Poverty - Unhappiness?

Thanks, Dawa for your response to my blogpost linking to the Economics of Happiness. It has given me my topic for this new post.

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Exactly, Dawa, "What's poverty?" If we (Bhutan) went by our own definition on the basis of GNH, 'being unhappy' would be 'poverty.' This then means knowing what makes us happy is crucial, but do we really know? Our govt. has decided that happiness lies in the four pillars of environmental conservation, cultural preservation, socio economic equity and good governance. When we measure these, even roughly, we can tell immediately that as a nation we are less poor than we were before when social services were not accessible to many rural communities and market was not as easily accessible to rural communities - whether for marketting agri products or purchasing basic commodities for household consumption. Our environment conservation and cultural preservation, on the other hand, have consistently been our major strengths. Yes, the govt has indeed done a lot, but the question is "What have we ourselves done to contribute to our own happiness"?

My personal concern has to do with 'individual' happiness - can it come from the same source for every individual? Can it always be dependent on what the govt. does for us? What about individual capability to promote individual happiness?  And what does that individual capability constitute? I think very basic simple things like lifeskills (health & hygiene; prevention of HIV/AIDS; child care and development; etc), vocational skills, emotional management, self discipline, etc. Formal School Education makes provisions mainly for bookish knowledge  (that gets outdated and irrelevant by the time we are out in the real world), when what makes much more sense in the real interconnected globalized world is the process of 'learning to learn,' the cognitive ability to 'think critically' and the social ability to 'connect' with people. We are not robots to depend on what others decide what we should think and do. We have ownership over our own lives. I think it is not asking too much to be responsible owners of our lives, therefore responsible for our own happiness.

According to PHCB 2005 MOST (96.8%) of our people have claimed that they are happy or very happy, but did we find out why? Some critics say it's subjective, relative and momentary, which means for whatever reason 96.8% of our people were happy at the same moment that they were asked that question. Some other critics say that people might have just said it out of fear. Then I'd like to know about the 3.2% who had no fear. If we went by this census study, the message to the government is to focus on the 3.2% that are not very happy. Why? Maybe because they happen to be the remotest communities with no access to road, therefore more than six hours of walking from their community to the geog centre where all major facilities are concentrated. However, if the govt. must focus on the mainstream, leaving the 3.2% to NGOs, and on sustaining the tremendous progress we have made thus far, then the govt responsibility now is to generate internal revenue to clear our debts and to sustain our four pillars of GNH. We citizens have the responsibility of keeping ourselves happy without having to always depend on the government. And if our happiness were dependent on the govt. totally, then our farmers would be waiting forever to be happy with a fence around their land to defend their crops against the wild animals, to own a power tiller, a tractor or a car to make use of the power tiller tracks and farm roads leading to the social and market facilities.

This reminds me that I have to be on the lookout for "Happiness Around the World: The Paradox of Happy Peasants and Miserable Millionaires" by Carol Graham (not yet out in the market, I think). And then another post sequel to this post after reading Carol’s book. Until then  ta da da dee dee dum… ♫ ♪