Obsessive Comparison Disorder Part 2

 

My take on the happiness index of India and what I feel is the right parameter on which to judge the country.

The world’s criteria - Social Support, Income, Health, Freedom, Generosity, and Absence of corruption.

The first criteria of social support.

Rather than the Government, the true social support comes from the society in which we live in.

The supportive neighbours when you are in distress; the joint family system that we live in; in fact if we even have a surviving parent living with us in our own home with, you wouldn’t find a happier home.

The western world probably does not know that such a world exists.

Many people I know have no regular source of income, yet continue to live a respectable life, cultivating their own food, selling wares and goods, cooking food for others and very contented with that life style.

My own grand mother raised seven children in Mumbai just be packing lunch boxes and supplying them to offices in the neighbourhood and this included raising my father to get his higher education.

They had no income to show, definitely no savings and just sustenance and this never made them unhappy; rather they lived a very happy life.

The parameter of health that the western world is linked to payment of medical bills and health care provided by the Government.

In India with its villages, health care provided by the Government is probably very bad or poor but the villagers themselves may lead a very healthy life style.

In the western world, affliction of a common cold may end you up in a hospital, but in this country with its robust immune system, people rarely need to be admitted into hospitals.

I can’t think of a country with more freedom than India. Probably the western world thinks of freedom in the sense of freedom to get divorce, freedom to do any sort of business, freedom to earn any amount of money etc that definitely have some limitations in our country.

I read recently that there is no word in our vocabulary for “divorce” because until recent times, husband and wife get married in India for life time. All words for divorce in Marathi like ghatasfot are probably slang for divorce.

For us, marriage is sacred akin to the marriage of our own Gods and once married, we cannot separate the husband from the wife.

In India, if I were to do any business, the restrictions are in place not for any other purpose except to protect the common man. So there may be restrictions to see that there is no monopoly

The western definition of Freedom, Generosity, and Absence of corruption differs from the one used in our country.

A friend from Polland once get the front tyre of her car stuck into the gutter in from of Hotel Avanti in Panaji. When she recounted this incident, she said, such a thing can never happen in Polland because you never see such open pits and drains on roadside in her country.

Yet, in the same breath she said that the moment this disaster happened, there were several passer by who actually helped her by lifting the front portion of her car out of the pit! She said, this too can never happen in Polland because nobody would have come to her assistance in her country if she were in distress!

Even though we complain so often of corruption, we meet scores of people who get their work done without resorting to corruption.

I myself have never bribed anyone to get my work done, ever. I would rather forgo that service than get the service by paying a bribe.

In my opinion, corruption happens only when you want it to happen. You bribe someone to facilitate easy work done rather go through the complicated procedure in the system.

If all of us follow the system, there is no corruption.

Still, including the parameter of corruption in measuring happiness is odd because some people are happy that they can get work done by bribing someone!

To cap my argument, the exercise of counting happiness through a scale is not required at all.

Just be happy for the sake of being happy.

Not because I want someone to judge me and pronounce me happy!