Seeking national happiness

One of the ironies of the last century and a half is that, while the great ideological battle between capitalism and communism ended two decades ago with the victory of the capitalists, the latter had by then completely accepted their opponents’ premise that, fundamentally, man was an economic animal. As a result, we all measure progress and development using various economic metrics, especially Gross Domestic Product (GDP). But, of recent, there has been a dramatic shift away from this orientation and towards recognition that, when all is said and done, man’s activity is basically intended to deliver greater happiness. And there is also a grudging acceptance that material goods alone do not automatically guarantee happiness.

While the latter viewpoint had long been articulated by religiously-minded individuals and institutions, it had been denigrated by “hard- nosed realists” and economists as being too “otherworldly”. Its introduction into the realm of national policy came from an unlikely source: the king of the remote Himalayan Buddhist kingdom of Bhutan, back in 1972. Given epistemological rigour by the Centre for Bhutan Studies, a Gross National Happiness (GNH) Index was devised, which rested on the promotion of sustainable development, preservation and promotion of cultural values, conservation of the natural environment, and the establishment of good governance. These four pillars supported eight more detailed contributors to happiness: physical, mental and spiritual health; time-balance; social and community vitality; cultural vitality; education; living standards; good governance; and ecological vitality.

Initially, the economic powerhouses in the West who had set the pace for what was considered “development” pooh poohed the notion that “happiness” of nations could be the goal of governments. However, economists from the Indian subcontinent, ensconced in Western institutions but imbued with the notion that “wellbeing” went beyond the traditional economic metrics, began to introduce Bhutan’s orientation into mainstream economic thinking.

Bhutan’s idea was taken up by the UNDP’s program and refined by economists like Mahbub ul Haq of Pakistan, Britain’s Lord Meghnad Desai, and the Indian Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen as the “Human Development Index”, which seeks to incorporate life expectancy, education and standards of living as indicators of a country’s development. From this platform, the idea of a Gross National Happiness (GNH) has now taken centre stage in some of the countries that were most sceptical in the beginning.

In 2009, a panel of economists commissioned by French President Nicholas Sarkozy proposed the replacement of “Gross Domestic Product” with a “Net National Product” which would take into account the contentment of the people, the quality of public services, and free services available within communities. Last November, Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron also announced plans for a ‘happiness index’ and said the Office for National Statistics would invite people to grade their own contentment from April this year. He explained: “We’ll continue to measure GDP as we’ve always done, but it is high time we admitted that, taken on its own, GDP is an incomplete way of measuring a country’s progress.”

This January, German politicians also began investigating ways to gauge the country’s quality of life and prosperity as a way to complement GDP figures in Europe’s top economy. A committee headed by Parliamentary Speaker Norbert Lammert will issue its recommendations in two-and-a-half years’ time. The so-called “Progress Index” will measure Germany’s economic wealth as well as advancements in education, environment and quality of life.

The latest country to jump on the “happiness” bandwagon is China – the fastest growing economy in the world – which in a few decades is projected to overtake the US as the largest economy. As part of the drive to find greater happiness, local Chinese officials are typically being set ten targets to meet – five being economic or GDP-related, and five being assessed on more nebulous, happiness- related criteria linked to social wellbeing.

Our government’s LCDS incorporates some premises of the GNH position. Maybe it’s time that we investigate the concept further.