Origin of Happiness Concept
Used to measuring prosperity and well being of people on the basis of crude GDP, per capita income and other such statistics, the developed world was ushered to the concept of happiness from a small nation Bhutan in the year 1971. It was this small kingdom from the Global South which in the year 1971 talked about Gross National Happiness which attempted to measure whether people are really happy and content on the basis of human development indices along with measuring people’s satisfaction with their environment, spiritual and ethical outlook.
The United Nations took 40 long years to acknowledge the idea of happiness on a global scale. From the year 2013, the UN has been celebrating the International Day of Happiness along with publishing a worldwide World Happiness Index report in the year 2012. The indices which are included to measure happiness index include GDP per capita, social support, life expectancy, freedom to make choices, generosity and perception of corruption among others.
UN World Happiness Index Report, 2020
Since the year 2012, the top ranks are grabbed by Global North including Scandinavian countries such as Finland which has been ranked successive times. As far as India’s performance in the 2020 World Happiness Index Report is concerned, the country stood at a dismal 144 out of the 156 countries which were in the race.