Reflecting on Gross National Happiness

Having taken numerous classes on Happiness and Gross National Happiness, if you ask what strikes me the most, here are my reflections. Gross National Happiness stands out as developmental philosophy and as a paradigm in many ways from the other developmental instruments like Ubuntu and World Happiness Index, one distinctively because it is all-embracing. The all-embracing phenomenon can be explained in a way that ambitiously takes into account not only the economic progress but also the overall well-being of the people in terms of their happiness. 

The concept of GNH is structured on its four pillars: good governance, sustainable socio-economic development, cultural preservation, and environmental conservation and broken down into 33 indicators for assessment and measuring purposes that uses a multidimensional methodology called the Alkire-Foster method that reflects on the holistic range of GNH values. 

For the reflection, I have some caveats with the nomenclature “happiness” albeit GNH's robust development of its indexes. The term happiness is nebulous because its understanding is examined through different contexts and standpoints, from different epistemological points of view from the likes of eudaimonia to gawa in Bhutanese understanding, and from all the obliviousness of happiness, one thing is obvious--people want to be happy. It is to be noted that the fundamental feature of language is that it is arbitrary in nature and understanding the perspective of others through our own lens is always hard and flawed and so is the understanding of happiness. For the question: “What is happiness for you?”, it has no bright-line answer because the meaning of the question itself is confusing. Nonetheless, the efforts in the heavily laid GNH survey questionnaires are commendable because it does not solely depend on the abstract conceptions of happiness by just asking the question of how happy they are. 

The GNH Index opens a wider angle onto people’s lives to clarify areas in which the conditions for happiness exist and those where public action is required to establish the conditions of happiness. However, the use of data collected from the survey is questionable. Is the data collected used for making sound development and policy decisions by the relevant stakeholders like the Government? Is the Gross National Happiness Commission (GNHC) working in tandem with other decision-making stakeholders and improvising the GNH Screening Tools with the ground reality of what it takes to make a decision faster and more efficiently (esp. for the government)? 

As I have understood, measuring yardsticks like variables and domains for GNH has not been fully developed for long. Does this reliably measure the well-being of the people? A lot of questions arise that need context-based, empirical, and evidence-based studies to understand the complexities of GNH. Dr David L Luechauer--a visiting Professor at Gaeddu College of Business Studies criticizes that GNH is orienting more towards a socialist society. Despite its advantages, one very noticeable disadvantage of a socialistic system is its reliance on cooperative pooling to get things done. This hampers the pace at which development should be taking place because Bhutan is seemingly crossing the bridge that divides the Least Developed Countries from the developing. The issue here lies in the availability of basic infrastructures to take a full reign on socialist benefits. 

In my recent presentation on “Community Vitality”, I looked at the variables and questionnaires and interestingly found that the questions posed to the people asked the number of times they have done public services in the community and if it is more than a certain number of days in a year, the measuring indices are high and hence a good indicator. It is evident that it is looked through a socialist point of view. I found this question quite interesting because the Community Vitality’s variables include family, safety, community relationships, and so on. However, it fails to recognize how satisfied they are with serving the community for more than 20 days a year. Or how they feel about the working conditions, safety, and whether there is assistance from the local government. They missed the forest for the trees in coming up with reasonable questions. I have not critically analyzed the other variables but this may be Pandora's box of how others would look and it calls for critical interventions. 

Furthermore, I had, on the contrary, different views on whether each individual notwithstanding the local government people should have an understanding of GNH from recent claims by Dr. Dorji Penjore. Professor Nima Dorji said that it is very important to understand the GNH whoever you are and it further validates why it is important. GNH should not only be a top-down approach. Every pillar, each domain and every variable shows us what it takes to have a good and progressive life. I believe it makes us more conscious and informed about what aspects are important for a good living and how an informed decision from a granular individual level to the executive level can be made for the overall well-being. Hence, the GNH calls for further investigations and learning.