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Bhutan's Gross National Happiness:An Economic Reality or Wishful Thinking ?
In Defence of Traditional Yardstick cont...
Economic journalist Daniel Ben-Ami is apprehensive of happiness as a social goal. For, it downplays economic prosperity that can potentially benefit the mass of the society. Secondly, the pursuit of happiness as a social goal opens the way for public authorities to regulate people's emotions.36
A Third Dimension
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Prof. Bruno S. Frey and Prof. Alois Stutzer have turned the existing dilemma into a sort of trilemma by adding another dimension to the ongoing debate. They argued that the appropriate approach is not the maximisation of social welfare, and not certainly the maximisation of GDP, but the maximisation of the processes where individuals can better express their preference and better advance “what constitute their idea of good life”.37 People prefer processes over outcomes.Processes give a sense of self, autonomy, competence and relatedness. In his book Development as Freedom, Prof. Amartya Sen has established that the main purpose of development is to spread freedom and not merely contentment. He harks back to the 18th century English poet William Cowper who so persuasively exulted: "Freedom has a thousand charms to show, Critics also point out that justice, personality development, loyalty, responsibility are often more obvious ultimate goals than maximisation of welfare. A mother of many children, for instance, scarcely thinks of her well-being while she attends to |
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the responsibility of tending her off-springs. Some people
even find virtue in unhappiness if deep discontent is instrumental in dislodging social ills. Others
argue that since one cannot become happy by trying, it is inconsistent to set happiness as a goal.
The Bhutanese concept of GNH is an attempt to redefine progress by putting spotlight on
environmental care, cultural promotion and good governance in addition to equitable economic
development. Although still a work in progress, it has been igniting a lot of discourse on national
well-being across the countries, notably the US, Canada, UK, France, Kenya, Japan and Thailand.
Two Nobel laureate economists Prof. Amartya Sen and Prof. Joseph E. Stiglitz, on the invitation
of the French President Nicolas Sarkozy, are putting their minds together to suggest what constitutes
national well-being and how to measure it.39 While all the debates and discussions are going on,
Bhutan is poised to come up with its second survey of national happiness to present a comparison
of national progress – for the first time in the world – on the basis of GNH, evoking the immortal
words of Robert Frost:
"Two roads diverged in the woods, and I -
I took the one less travelled by
And that has made all the difference."40
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36] Ben-Ami D., “There is no Paradox of Prosperity”, Prosperity Index: An Introduction, 1st Edition (Ed.) (ISBN:81-314-1382-
9), The Icfai University Press, Hyderabad, 2008, page 68
37] “Should National Happiness Be Maximised?”, op.cit., page 15
38] “Oxford University Press Reviews: Development as Freedom”, http://www.oup.com/uk/catalogue/?ci=9780198297581
39] Bhattacharjee Jay, “How to Track Well-Being”, The Times of India, January 22nd 2008, page 16
40] Frost Robert, “The Road Not Taken”, http://www.tetrameter.com/frost.htm#The%20Road%20Not%20Taken
