Gross National Happiness (GNH): The aggregate level of happiness in a country. In Bhutan, a small kingdom neighbouring India, GNH is inscribed in the constitution. For the Bhutanese people, GNH is a constitutional right, a promise that their country and government is focused on maximising the happiness of its citizens. The idea of GNH, first vocalised by HRH Jigme Wangchuk in 1979, has now become popular around the world. Books like Madeline Drexler’s A Splendid Isolation have helped popularise the idea of GNH, and Bhutan’s commitment to it, to the rest of the world.

What makes a country, and its people, happy? Writing for the National Geographic, Dan Buettner recently identified three strands of happiness to make life joyful. The first is ‘experienced happiness’, which is reflected in the frequency with which one experiences positive emotions like smiling or laughing in one’s daily life. Good social relationships and sound physical health boost experienced happiness, such as happens among the people of Costa Rica, a tiny Central American country that ranks among the highest in the world on this form of happiness.

Vishal Gupta
Associate Professor at The University of Alabama. An avid-reader, he is also an accomplished researcher and teacher.

There is also ‘eudaimonic happiness’, which captures the extent to which people think their daily life is full of meaningful activities. It is measured by whether one is learning or doing interesting things in daily life. Pursuing one’s passion at work and during leisure boosts this form of happiness, such as for the people of Denmark, the Scandinavian nation that gets high points for people finding purpose and meaning in daily activities.

Then, there is ‘evaluative happiness’, which is about life satisfaction. When people trust each other and feel safe, it makes them more satisfied with their life. A prime example for this form of happiness is Singapore, the Asian country that was a non-descript fishing village only about half a century back, but today ranks among the happiest, and most prosperous, countries in the world. Critics would argue that Bhutan, Costa Rica, Denmark, and Singapore are all small homogenous nations, so that what works there may not be very relevant for large diverse countries like US and India. I am inclined to view that as a lazy way of thinking! It is easy to dismiss other countries because they look and feel different from us, but what we can learn from ‘happy’ countries is that investing time and effort in strengthening social relationships, bettering physical health, doing things you love, and living in safe communities where people trust each other is key to happiness.

In India and the US (and many other countries ) , too much emphasis is on acquiring material things (eg. the kind of car you drive, the size of the house you live in), which is certainly not the path to happiness . Much of the populace in India and the US is too harried to enjoy the simple pleasures of life, too preoccupied with making money to have time to be happy. I am neither criticising wealth nor romanticising the lack-of-it (as some writers on happiness tend to do), but simply stating that wealth and happiness are not as correlated as Indians, Americans, Chinese (and many others) may think.

While it may be wishful thinking to expect the political leadership in India or US to prioritise national happiness (as Bhutan did), every one of us can change our lifestyle to emphasise the pursuit of happiness over chasing material things. As I was finishing up this column, Fareed Zakaria GPS was playing on CNN in the background. I heard a commentator say that the Uzbek-American behind the recent terror in the New York ‘had become unhappy before he became radicalized’. The idea that lack of happiness can be fertile breeding ground for negative destructive thoughts, including terrorism, is quite intriguing! Today, when terrorism is everywhere from Kashmir to Kansas, it is perhaps worth thinking about the importance of happiness as a desirable goal for all individuals, communities, and societies.