March,17,2016:
Why we Indians are so unhappy despite Peace, Democracy and Equal Rights guaranteed by our Constitution.
Indians are less happy than their counterparts in Pakistan and Bangladesh, according to a report published by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), which is a global initiative for the United Nations.
India comes in at the 118th spot out of 158 countries in the 2015 World Happiness Report. The report takes into account GDP per capita, life expectancy, social support and freedom to make life choices as indicators of happiness. India’s rank dropped six notches from the 2013 report, when it was on the 111th spot.
Pakistan is ranked 81 and Bangladesh, 109. Places like Ukraine (111), Palestine (108) and Iraq (112) too come up higher than India on the index.
Switzerland has been named the happiest country in the world. The other countries in the top five are Iceland, Denmark, Norway and Canada.
All things considered, it doesn't look too good for India. Already rated an unhappy place in 2014 with a ranking of 111, the country dropped six places to 117 out of 158 countries ranked in the 2015 list,
“Increasingly, happiness is considered a proper measure of social progress and goal of public policy,” the report said, adding the happiness index describes how measurements of well-being can be used effectively to assess the progress of nations.
It takes into account factors like GDP per capita, social support of having someone to count on in times of trouble, freedom to make life choices, healthy life expectancy, generosity and perceptions of corruption.
The US is ranked 15, followed by UK (21), Singapore (24), Saudi Arabia (35), Japan (46) and China (84).
Afghanistan and war-torn Syria joined eight sub-Saharan countries in Africa — Togo, Burundi, Benin, Rwanda, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Guinea and Chad — as the 10 least happy of 158 countries.
Inequality, a key parameter
Why India, which is generally considered a country with great promise and a bright future is ranked so poorly, while countries with aging population and declining economic growth are ranked higher, is not hard to fathom.
The report, released ahead of the UN World Happiness Day on March 20, for the first time gives a special role to the measurement and consequences of inequality in the distribution of well-being among countries and regions.
“People are happier living in societies where there is less inequality of happiness. They also find that happiness inequality has increased significantly (comparing 2012-2015 to 2005-2011) in most countries, in almost all global regions, and for the population of the world as a whole,” the report said.
The index considers current conditions and also takes into account not just economic measures, but also positive social relations, characterized by values such as trust, benevolence and shared social identities that contribute positively to economic outcomes as well as delivering happiness directly.
For just four per cent of its GDP, India could provide “a basic and modest set of social security guarantees for all citizens with universal pension, basic health care, child benefits and employment schemes”, the UN Report said.
In addition to national employment strategies, the report calls for a new social contract between governments, society, and the private sector to ensure that all members of society have their needs taken into account in policy formulation, a global deal among governments to guarantee workers’ rights and benefits around the world and a decent work agenda, that will help promote freedom of association, equity, security, and human dignity in work life. The report repeatedly singles out India’s Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme for praise.
The Human Development Index (HDI) is a composite index meant to compare the well-being of people across countries and was first introduced by the UNDP in 1990. It is calculated as the geometric mean of three indicators: life expectancy, education and national income. Of the three sub-components, India had a substantially higher income per capita than countries that did better than it on the index, while the average years of schooling that the average Indian adult has received (5.4 years) was particularly low among middle income countries.
Read Full Report Here-
The World Happiness Report,2016
