Goa’s Happiness Index? Does it even exist, the index that is? Political parties have assured they will work on improving it, especially during the recent Gujarat and Goa elections, but that just remains one of the many hollow promises politicians are used to making. We being a developing country have not reached that stage where government really needs to bother about the happiness of its citizens to win elections. That is precisely the reason why we have not even put in place a proper system that is capable of measuring happiness. Naturally if India is not bothered, why should Goan politicians scratch their heads of addressing issues relating to happiness, which at a later stage might come to haunt them on its performance?
Sporadically Goans have spoken about Happiness Index, but most of that is in social context. While the society and the people surrounding us can have a direct impact on our happiness, politicians and governments cannot shy away from this responsibility of making the environment conducive for happiness. Few years ago India’s research firm CRISIL did attempt to measure India’s happiness state-wise and placed Punjab Kerala and Gujarat at the top. Goa was not included in the research, probably due to its small size, but they made a point to mention that Goans were happier than citizens of other states, strictly because they chose to shun the rat race and be a content society, at least in the past. No fun in being a one eyed king in the land of the blind.
Now that it is clear, Indian Governments central or local, are not going to tell you about the country’s performance on the Happiness Index, we have to depend on data from international organisations and the results are dreadful to say the least. The United Nations recently celebrated the International Day of Happiness and as part of the celebrations released the World Happiness Report for 2018. India’s ranking was a pathetic 133 out of the total 156 nations, a 11 point drop from its 2017 ranking. That’s not all Pakistan had climbed up by 5 points from its last year ranking and stood at an impressive 75th position despite all the terrorism. That should give you a fair idea the tremendous work that lies ahead for governments of India on the happiness front.
That is not all, just to get the feel of our real standings on the happiness index; here is some more data. Everybody knows the situation of Syria, a country ravaged by civil war for the past seven years that has taken the toll on at least 400,000 civilians, wrecked cities and forced its people to flee the country. Their ranking is an understandable 150th, but even they managed to climb 2 points from its 2017 position. For India in peacetime to be ahead of Syria by only 17 points is nothing less than an unimaginable situation.
The present government’s biggest drawback is that it avoids acknowledging the problematic areas and focuses only on the feel good achievements. We cannot treat such ratings as useless and choose to ignore them when they work against you and make massive noise when some of the indexes work for you. The pattern these days in our country is to adore any index that upgrades our ranking and abhor those that downgrade our position.
Safe to say this index has shunned us in the losers group as far as happiness is concerned. A small increase here and there is really not going to make any material difference, unless we change our situation on the ground significantly. If we don’t change the way we live and demand service from politicians, then be prepared to be confined as losers, maybe even end up as a dystopian country.
Keeping an open mind and checking out countries that mostly end up as winners almost always on the Happiness Index might help. The Scandinavian countries despite their harsh weather manage to always come on tops year after year. These countries are not as large and diversified as India and therefore maybe easy to manage, but then nobody is suggesting India should aim for the top position, but at least get us to a two digit ranking.
There is another big correlation to these top winning countries, they also happen to be the least corrupt according to Transparency International. Goans who accept corruption as just a way of life of a politician should really ponder on this piece of data. These rating agencies are methodical and really need not be present physically to find out how corruption in India ruins all the good work we do. Although the report relies on six key variables to support well being: income, healthy life expectancy, social support, freedom, trust and generosity, but addressing corruption is the biggest piece of the jigsaw puzzle, you need to address that first, everything else can come only later.
Citizens of Goa and India have been taken for a ride as far as addressing corruption is concerned. Blatant corruption is almost been condoned by government that promised to fight it once elected. The citizens have gone back to their daily struggle, refusing to believe that corruption really affects their happiness. Difficult to believe, but once you apply your mind towards it, you will realise that by electing a corrupt politician the constituency suffers and with that its people.
Meantime there is one man fighting alone for our happiness. That man is Anna Hazare, he has gone on another hunger strike in Delhi, to draw attention to the government that nothing worthwhile has been done on the corruption front. The media seems to have no time to cover the event and the crowds are sparse this time because politicians are kept away from this strike. If Anna does not get the support in his fight for corruption, we really don’t stand a chance to improve our rankings on the Happiness Index.
(The author is a business consultant).
