While India ranks as the fourth unhappiest country in the world, according to the latest results of the World Happiness Report, the countries to fall lower than India were Jordan, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe. The list of the 10 unhappiest counties in the world is Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Jordan, India, Cambodia, Benin, Myanmar, Namibia, Egypt, and Kenya.
Topping the list of the happiest nations in the world, Finland maintained its lead at the top of the charts. In an annual UN-sponsored report, the ten happiest nations in the world are Finland ranking top as the happiest country in the world, Denmark, Switzerland, Iceland, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Luxembourg, New Zealand, and Austria.
“Finland ranked very high on the measures of mutual trust that have helped to protect lives and livelihoods during the pandemic, ” the report said. The pandemic presumably brought out mutual help and fortified trust for the happier countries.
The determining factors for the World Happiness Report are safety, protection, high quality of life, trust, and security. There are nine factors used to determine this index:
Psychological Wellbeing (Psychological indicators)
Mental and Spiritual Health (Health and mental health indicators)
Time-balance (Work and Sleep Indicators)
Social and Community Vitality (Philanthropy, Family-related indicators)
Cultural Vitality (Native speaker, Domestic industry indicators)
Education (Literacy indicators)
Standard of life (Living Standards indicators)
Good governance (Human rights, political participation, government performance indicators)
Ecological Vitality (Wildlife, Forest, Urban-Rural, Environmental indicators).
India could have dropped from 111 down to 144 out of 156 countries in the 2020 report due to ravaging fears pervading the population where people’s deep concerns are not addressed. There are rising religious discriminations, economic crashes, salary cuts, increasing tax burdens, loss of jobs, the widening gap between the rich and poor crushing the middle class. There is a sudden escalation in violence and murders, steeping crimes against women, religious radicals dividing the nation which is affecting rural India, the side effects of COVID-19 added salt to wounds, lower standards of living with the high cost of living, poor quality of life among other worries.
In the words of the late Pranab Mukherjee, former president of India, he said, “The quest of happiness is closely tied to the quest for sustainable development which is a combination of social inclusion and environmental sustainability,” while speaking at a seminar on People, Planet and Profit organized by the Indian Chamber Of Commerce.
He also said, “A narrow vision focus on economic development may have given us a better GDP and increase in per capita income but moved our focus from environmental sustainability, social welfare, emotional and mental wellbeing of our people. These are the primary reasons of our ranking in the world happiness index year after year.”
Pranab Mukherjee pointed out while India has managed to bypass France with substantial figures in terms of its value of the economy, it must be remembered that the current progress was not achieved in the last couple of years.
He said India has shown steady improvement in GDP, national per capita income, life expectancy, literacy, and food production while managing to bring down the poverty ratio significantly over the past 70 years.
He added, “The recent World Bank report has placed India above France in terms of the value of economy in US dollar terms. But obviously, it did not happen in the last couple of years or even in a couple of decades. It has happened over seven decades.”
However, in 2016, the number of suicides in India had increased to 230,314. India reported an average of 381 deaths by suicide daily in 2019, totaling 1,39,123 fatalities over the year, according to the latest National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB).
With a 3.4 percent increase in suicides during 2019 (1,39,123 suicides) as compared to 2018 data (1,34,516) and 2017 (1,29,887), it is alarming and measures must be implemented by the government to ensure that a safe, secure, positive environment is inculcated to ensure India is developed in a climate of happiness.