Yet another misleading report

The 'World Happiness Report 2023' has been released by 'Sustainable Development Solutions Network' in the third week of March 2023. In this report, India has been shown at 126th position in the World Happiness Index. Although in this report, India is placed on the 126th position, better than the 136th position of the last year, but the surprising fact is that those who are shown to be above India, actually don't deserve to be better than India in terms of happiness in any case. For example, Saudi Arabia, a totalitarian state, is ranked 30th, Ukraine, which is ruined by war, is ranked 92nd; Turkey, plagued by hyper inflation is ranked 106th; Pakistan standing before the world with begging brown is ranked 108th. Sri Lanka is at 112th position and India which is far better than all these countries of the world, not only in terms of food, but in many other ways, is ranked so low. In such a situation, questions are also being raised about this report.
This is not the first time that this type of misleading report

has been published. Recently, a German agency named 'Welt Hunger Hilfe' also placed India at 107th position in the table of 121 countries in the Hunger Index. The interesting thing was that in this list countries like Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Bangladesh, and Jordan etc. have been shown in a better position than India. The truth is that at present India is far ahead of many countries of the world in terms of food grains and other food items. Today, not only the poor but many rich countries of the world are al also facing shortage of food items. India has so far sent lakhs of tonnes of food grains to many countries including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Israel, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nepal, Oman, Philippines, Qatar, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Switzerland etc. Not only this, in the context of hunger, different types of indicators have also become better in India than before.

The remarkable progress made by India in the last few decades, which has improved the standard of living of the people and has made her move from being the 10th largest economy to the 5th largest economy in the world, in the last few years, many powers of the world are unable to digest this progress of India. In such a situation, they leave no stone unturned to defame India by adopting various tactics.

The World Happiness Report was first launched in the year 2012. It is said that this report is made on the basis of a gallop survey from all over the world. But if seen, this type of concept was actually started in 1974 by the then King of Bhutan Jigme Singe Wanchuk in the name of 'National Happiness Index'. He believed that mere increase in GDP cannot be a reason for happiness. Hence happiness should be an important element in the measurement of development. After that the country of Bhutan started giving top priority to the objective of happiness of its people. Since 2006, for few years, the task of ranking countries around the world on the basis of happiness of the people has started. Looking at the ranking based on the happiness, 'Happy Planet Index' published in 2009 shows that the US which is the most developed nation in the world was ranked 114th in the list of 143 countries based on this index. Singapore was ranked 49th, France 71st, Canada 89th, England 74th, Germany 51st and India 35th. Bhutan, which ranked 131st on the Human Development Index based on current indicators of per capita income, education and health, was surprisingly ranked 17th on this Happy Planet Index. In fact, Bhutan was the only developing country among the nations to get among top 20 spots. Interestingly, Finland which currently ranks first in the World Happiness Index was ranked poorly at 59th position as per 'Happy Planet Index'. It is worth considering that in the happiness index which was first published in the world, as Happy Planet Index, USA and the countries of Europe were far behind in the happiness index. But after this work came into the hands of western countries, since then Asian countries have slipped behind and European countries have come in the first row. Means it can be said that material wealth and income have again been considered as the measure of happiness and low income countries are being placed up and down as per their wish (or agenda).

India, which has been ranked at 126th position, today is not only self-sufficient in terms of food, but is also providing food grains to the world, where housing facilities have been provided to more than 3 crore homeless people and those living in kutcha house in the last few years; which has faced pandemic in most efficient manner, where almost all people have been given corona vaccine; where it is ensured that no one goes hungry, and for that 80 crore people have continuously been given free food by the government, where unprecedented development is taking place in education, health, drinking water, electricity, sanitation etc. If India is being ranked behind Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar, it does not reduce the prestige of India, but it definitely raises doubt on the credibility of the institution which says so.

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