The Hindu Business Line : Calculus of happiness

WHEN IS one `absurdly happy'? Maybe, when one is having the ice-cream of one's choice in the pleasantest of surroundings and company, with not a care to disturb the state of one's mental solace and feeling of contentment.

Or, maybe, when one is making enough money to drown other sources of discontentment such as having to settle one of those inconsequential differences with a troublesome neighbour.

Or, again, feeling on top of the world generally be even when one is suffering from a pain in a joint or, perhaps, when one is having to tackle a particularly abrasive colleague in one's place of work.

What all this suggests is that the feeling `absurdly happy' is more a state of mind than anything else, the inference being that it is not always linked to the business of living. If this is so, it may be asked what specific value `surveys of happiness' have and whether it would be sensible to just note in passing their conclusions instead of attaching any more importance to them.

The immediate provocation for dwelling on this rather esoteric but engaging subject is a report on a survey of what has been described as gross national happiness (GNH) commissioned by multinationals such as Toyota, Sony and McDonalds. On the international scale, the conclusions are not a little interesting in that the survey finds Australians to be the happiest lot on earth, followed by Americans, Egyptians and Indians, in that order.

Leaving aside for the moment the surprisingly exalted position accorded to Indians, the point of keen interest is the figuring of Egyptians so high on the list. Clearly, what the positioning of Egyptians indicates is that material well-being did not apparently play a major role in deciding the rankings, because if it did both Egypt and India would not have figured so high on the list.

So, what is the source of the contentment that the survey has found among the people of Egypt, which is absent or certainly weaker in other countries which are far more affluent?

More interestingly, if that source of happiness is not linked to material well-being (as the survey findings seem to suggest), why is it not strong enough in other `equally poor' economies?

Does the happiness of the people of a particular country depend in any way on a sense of history, of being the inheritors of past civilisations which have left an indelible mark on the history of mankind so to speak?

If so, the case for Egypt is strong, but then there are countries such as Mexico, China, Iran, Iraq (among the developing countries), which too have an equally illustrious past and which, by virtue of this attribute alone, should find a place as prominent as Egypt on the `happiness league table'.

But the fact is that they do not, which suggests either that the survey's findings are not reliable or that the wellsprings of happiness among the people of a country are far more complex than is apparent.

Personally, this correspondent is drawn to that school of thought which would link a state of happiness and contentment among human beings to reasons other than those connected to material well-being (a hefty bank balance, for example) or a position of power and authority.

Certainly, there should be enough to keep body and soul together (which, in fact, is a basic prerequisite for existence and the sense of feeling), but it is not a necessary and/or sufficient condition to generate happiness of the sort that is to be preferred.

When seen against this background, the comment of the GNH survey conductors that India's performance was `unsurprising' because it took into account only `upscale urban Indians' should be attributed to the faulty premise that there is a strong positive correlation between material well-being and happiness.

What adds infinite colour to the entire subject is the fact that all that has been suggested in the foregoing paragraphs is based on an entirely subjective assessment of what happiness and contentment is all about.

In other words, what is happiness to one man may be quite inconsequential to another person, and so on.

Who knows, the survey may after all have some value if it has, in fact, measured the pluses and minuses of this great, varied calculus which, come to think of it, is bound to throw up surprises galore because of its basically subjective moorings.

Ranabir Ray Choudhury

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