Refixing our national development goals

His Majesty Jigme Singye Wangchuck, the king of Bhutan, proclaimed that the ultimate purpose of government is to promote happiness of the people. So, to the king's belief Gross National Happiness (GNH) is more important than Gross National Product (GDP) and happiness should be given precedence over economic prosperity. Though not exactly quantifiable, GNH, not GDP, is the prime development objective in Bhutan . GNH has already provoked a mild uproar in the occident where people are bored with the burden of wealth and the ripple effects are being felt by both the poor and the rich all over the world.

In Bangladesh we all know who is rich and who is poor by their income disparities. We make surveys in rural and urban areas to determine our level of poverty by counting, inter alia, households with or without creature comforts: creature comforts like television, freezer, telephone or roof made of corrugated iron sheets or bed affixed with frames for mosquito nets. A house with thatched roof or a bed without frame for hooking mosquito net is a clear indicator that the owner is poor. And a big mound of haystack on his backyard is a telltale signature of the housemaster's money power. A man, on his way to village market flaunting a long rechargeable flashlight, a vanity presumably sent by his son working as an illegal guest worker in Japan , is venerated by his neighbors as a happy man of many rungs above.

A supervisor of a rural bank branch, while assessing creditworthiness of a potential borrower, first observes the status of his house roof and his bed before inspecting and examining the real cultivable land he owns. The same supervisor after disbursing credits doesn't knock at the borrower's door to recover overdue loans unless he finds hays mounded afresh over his old haystack. A new haystack also beacons a dacoit to rob the farm owner of his new liquid cash from sale of his new paddy harvests. Material possessions ostensibly make people influential and powerful. Money power buys us foods and corrugated iron sheets along with envy of the poor who see happiness in our gaits and smiles. Money power also buys the farmer a pretty girl in the village to be wife of his worthless son. Polygamy too is a byproduct of money power. Money talks especially in harsh economic climate.

Can money power buy happiness? Bhutanese king flatly says no. Can happiness be scored without money? Most of us in our society will declare of course not. Correct answering of such questions on happiness depends on when and what context you are asked. Yesterday your were in ebullient mood while reading a novel by Shankar, but today you are bored with your reconciling the family budget at the end of the month. Yesterday you were happy, today you are sad.

Economics is always at the heart of our development planning. Growth and development are synonyms of distribution and flow of money. GDP, defined as the total value of a country's annual output of goods and services, is deemed the yardstick of a nation's progress.

But GDP was never intended to function as an indicator of well-being. Even the economist Simon Küznets, the pivotal figure in the development of GDP, in 1934 urged the US Congress to remember: "The welfare of a nation can scarcely be inferred from a measurement of national income." However it has lamentably been assumed to be a reliable proxy for standard of our living and a reckoner of our happiness.

GDP turns out to be a poor indicator of welfare in several key respects. For a start, interpreting it as a standard-of-living measure means assuming that income is strongly correlated with well-being at the national level, such that -all else being equal- general well-being will increase as the economy grows. But it has been repeatedly proven in recent years that this is simply not true. Undoubtedly, a relationship exists between income and well-being, but beyond a level, an increase in material consumption is not accompanied by a concomitant rise in happiness. With people unhappy at work GDP too is destined for low level in the long run.

Development means enlightenment of individuals. Enlightenment is not solely an object of religious activity. Enlightenment is blossoming of happiness. It is made more probable by consciously creating a harmonious, psychological, social, and economic environment. Enlightenment is a goal of psychological evolution for any lay person, regardless of his or her formal faith.

Inner spiritual development to gain enlightenment is more important than external material development. Our mind should be an object of conscious refinement. Psychological engineering should be aimed at realization of positive mental and psychological powers. These powers are not directed outwards to the control of the natural world. Rather, they are turned inwards, towards our own mind, so that we can understand our mind and its relationship both with itself and with the outer world. The knowledge of the self is important to attain individual liberty and freedom, to gain happiness.

The contemporary world may be too acutely preoccupied with the self in the sense of paying excessive attention to our selves, our concerns, our needs and the likes. But the paradox is: excessive preoccupation with our selves does not lead to a real knowledge of our self. Happiness depends on gaining freedom, to a certain degree, from this particular kind of self-concern.

Minimization of self-concern is an important step in the process of constructing a happier web of human relationships and of transforming Man into a less intrusive and destructive force in our natural and human environment. Man is just a sentient being, among other forms of existence. The assumption that Man is on top of the chain of beings is a false comfort, considering the mysterious web of inter-dependent relationship that is now being confirmed through scientific studies.

We would all agree that the mounting threat to the global ecosystem arises from two sources: increasing population and increasing per capita resource consumption. The rationale for reducing the size or scale of the economy relative to the ecosystem can not be derived effectively from conventional economics, which is concerned more with efficiency of production and distribution. Market economics is myopic when dealing with the scale of economy relative to the ecosystem. Reality is not hierarchical but whole and circular. Sustainable development and environmental care is in the interest of every being every day, not just in the interest of future generations alone.

Our need is increased when we find that others in our reference group have more. As psychologists and economists say, happiness depends on relative income, not on absolute income. In a world, where everyone who has less is trying to catch up with everyone else who has more, we may become richer but happiness becomes elusive. Much as happiness may seem ephemeral we chase mirages day and night that we wish can fetch us a feeling of happiness as we prefer materialism as the bedrock of our life on this planet to spiritualism.

Nations will not rank higher on the scale of happiness as they move up on the scale of economic performance. As is widely known, this is due to the fact that the value of money in giving happiness diminishes as the amount increases.

With a view to addressing the relative success or failure of countries in supporting good life for their citizens, whilst respecting the environmental resource limits upon which our lives depend, social scientists have of late formulated HPI: Happy Planet Index. HPI is an innovative new measure that shows the ecological efficiency with which human wellbeing is delivered.

As an equation HPI is equal to Life Satisfaction multiplied by Life Expectancy divided by Ecological Footprint. The HPI reflects the average years of happy life produced by a given society, nation or group of nations, per unit of planetary resources consumed. Put another way, it represents the efficiency with which countries convert the earth's finite resources into well-being experienced by their citizens.

International surveys tend to consider life satisfaction by asking respondents a question such as: 'If you consider your life overall, how satisfied would you say you are nowadays?' Responses are given on a 0 to 10 scale, from not at all satisfied to extremely satisfied. As a general indicator of the state of well-being in a country, however, this single question performs surprisingly well, showing good validity when compared with other national-level statistics.

Life expectancy at birth is an estimate based on the prevailing conditions in the country, and is calculated through large-scale data collection of mortality rates at different ages.

Life expectancy is often regarded as a gold-standard measure of well-being. This is not simply because a long life is necessarily a good thing but because rates of life expectancy depend on numerous factors that relate directly to material conditions in a country. For these reasons, and undoubtedly thanks to its clarity and tangibility, life expectancy is widely used as a development indicator, and is one of the main components of the UN's HDI.

Nature can keep up with the demands of human economic activity, but only as long as this activity stays within the regenerative capacity of the biosphere: the living part of the planet. Ecological footprint accounting measures the extent to which the ecological demand of human economies stays within or exceeds the capacity of the biosphere to supply goods and services.

The ecological footprint measures how much land area is required to sustain a given population at present levels of consumption, technological development and resource efficiency. The largest component elements of footprint are the land used to grow food, trees and bio-fuels, areas of ocean used for fishing, and most importantly the land required to support the plant life needed to absorb and sequester CO2 emissions from fossil fuels.

Footprint takes account of the fact that in a global economy people consume resources and ecological services from all over the world. Therefore, shrimp culture in Bangladesh will not count towards Bangladesh's Footprint, but rather towards the Footprint of those countries where the shrimps are exported and consumed. For this reason, a country's Footprint can be significantly larger than its actual bio-capacity. The Footprint of a country is thus best understood as a measure of its consumption, and its worldwide environmental impact.

On a scale of 0 to 100 for the HPI, a reasonable HPI target is set at 83.5 with Life Satisfaction at 8.2, Life Expectation at 82.0 and Ecological Footprint at 1.5. This is based on attainable levels of life expectancy and well-being and a reasonably sized ecological footprint.

Presently, however, the highest HPI is only 68.2, scored by the Pacific archipelago of Vanuatu. And the lowest is Zimbabwe's at 16.6. Bangladesh with Life Satisfaction at 5.7, Life Expectation at 62.8, Ecological Footprint at 0.6 enjoys a prestigious HPI level at 53.2 ranking 41st in the long list of 178 countries where United States is ranked 150th, Bhutan 13th, China 31st, India 62nd and United Kingdom 108 th. Simply put, Bangladesh and Bhutan takes much less resources from Mother Nature and contributes reasonable amount of resources back to the planet compared to United States and other industrialized nations. And the Pacific archipelago of Vanuatu is the champion as a planet friendly country.

It is important to recognize that the HPI is not an indicator of the happiest country on the planet, or the best place to live in. Nor does it indicate the most developed country in the traditional sense, or the most environmentally friendly. Instead, the HPI combines these notions, providing a method of comparing countries' progress towards the goal of providing long-term well-being for all without exceeding the limits of equitable resource consumption.

People all over the world want to lead happy and complete lives, but we all share just one planet to live on. We urgently need our political organizations to embrace and apply new measures of progress, such as the HPI and adjusted GDP indicators. Only then will we be equipped to address the twin challenges of delivering well-being for all whilst remaining within genuine environmental limits.

For our planet to sustain life for us and posterity our 'Ten Commandments' should be: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger; Improve healthcare; Relieve debt; Shift values; Support meaningful lives; Empower people and promote good governance; Identify environmental limits and design economic policy to work within them; Design systems for sustainable consumption and production; Work to tackle climate change and Measure what matters.

Last year, some professors of London School of Economics, while tinkering with the link between personal spending power and the perceived quality of life conclusively proved that money can buy everything but happiness. The study, not taking Ecological Footprint into cognizance, revealed that Bangladeshis, living even in abject poverty, are the happiest in the world as they know how to derive maximum pleasures from their small incomes and from the wonders of nature. The researchers concluded that although Americans are rich as far as their bank balances are concerned they are emotionally poor. Ranked 46 th in the list of happiness USA failed to offer their citizens a quality environment where they could be ridden of their emotional poverty caused by consumerism and the breakdown of family life.

Snuggled in her warm home a neatly dressed American baby giggles with ecstasy as she pats her puppy or relishes a candy. A Bangladeshi half naked fun-loving baby of same age also smiles in glee as she grinds her little teeth on the stone of a ripe mango frantically trying to extract the last sliver of mango pulp or the last thread of mango fiber. Whose happiness weighs how many ounces depends on how they compare their status in their respective stations of life.

Scarcity as opposed to abundance rather offers a better ground where seeds of mirth, cheer, hilarity etc., if well planted, may crown into large canopies you and your progeny can sit under to enjoy those fleeting moments of happiness in many happy returns: happiness expressed not on our faces alone but also felt inside the corridors of our hearts.

Nathaniel Hawthorne said: "Happiness is like a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you silently."

(Maswood Alam Khan is General Manager Bangladesh Krishi Bank)