20th March is celebrated worldwide as Universal Happiness Day, but is this truly, a happy day for India? I guess not, the World Happiness Report of 2021, placed India at the 139th position out of the total 149 countries surveyed.
It is indeed a
worrisome ranking and what further exacerbates the wound, is the fact that
Pakistan has been placed at the 105th position.
Is it really possible
that a country like India who has been making major developmental strides all
along is the 11th worse country in terms of happiness? Are we Indians
really that miserable?
Another crucial
question that comes to our mind is, how is the Happiness Index measured? What
are the parameters taken into consideration?
The Happiness Index
is gauged by the United Nations body conducting a survey using a sample space
of 1000-3000 people of a country. A 6-fold criteria is undertaken to
determine the score of the country.
1. GDP
per capita
2. 2. Health
Life Expectancy
3. 3. Social
Support
4. 4. Freedom
of Choice
5. 5. Generosity
6. 6. Perception
of Corruption
The first two are
well defined and backed by data, but what about the other four criteria?
Now, let’s understand how factors like freedom of choice and generosity are determined. The survey is conducted by agencies who put across questions and the surveyed are supposed to answer using a scale of 0-10.
For example: “Have you donated to a charity
in the last month?” Is a way to judge the generosity and big-heartedness of the
people in a country.
Another example: “Are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the freedom
to choose what you want to do with your life?” Is a way to gauge freedom of
choice be it choosing a career, residence or a life-partner.
But how reliable are
the responses? Can’t they be biased responses or responses influenced by
prejudices? Well, there’s no way to find that out, thus, these are labelled as
opiniated or perception-based replies that are not backed by any solid data.
A democratic country
like India, which is one of the only country’s in the world to have shown a positive surge
in the GDP numbers during the third quarter of 2020, is falling behind a
country like Pakistan which along with the imminence of terrorism has been unstable in many aspects since the time
of its inception. This is a theory that no well-informed Indian would be ready
to accept.
I cast no doubts on
the methodologies undertaken to run polls but I am also of the opinion that
many who formed part of the survey have resorted to far-fetched assumptions and
comparisons. They may have not solely acted on their conscious but compared
their contribution to contributions by super-power countries which led to them
giving a lower ranking on the 0-10 scale.
One cannot also hide
from the fact that India’s happiness ranking has been worsening over the period
of years and it does need to pull up its socks because GDP is not the only
defining factor for a nation, happiness and prosperity of its citizen should be
of utmost priority too. The ranking can be improved by changing several age-old
societal prevalence’s and it’s possible only when governance is in compliance
with the needs and aspirations of the people.
Written By - Tushna
Choksey
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