Telenor hoovers out far too much of the value generated (they were privatised after the JV began) but we still see the scale to which people's willingness to exchange things of value for the right to communicate at a distance is capable of causing massive "economic growth".
That's an increase in economic activity, and in that particular context that is an exchange of something of value for something else of value ... and that something else of value that was not readily available in the village before.
That's economic growth.
Of course, economic growth is not an intrinsic good in and of itself ... though it is widely portrayed as such as a result of the current economic system's growth addiction ... and whether its a contribution to economic development or not is another question. However, it is certainly economic growth. Utsukushikereba sore de ii
Communication is a new form of fungible "money's worth"/currency denominated in time units: I remember a former Director of Orange (UK mobile telco) telling me that their stored value cards became commonly used as currency in some countries because they held their value in a way that the official currency did not: to the extent that the Central Bank cracked down...
What is not only dubious but simply flat out wrong is the presumption that economic growth is an intrinsically good thing.
As in the issue of the "need" of 2% or 4% growth to oil the wheels of accumulation of productive equipment and "intellectual property". There's no intrinsic need for that. Rentals and interest are a claim on national income, with no necessity at all for them to come out of increases in national income.
Of course, in the SNA we draw a distinction between incomes drawn from ownership rights created over pre-existing natural resources, which is recorded in the national income accounts as rents, and incomes drawn from ownership rights created over produced resources for production ... plant, equipment, "intellectual property" ... which is recorded in the national income accounts as interest incomes.
However, in either case, the payments settling rental and interest obligations come out of the income flow without somehow requiring that income to have been newly created that year.
What economic growth does is simplify the payment of newly created rental and interest obligations, by allowing them to be paid without shoving to one side levels of incomes previously received by others.
Since that shoving to one side is normally accomplished by inflation, and inflation reduces the economic power of holders of contracts for the receipt of incomes of given dollar amounts, the financial sector opposes recourse to that ... and in the crudest sketch, uses their influence over central banks to threaten everyone else with recession if there is too much loss of economic power by creditors. Utsukushikereba sore de ii
