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

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
47 comments
Read more

Indian Knowledge Systems

Shashi Tharoor wrote a massive book back in 2018 to explore the paradoxes that constitute the man called Narendra Modi. Paradoxes dominate present Indian politics. One of them is what’s called the Indian Knowledge Systems (IKS). What constitute the paradox here are two parallel realities: one genuinely valuable, and the other deeply regressive. The contributions of Aryabhata and Brahmagupta to mathematics, Panini to linguistics, Vedanta to philosophy, and Ayurveda to medicine are genuine traditions that may deserve due attention. But there’s a hijacked version of IKS which is a hilariously, if not villainously, political project. Much of what is now packaged as IKS in government documents, school curricula, and propaganda includes mythological claims treated as historical facts, pseudoscience (e.g., Ravana’s Pushpaka Vimana as a real aircraft or Ganesha’s trunk as a product of plastic surgery), astrology replacing astronomy, ritualism replacing reasoning, attempts to invent the r...
17 comments
Read more

The Ugly Duckling

Source: Acting Company A. A. Milne’s one-act play, The Ugly Duckling , acquired a classical status because of the hearty humour used to present a profound theme. The King and the Queen are worried because their daughter Camilla is too ugly to get a suitor. In spite of all the devious strategies employed by the King and his Chancellor, the princess remained unmarried. Camilla was blessed with a unique beauty by her two godmothers but no one could see any beauty in her physical appearance. She has an exquisitely beautiful character. What use is character? The King asks. The play is an answer to that question. Character plays the most crucial role in our moral science books and traditional rhetoric, religious scriptures and homilies. When it comes to practical life, we look for other things such as wealth, social rank, physical looks, and so on. As the King says in this play, “If a girl is beautiful, it is easy to assume that she has, tucked away inside her, an equally beauti...
31 comments
Read more

Waiting for the Mahatma

Book Review I read this book purely by chance. R K Narayan is not a writer whom I would choose for any reason whatever. He is too simple, simplistic. I was at school on Saturday last and I suddenly found myself without anything to do though I was on duty. Some duties are like that: like a traffic policeman’s duty on a road without any traffic! So I went up to the school library and picked up a book which looked clean. It happened to be Waiting for the Mahatma by R K Narayan. A small book of 200 pages which I almost finished reading on the same day. The novel was originally published in 1955, written probably as a tribute to Mahatma Gandhi and India’s struggle for independence. The edition that I read is a later reprint by Penguin Classics. Twenty-year-old Sriram is the protagonist though Gandhi towers above everybody else in the novel just as he did in India of the independence-struggle years. Sriram who lives with his grandmother inherits significant wealth when he turns 20. Hi...
9 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
19 comments
Read more