Skip to main content

Happiness and India



India has got a miserable 140th place out of 156 nations surveyed by the World Happiness Report for happiness levels. Finland continues to hold number one position, followed by Denmark, Norway and Iceland.
The survey concludes that generosity and an environment which sustains mutual support keep people happy. The USA has the world’s highest GDP, the richest nation, but its rank in the happiness index is 19. Wealth doesn’t necessarily keep you happy. Happiness is a feeling created by people’s willingness to be of help to one another.
The government plays a vital role too. People alone cannot determine the prevalent mood in the country. The Happiness Report suggests that countries which improve civic engagement by making their government more representative will be happier.
India now has a government that has been promising us better days for about six years now. But the Report shows that we have dropped way behind Pakistan, China, Bhutan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and even Bangladesh in happiness levels. When Mr Modi became the Prime Minister, India’s place in this index was far better: 117 in 2015. India kept sliding down ever since. Another four plus years to go under this leadership!
India should sit back and introspect. Is the present sort of nationalism doing any good to the country? Are we not on an entirely wrong track? What are we going to achieve by making India a Hindu nation? Isn’t it our duty as a nation to ensure better infrastructure and better standards of life to the citizens?
It’s a pity that India has leaders whose vision seems to stop at the ends of their noses. May better thoughts visit them sooner than later!


Comments

  1. SylendraJanuary 27, 2020 at 2:33 PM

    Poor us...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJanuary 27, 2020 at 2:39 PM

      Indeed. But we are still a democracy. We can throw these scums out.

      Delete
  2. Narender NethaJanuary 28, 2020 at 2:03 AM

    What is the yardstick for this comparison?
    Here is a case where India ranks 9th on happiness index among 28 nations.
    It all depends on the yardstick.

    To be happy comes from within and Indians know that very well. It is those with yardsticks that don't know. Maybe for happiness from outside materialism this ranking is valid. For the happiness from within, it is upto one to find out and be happy. India is the land that told the world how to be happy from within from ancient times. None can beat that.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJanuary 28, 2020 at 6:29 AM

      Hypocrisy was raised to a virtue in India.

      Delete
    2. Tomichan MatheikalJanuary 28, 2020 at 7:25 AM

      The parameters are given in the report. The link is in the post too.

      Delete
  3. samir sardanaJanuary 30, 2020 at 6:14 PM

    Happiness in the rape nation of the world !

    Rape is part of Religion and Culture !

    Sample the Dindoo Hindooo Religion

    https://dindooohindoo.page.tl/Vagina-Locks%2CRapes-%26-Dogs-and-Apes.htm

    If she should not grant him his desire, he should bribe her. If she still does not grant him his desire, he should hit her with a stick or with his hand, and overcome her, saying: ‘With power, with glory I take away your glory!’ Thus she becomes inglorious - id.est., raped ! Brihadâranyaka Upanishad VI:4:6. 7.

    The Indians have a way to stop rape !

    https://dindooohindoo.page.tl/Vagina-Locks%2CRapes-%26-Dogs-and-Apes.htm

    It is called Vagina Locks

    They place steel and alumunium locks on the vagina

    http://www.outlookindia.com/news/article/man-arrested-for-keeping-wifes-private-parts-locked/769191
    http://uptownmagazine.com/2012/08/man-puts-an-actual-lock-and-key-on-his-wifes-vagina/

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Yesterday

With students of Carmel Margaret, are you grieving / Over Goldengrove unleaving…? It was one of my first days in the eleventh class of Carmel Public School in Kerala, the last school of my teaching career. One girl, whose name was not Margaret, was in the class looking extremely melancholy. I had noticed her for a few days. I didn’t know how to put the matter over to her. I had already told the students that a smiling face was a rule in the English class. Since Margaret didn’t comply, I chose to drag Hopkins in. I replaced the name of Margaret with the girl’s actual name, however, when I quoted the lines. Margaret is a little girl in the Hopkins poem. Looking at autumn’s falling leaves, Margaret is saddened by the fact of life’s inevitable degeneration. The leaves have to turn yellow and eventually fall. And decay. The poet tells her that she has no choice but accept certain inevitabilities of life. Sorrow is our legacy, Margaret , I said to Margaret’s alter ego in my class. Let
34 comments
Read more

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
37 comments
Read more

X the variable

X is the most versatile and hence a very precious entity in mathematics. Whenever there is an unknown quantity whose value has to be discovered, the mathematician begins with: Let the unknown quantity be x . This A2Z series presented a few personalities who played certain prominent roles in my life. They are not the only ones who touched my life, however. There are so many others, especially relatives, who left indelible marks on my psyche in many ways. I chose not to bring relatives into this series. Dealing with relatives is one of the most difficult jobs for me. I have failed in that task time and again. Miserably sometimes. When I think of relatives, O V Vijayan’s parable leaps to my mind. Father and little son are on a walk. “Be careful lest you fall,” father warns the boy. “What will happen if I fall?” The boy asks. The father’s answer is: “Relatives will laugh.” One of the harsh truths I have noticed as a teacher is that it is nearly impossible to teach your relatives – nephews
16 comments
Read more

Zorba’s Wisdom

Zorba is the protagonist of Nikos Kazantzakis’s novel Zorba the Greek . I fell in love with Zorba the very first time I read the novel. That must have been in my late 20s. I read the novel again after many years. And again a few years ago. I loved listening to Zorba play his santuri . I danced with him on the Cretan beaches. I loved the devil inside Zorba. I called that devil Tomichan. Zorba tells us the story of a monk who lived on Mount Athos. Father Lavrentio. This monk believed that a devil named Hodja resided in him making him do all wrong things. Hodja wants to eat meet on Good Friday, Hodja wants to sleep with a woman, Hodja wants to kill the Abbot… The monk put the blame for all his evil thoughts and deeds on Hodja. “I’ve a kind of devil inside me, too, boss, and I call him Zorba!” Zorba says. I met my devil in Zorba. And I learnt to call it Tomichan. I was as passionate as Zorba was. I enjoyed life exuberantly. As much as I was allowed to, at least. The plain truth is
19 comments
Read more

Everything is Politics

Politics begins to contaminate everything like an epidemic when ideology dies. Death of ideology is the most glaring fault line on the rock of present Indian democracy. Before the present regime took charge of the country, political parties were driven by certain underlying ideologies though corruption was on the rise from Indira Gandhi’s time onwards. Mahatma Gandhi’s ideology was rooted in nonviolence. Nothing could shake the Mahatma’s faith in that ideal. Nehru was a staunch secularist who longed to make India a nation of rational people who will reap the abundant benefits proffered by science and technology. Even the violent left parties had the ideal of socialism to guide them. The most heartless political theory of globalisation was driven by the ideology of wealth-creation for all. When there is no ideology whatever, politics of the foulest kind begins to corrode the very soul of the nation. And that is precisely what is happening to present India. Everything is politics
8 comments
Read more