One of the ironies of the last century and a half is that while the great ideological battle between capitalism and communism ended two decades ago with the victory of the capitalists, the latter by then had completely accepted their opponents’ premise that fundamentally, man was an economic animal.
As a result, we all measure progress and development using various economic metrics especially Gross Domestic Product (GDP). But in the last decade, there has been a dramatic shift away from this orientation and towards a recognition that when all is said and done, man’s activity is basically intended to deliver greater happiness. And a grudging acceptance that material goods alone do not automatically guarantee happiness.
While the latter viewpoint had long been articulated by religiously-minded individuals and institutions, it had been denigrated by “hard-nosed realists” and economists as being too “otherworldly”. Its introduction into the realm of national policy came from an unlikely source: the king of the remote Himalayan Buddhist kingdom of Bhutan, back in 1972.
Given epistemological rigour by the Centre for Bhutan Studies, a Gross National Happiness (GNH) index was devised which rested on the promotion of sustainable development, preservation and promotion of cultural values, conservation of the natural environment, and the establishment of good governance. These four pillars supported eight more detailed contributors to happiness: physical, mental and spiritual health; time-balance; social and community vitality; cultural vitality; education; living standards; good governance; and ecological vitality.
Initially, the economic powerhouses in the West that set the pace for what was considered “development” pooh-poohed the notion that “happiness” of nations could be the goal of governments. However, economists from the Indian subcontinent, ensconced in Western institutions but imbued with the notions from their own culture that “well-being” went beyond the traditional economic metrics, began to introduce Bhutan’s orientation into mainstream economic thinking.
Bhutan’s idea was taken up by the UNDP’s programme and refined by economists like Mahbubul Haq of Pakistan, Britain’s Lord Meghnad Desai and the Indian Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen as the “Human Development Index”, which seeks to incorporate life expectancy, education and standards of living as indicators of a country’s development. From this platform, the idea of a GNH has now taken centre stage in some of the countries that were most sceptical in the beginning.
In 2009, a panel of economists commissioned by Nicolas Sarkozy, the French President, proposed the replacement of “Gross Domestic Product” with a “Net National Product” which would take into account the contentment of the people, the quality of public services and free services available within communities. In November 2010, Britain’s PM, David Cameron also announced plans for a ‘happiness index’ and said the Office for National Statistics would invite people to grade their own contentment from April 2022. He explained, “We’ll continue to measure GDP as we’ve always done, but it is high time we admitted that, taken on its own, GDP is an incomplete way of measuring a country’s progress.”
In January of that year, German politicians also began investigating ways to gauge the country’s quality of life and prosperity as a way to complement GDP figures in Europe’s top economy. A committee headed by Speaker of Parliament Norbert Lammert issued its recommendations in 2015. The so-called “Progress Index” measures Germany’s economic wealth, as well as advancements in education, environment and quality of life.
Another country to jump on the “happiness” bandwagon was China – the fastest growing economy in the world that is projected to overtake the US as the largest economy in a few decades. As part of its drive to find greater happiness, local Chinese officials are typically being set ten targets to meet – five being economic or GDP-related, and five being assessed on more nebulous, happiness- related criteria linked to social well-being. Our Government’s “green economy” incorporates some premises of the GNH position. Maybe it’s time we investigate the concept further?