Issue type question:
"The surest indicator of a great nations represented not by the achievements of it's rulers, artists, or scientists, but by the general welfare of it's people."


Essay:
A great nation is the one which is backed by a strong economy. In fact, in this age of industrialization and technology it is very unlikely that a country and it's people flourish without having a proper infrastructure for healthcare, education, and industry. The prompt suggests that for a nation to be considered great a better indicator would be welfare of it's people rather than the accomplishments of the nation's rulers, scientists, etc.,. In my opinion, I strongly disagree with the suggestion and argue that accomplishments of a nation and it's people build a strong economy by bringing advancements in infrastructure for the following reasons.

To begin, achievements of a country's people bring in money for the government to build strong infrastructure for defense, education, healthcare, etc.,. When a country registers a big accomplishment in a domain, many local or international investors see it as an opportunity to make a business. This creates job opportunities for the locals, generates an income for the government through taxes and boosts the country's economy. For example, India has had a lot of traffic congestion in cities in the recent decade. One of the places where there is congestion unnecessarily are the highway tolls (in simple terms, checkpoints at the city entrance for visitors to pay visitor's fee). Researchers proposed the use of RFID technology to deduct fee for moving vehicles directly from their banks. The notion was a hit and received a lot of investments for implementation. Today, all highway tolls in the country have the smoothest traffic flow it has ever had. This is saving the government millions of dollars each year and reduced stress on commuters, significantly, caused by spending hours in traffic while they enter or exit a city using road. For the example, we can understand how simple accomplishments can turn into a huge success for the people and country aiding the growth of infrastructure and investments.

Furthermore, indicators like happiness or safety are biased and inaccurate measurements. Happiness of a group is immeasurable as it is not quantifiable and can be influenced by multiple factors like a family's income, medical illness or stress which are not causes that justify if the country is well performing and can be considered great. Safety on the other hand can be measured to an extent, however, it tends to be biased and flawed. For instance, safety is measured by counting the number of crimes commited in an area which at first glance seems like the perfect criteria, however, it is incorrect because many crimes go unreported due to reasons like victim not willing to file complaint, or corruption in the government departments, etc. Moreover, not all countries consider the same activities as crime. There are many countries where certain drugs are legal while others where it is serious crime to even have possession of those drugs. Thus, we can say that welfare of a country has way too many parameters to be measured among which many are inaccurate making it a bad system to act as an indicator to measure a nation's performance.

Of course, welfare of nation's population is the most important factor to decide on it's greatness, however, it is immeasurable. Welfare of people is mostly influenced by the facilities offered in the country, and hence, the same can be measured by considering achievements of rulers, atheletes or scientists as they indirectly aid in growing wealth for the government which can be used in building excellent infrastructure for people. Therefore, a country's greatness can be perfectly measured using parameters like achievements of it's people.