The standard of happiness and the reality
Dr. Satyavan Saurabh
The World Happiness Report annually assesses a country’s happiness and contentment. However, for a country as vast, diverse, and culturally complex as India, this report often fails to reflect the deeper realities of society.
India’s ranking often appears above 100, even though during this same period, India has achieved significant achievements in areas such as health, nutrition, social protection, direct benefit transfers, structural reforms, and poverty reduction. This contradiction raises a natural question—can a country’s “happiness” be understood solely through a survey-based approach? And is this measurement capable of capturing Indian values and social realities?
The World Happiness Report is primarily based on self-assessment. Surveyors ask respondents where they place their lives on a ten-level ladder. This “ladder-based rating” is based on the idea used in Western psychology that happiness is measured by personal achievements and circumstances.
However, in Indian society, the concept of happiness is deeply connected not only to the individual but also to community, spiritual, and family dimensions. In Indian culture, contentment, duty, mutual support, stability of relationships, and spiritual balance are also considered important pillars of happiness.
Therefore, when an Indian respondent is asked how many marks out of ten they would give their life, several cultural factors come into play—humility, calm acceptance, a tendency to attribute circumstances to fate, or a reluctance to complain in society. As a result, many Indians may rate their lives lower, even though they may actually be better off on many levels.
The survey’s sample size also cannot be considered sufficient for India. For a country with a population of over one billion and a diverse urban and rural landscape, conclusions based on the responses of only about a thousand people may be unbalanced.
Indian society is highly heterogeneous at regional, linguistic, economic, and social levels; representing that diversity using a small sample is impossible. A rural farmer in one district may have a different perception of life satisfaction than an urban professional in Delhi. However, interpreting a national “happiness score” by equating both appears scientifically limited.
Furthermore, the concept of happiness used in the report is also influenced by cultural biases. The Western framework associates happiness with material achievements, personal freedom, and apparent satisfaction, whereas in Indian society, happiness is often associated with maintaining balance amidst difficulties, emotional support, community cooperation, or spiritual peace.
This difference influences the surveyor’s language, style, phrasing, and the respondent’s attitude. It is often observed that respondents in rural or semi-urban areas of India perceive the “life score” question as an inappropriate one in which to express complaint or dissatisfaction. Consequently, many Indians underestimate satisfaction despite actual experiences, further distorting the results.
In contrast, India has made significant changes in social welfare over the years. Providing free food grains to millions of people, ensuring basic security through schemes like universal health insurance, expanding rural livelihood programs, and enhancing education and women and child nutrition programs—all of these have been measures that have improved overall quality of life.
However, international reports only partially integrate these indicators because their core focus is on “perceived satisfaction,” not “objective well-being.” This is why even objectively improved facilities are not adequately highlighted in reports. Reductions in poverty and increased access to healthcare in India have made life more secure and stable, but well-being surveys remain incapable of measuring these positive changes.
In such a situation, the question arises: what should India change within itself to make society more emotionally safe, compassionate, and balanced? The answer lies in the “empathy architecture”—a comprehensive social framework in which the state, society, institutions, and communities work together to provide emotional security, psychological support, communication, and assistance to citizens.
The first pillar of this framework is the expansion of mental health services. There are still many myths and stigmas surrounding mental health in India. People are hesitant to seek help, and the absence of mental health services in the primary healthcare system exacerbates the problem. If primary health centers have trained counsellors, telephone services are widespread, and psychological support is available in schools and colleges, emotional insecurity in society can be reduced.
aspect is community-based support. Neighborhood, family, and social ties have been incredibly powerful in Indian culture, but urbanization and individual competition are weakening these structures.
Social isolation can be reduced if local communities develop dialogue circles, support groups, senior citizen support centers, safe community spaces for women, and shared support platforms for youth. Empathy develops when people feel present in each other’s lives.
The third pillar of the empathy framework is the workplace. Stress, competition, goal-driven pressure, and insecurity are increasing in workplaces, impacting employee mental well-being. If organizations adopt sensitive policies—flexible work hours, counselling services, peer support programs, and empathy-based approaches to leadership training—they can create a healthy environment. An empathetic institutional culture not only boosts employee morale but also increases productivity.
The fourth dimension is emotional education in schools. Prioritizing empathy, nonviolent communication, emotional intelligence, and collaborative activities is essential. If children learn to understand and express their own emotions, and recognize the emotions of others, society will become more sensitive in the future. The educational framework should be life-based, not just exam-based.
The fifth aspect is technological support. If technology is used for mental health and emotional support—such as counseling apps, crisis support, digital communication centers for students and youth—it can broaden the empathy framework. Responsible use of technology can promote social sensitivity, provided it is monitored and ethically sound.
Finally, empathy is also needed within the administrative structure of the state. When those working in government offices, hospitals, transportation, security, and the justice system adopt a more compassionate attitude toward citizens, citizen-state relations are strengthened. Listening to, respecting, and adopting a humane approach to solving public problems is fundamental to the strength of any democracy.
Thus, India’s ranking in the World Happiness Report should be viewed as an opportunity rather than a negative one. This opportunity offers Indian society a way to consider how we can develop “happiness” not just as individual satisfaction, but also as a collective emotional security, social trust, sensitive communication, and mental health infrastructure. Regardless of the limitations of the report’s methodology, it forces us to consider the direction society should take. If India combines its traditional community strengths with modern social welfare frameworks, a new wave of compassion-based development can be established, further strengthening true happiness.
(The author is a poet, freelance journalist and a columnist)
