Happy news?

What is known as the World Happiness Report is out, and has declared Finland as the happiest place in the world. In what has been smugly waved around in Pakistan, the country has gained five ranks while India has fallen another 11. The US too has fallen in happiness from the 14th place to the 18th place. While the index does make for some interesting reading, the trouble is that it is a fairly dodgy metric of what it claims to be measuring. Using factors such as GDP, social support, life expectancy, social freedom, generosity and corruption as markers, it appears to be a strange mix of measurable and immeasurable factors. The only thing that would lend it credibility is that the mix-and-match methodology is the same for every country, but it would be hard to say that it actually ends up measuring happiness. It is more a measure of a number of sustainable development measures that allow us to gauge the material and social wellbeing of the countries measured. The trouble is that very few understand this, which is why headlines continue to be dominated around which country has the most social happiness. If that were being measured, then we may as well count the number of smiles per capita.

In Pakistan, the focus has been on how Pakistan has ranked much better than India and most other Saarc countries. Based on this, it would appear that Pakistanis are the happiest people in South Asia. If we accept that is true, then this is a very low barometer for the region. Pakistan remains plagued by high levels of inequality and terrorism. The index might offer politicians and elites a chance to be able to boast about how well Pakistan is doing in contrast to other countries, but it does very little to improve the lives of the poorest and most vulnerable segments of society. In our context, the ranking could breed more complacency in a context where social protections for the poor have almost withered away. The aim of the report was to get rid of the limitations of a GDP or GINI based index of social development. But the index needs a lot of work before it becomes an accurate reflection of social happiness within a country. For now, governments must not rest on their laurels due to approval from one index.