATA group turnover is more than Pakistan's GDP. As an Indian, I go, Wow! But a sobering thought was...how on earth can a business group's turnover ever be compared to a country with 23.14 Crore population & a 365 Billion $ GDP? Tim Worstall on June 28th ,2011 for Forbes magazine wrote an opinion piece titled " GDP For a Country is Not the Same Thing as Turnover for a Business". He commented that its a total fallacy that "Exxon's revenue being the same as Thailand's GDP would make Exxon the same size as Thailand". It's as absurd as taking NSE daily average turnover for 2021-22 viz. Rs 68.35 Lac Cr to claim that it annually contributes Rs 20205 Lac Cr to India's GDP. India's GDP for 2024 is projected to be Rs 41120 Lac Crores. So by similar logic could we state that the NSE turnover actually to half of India's GDP?

If GDP is the value of goods and services produced in a country, it includes net exports, government spending goods & services, investment done by businesses and consumption done by households. By no means could this be equated with the turnover of a group of companies or its' net profit plus its salary & wage bill. In another Forbes article, Worstall states that GDP goes up if you sit in traffic for an hour with the engine ticking over. It doesn’t if you stay at home, caring for a sick child. GDP has soared in China over the past 20 years. But now, its people wear masks sometimes in the street to filter the smog. The real point about GDP is that, as best we can, it's a measure of the productive capacity of society. And thus also, given that all production is consumed, a measure of what can be consumed by people. Of course, it doesn't talk about the distribution of that consumption possibility, but it does tell us the potential we've got available to us. Coming back to the story of TATA Group turnover exceeding the GDP of Pakistan, it is similarly farfetched, because the value added by a company or a group of companies is indeed the turnover of that group whereas in a country, even a backward, sectarian country like Pakistan, adds human values in a hundred ways which cannot be measured, counted, added, taken into account, incorporated, enumerated or taken into account. Having said this, however, the GDP per capita or the GDP divided by the number of people in that country, definitely indicates the relative economic standing of that country's people vis-a-vis others viz. Pakistan's GDP per capita $ 1828 indicates an inferior position compared to $ 89105 for USA. The inference that the currency of USA would be many times stronger than that of Pakistan would also be correct. To conclude, if based on relative GDP per capita, you had guessed that USA would have won most medals in the Olympics and Pakistan next to nothing, your surmise would have been magically correct too. But, a country, a corporation, people are different entities, it's better these are not evaluated in a similar manner, whether you are measuring GDP or well being of individuals !!