Today’s Indians unhappier

World Happiness Report

Pakistanis, Bangladeshis a lot happier than them

In the World Happiness Report of 2015 of the UN on 158 countries, India has slipped from 111th in 2013 to 117th place. This, obviously, means that people in India have become unhappier during the last two years. The report covers the period from 2012 to 2014 and takes into account not just individual satisfaction and wealth but also broad contentment that includes social support, high healthy life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, perceptions of corruption, pro-sociality – the kind of conduct that may include honesty, benevolence, cooperation and trustworthiness.

With Switzerland expectedly topping the list, Nordic countries make up the top five. South Asia generally is in the bottom half and what is perhaps a reason for concern is that India has been ranked below Pakistan and Bangladesh – two countries that of late have been facing Islamic terror and yet their happiness quotient is higher. Bhutan, which practices the concept of Gross National Happiness and inspired the study through the UN General Assembly, has been ranked 79th – higher than India, yet a not-too-high a rank, given the headstart it had in reckoning “happiness” (as against “product”) as a metric for growth and development. According to the Summary of the 2015 report, the world has come a long way since the first report was launched in 2012.

It asserts: “Increasingly happiness is considered a proper measure of social progress and goal of public policy. A rapidly increasing number of national and local governments are using happiness data and research in their search for policies that could enable people to live better lives”. We in India, however, are not aware of any move to collect “Happiness” data at city, State or country levels to enable the administration to frame policies to mitigate the general feelings of unhappiness and misery. “Wellbeing” is being measured in the UK and OECD countries and perhaps measurement of “wellbeing”, especially “subjective wellbeing”, will be true reflection of people’s quality of life – as against the “gross domestic product”.

The report has been produced on the basis of some data that are already available with a few international organisations and others were made available by Gallop World Poll (GWP) against eight constructs, viz., GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, Freedom to make life choices, generosity, perceptions of corruption etc. In India, surely, nothing would be done on the basis of this report just as no action was, apparently, taken on the 2012 and 2013 reports. Placing the country at 117th position, therefore, seems very charitable. “Happiness” and “Wellbeing” of Indian masses do not yet figure in the lexicon of Indian administration.

By Proloy Bagchi