The pursuit of khushiness madhya pradesh set to be the first indian state to have a happex

The pursuit of khushiness madhya pradesh set to be the first indian state to have a happex

“Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd, / Had anything been wrong/ We should certainly have heard.” WH Auden’s ironic words about his ‘Unknown Citizen’ would find a resonance, sans irony, in present-day Madhya Pradesh. The state is reportedly all set to establish a ‘happiness index’ by next year, thus being the first in the country to have what might be described as the emotional equivalent of the Sensex, and which might be dubbed by wags as the Happex.
MP chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan made an announcement about the happiness index, appropriately enough, on World Happiness Day. The residents of MP will have their HQ – or happiness quotient – gauged by filling in a questionnaire, which will cover areas such as economic status and social welfare, and for which advice will be sought from ‘experts’.
The pursuit of happiness – or, to vernacularise the term, khushiness – has long been the subject of psychological and philosophical investigation, and MP’s babus could do worse than bone up on Jeremy Bentham’s ‘felicific calculus’, the objective of which was to devise a method to provide the greatest happiness to the greatest number.
However, as MP goes about its laudable task of spreading joy and good cheer and allocates funds for the purpose, it should bear in mind the cautionary words of Mr Micawber who succinctly summed up the issue: “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen [pounds] nineteen [shillings] and six [pence]; result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds nought and six; result misery.”
There is indeed a thin dividing line between elation and its opposite. When we wish for the moon, we’re only too liable to be fobbed off with sixpence, which under the current dispensation in the country could run the risk of overnight demonetisation.
Even as the long-promised acche din – which sceptics describe as being more about creating a din than creating anything acche – have yet to materialise. On the World Happiness Index, which lists 155 countries, India has fallen from a lowly 118 last year to an even lower 122 this year, way below neighbouring Pakistan’s 80.
It could, of course, be argued that the quantum of solace we derive from happiness depends on the base effect; how good we feel depends on how bad we felt earlier.
Like everything else, happiness is relative, as suggested by the story of the hapless office employee who was daily subjected to wrathful invective by the boss. One day, his colleagues were surprised to see him smiling cheerfully. Asked how come, he replied he’d just received a promotion: “I’ve been promoted from an animal to a human – yesterday the boss called me a gadha (donkey) and today he called me a bewakoof (idiot).”
Khushiness can be a funny business, in more ways than one.