Missing: the ministry of utmost happiness

No matter how some of us see in these United Nations reports conspiracies to put down India, the listed factors contributing to happiness could not be truer.
Missing: the ministry of utmost happiness

Can an Indian be happy? Are you kidding? To be an Indian and to be happy are contradictory terms. You might be proud. You might be a patriot. You might be even good: you might not spit out of the car window. But happy? Just take a look at the news headlines. Or watch the men and women frothing at the mouth on a TV show. No, we can be even pro-demonetisation, but we can’t be happy.

A recent UN report ranks India at 126th position out of 137 countries, behind Pakistan (108), Sri Lanka (112), Myanmar (117) and Bangladesh (118). But even here, we are not the best. The unhappiest nation is Afghanistan. This is what happens when the Russians, British, Americans and the Taliban put aside their differences and pull in one direction.

The external affairs minister S Jaishankar is a notable exception to our endemic unhappiness. He is that rarest of specimens. A cabinet minister and a contrarian: a happy Indian. If someone, usually Mr Rahul Gandhi, said China put a foot inside Tawang, Mr Jaishankar would calmly break the news that the incursive soldier was only wearing an extra-long boot.

Certainly, the minister dismissed the World Happiness Index (2023) out of hand as “mind games”. He said the happiest people on earth were to be found in Bengaluru, “particularly on a Friday night”. He did not mention alcohol as the possible source of the altered state. His measured response to the UN report was appreciated by patriots with tears in their eyes. Momentarily they could even be construed as unhappy.

Mr Jaishankar said the source of his happiness index was a friend from Singapore (happiness rank 25). The friend from Singapore also told him that “Europeans did not look that happy”. The friend apparently traveled a lot and had developed a technique of gazing at people’s faces and metering happiness.

The UN report, sourcing techniques more reliable than face watching, says the first four happiness ranks have been secured by Finland, Denmark, Iceland and Sweden. It was never made clear if the minister’s Singaporean friend was watching college-going boys and girls blowing up their parent’s money in a pub, the usual place where people are at their joyous best, when this revelation dawned on him. Or maybe, he was sipping a single malt himself? Alcohol generally is a contributor to happiness, no?

Mr Jaishankar is lucky that he never met Dr B R Ambedkar, (not a very happy man, considering his relationship with Mahatma Gandhi, Nehru, and generally with anyone who was in a position to grant him the happiness due him and Dalits) who did not constitutionally guarantee the Indian citizen happiness. He stopped with the right to equality before the law and the right to equality of opportunity. The right to feel zonked—an adequate substitute for happiness—by periodically watching Karan Johar movies we have granted ourselves.

Even the American Constitution that Dr Ambedkar consulted guarantees, not happiness to its citizens, but its pursuit. An adventure toward happiness. The trouble is, there has to be a safety net before we start out. It is quite like the West’s inclination toward adventure tourism: the day would be tough and hot, but in the evening they must retire to their five-star retreat. India lacks the safety net that makes adventures in happiness fun. That’s why we are so resistant to ideas and risks.

Why does India consistently figure low on the happiness index? The UN happiness report is based on six determinants: social support, income, health, freedom, generosity and absence of corruption.

No matter how some of us see in these UN reports conspiracies to put down India, the listed factors contributing to happiness could not be truer. The external affairs minister’s way of rebutting the report has been anecdotal. So let me offer one, too.

A few years ago, I spent a few days in Copenhagen. The taxi I travelled in happened to be a Mercedes, driven by a bearded Pakistani, who had migrated to the city 22 years ago. He had a wife, a son and a daughter. His current efforts were directed at bringing his 12-year-old nephew over as the boy’s father had died, and the mother was unable to take care of him financially. He was pretty sure he would be able to do it soon. Are you happy, I asked. He looked at me in the rearview mirror and stopped the car by a bay.

Then, he turned around and said: “I love this country. I don’t have to worry about my future. If I don’t have a house tomorrow, they will give me a community house. If I am sick, I just turn up at any hospital, and the treatment is free. My children study anything they want—medicine, engineering, anything, and it is free. If I lose my job, the government takes care of me. What’s not to love?”

The absence of material anxiety, the assured feeling that the system is fair and whose only real purpose of existence is to take care of the citizen, and that you can focus on your job (that you drive your taxi well) are precisely the reasons why anyone anywhere would be happy.

There is no such assurance in India. It is fundamentally the fear of the future that annually drives 2.5 million Indians to migrate to happier countries. This potentially includes Mr Jaishankar’s son, who is in the US as a think tank employee.

According to a Pew Research Centre report (by Phillip Connor), “India is the top source of international migrants, with one-in-twenty migrants worldwide born in India.”

Well, the real test of happiness is to bring them all back to India to spend the rest of their lives here, a single malt within reach.

C P Surendran

Poet, novelist, and screenplay writer. His latest novel is One Love and the Many Lives of Osip B

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