PMO Report Card: How India’s Happiness Declined Under Modi’s Watch
India’s happiness continues to decline since 2015, as indicated by the world happiness report. The World Happiness Report is a publication of the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network. It contains articles and rankings of national happiness, based on respondent ratings of their own lives, which the report also correlates with various (quality of) life factors.
The freefall is visible when we do trend analysis. Happiness is the single biggest factor in the measurement of success. In the 2022 report, Finland had the highest score, and Afghanistan had the lowest among the 146 countries analyzed. Under Modi, India ranked 136 among the 146 countries. While rank is one aspect, scores are another. There has been a marginal improvement in rank as the happiness of Indians nosedived during Covid and then recovered a bit. But overall the trends are distressing.
The ranking is often comparative and does not reflect actual improvement or decline. Most often the debate happens around ranking and positioning. If you are ranked low and the others who are below you perform even poorer, you will automatically improve. Vice versa is also true that even if you improve and the improvement is better in others, your rank will come down. Hence, both should be analyzed together.
Overall, the graph only indicates that Modi has failed to deliver a happier nation. If we look back on his tenure since 2014, most of the parameters from HDI (Human Development Index), Unemployment, GDP, Hunger, Poverty, etc, are in the doldrums and indicate a structural failure of our country.
