Month: March 2021

Finland, the small country in Northern Europe continues to be at the top of the world Happiness Index. India on the other hand has entered the bottom 10. We look at the World Happiness Index, what counts and why India looms at the bottom. But all is not gloom. There are possibilities of raising happiness in India.

The World Happiness Reports do not make forecasts about future happiness. The global pandemic poses great risks for some of the main supports for well-being, most especially health and income. Therefore, COVID-19 would have played a part in the results from the World Happiness Index for 2021 but is not the only thing that would make a difference, as you’ll see below, they measure happiness on a range of areas. 

What is the Happiness Report?

The World Happiness Report is a publication released annually by the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network. The report is released on the 20^th March, the United National International Day of Happiness and it ranks 156 countries by how happy their citizens perceive themselves to be.

The rankings of national happiness are based on a Cantril ladder survey. This measures life satisfaction by first asking the respondent to imagine their life in the best possible light and to describe their hopes and wishes for the future, with the best possible life for them being a 10, and the worst possible life being a 0. They are then asked to rate their own current lives on that 0 to 10 scale. Roughly 1,000 people in each UN member state rate their quality of life on a scale of 0-10. Below are the 6 key main area researchers will rank the countries depending on the results:

1. GDP per capita,
2. life expectancy,
3. social support,
4. trust and corruption,
5. perceived freedom to make life decisions,
6. generosity

The World Happiness Report 2020 for the first time ranks cities around the world by their subjective well-being and looked deeper into how the social, urban and natural environments combine to affect our happiness.

Top 10 Ranking Countries

1. Finland
2. Denmark
3. New Zealand
4. Switzerland
5. Norway
6. Israel
7. Sweden
8. Australia
9. Costa Rica
10. Iceland

2020 World Happiness Report

So, why has Finland been ranked as the Happiest Country for the past three years?

Finland ranks as the world’s happiest country based on the 2020 report. Finland scored 7.809 out of a total possible score of 10.

People feeling reassured by their fellow citizens speaks volumes, especially because it can be challenging to be happy if you do not feel you are supported or don’t have a support system backing you and your decisions. The freedom to make choices in Finland appears to be alive and well. If you glance at the scores within this variable among the happier countries, it is evident that this sense of freedom is rather pertinent where happiness is involved.

CNN interviewed Kopperoinen, a man who is lives in Helsinki, on what he believes plays a key role in Finland ranking at the top so consistently he believes “A big part of well-being is good quality public health care… [Finnish People] have a sense that in case of ailments and disabilities we will get treatment.”

Kopperoinen explained how “We trust the quality and availability of it… and our social security network is important. It helps us if we lose our job, get sick or [our] kids get sick. We will lose income, but we can get compensation, which helps us survive and adjust our daily consumption.”

It goes beyond just the standard of the health care, the quality of the childcare, educational system and unemployment benefits also make for a good society, especially during the unsettling time of COVID-19 as the coronavirus spreads across the globe.

In 2020 India ranked in bottom 10, but why?

Our research shows that the main area that drags India down in the UN World Happiness Report is due to their life expectancy. 

Life expectancy is a statistical measure of the average time a person is expected to live, based on the year of its birth, its current age, and other demographic factors including gender, where it has grown up and the healthcare it has access to.

Ranked at 144, India is a new entrant to the bottom-ten group. India’s large and steady decline in life evaluation scores since 2015 has led to an annual score of 3.573 in 2019, lower by 1.2 points than in 2015.

The editors of the Happiness Report claim, the unhappiest cities have some common themes. Most are located in underdeveloped countries and have experienced war (Kabul in Afghanistan, Sanaa in Yemen), armed conflict (Gaza in Palestine), civil war (Juba in South Sudan, Bangui in the Central African Republic), political instability (Cairo in Egypt) or devastating natural catastrophes (Port-au-Prince in Haiti).

However, happiness means different things to people from different nations…  

It is important to look past the UN Happiness Index Report and consider how different countries interpret happiness. In emerging and developing economies, people are most satisfied with their current health (global median of 70% saying 7,8,9 or 10) and the personal aspects of their life, including their family (69%), religion (68%) and social life (65%). Somewhat lower down the satisfaction scale are neighborhoods safety (62%), the quality of schools in their community (57%), their standard of living (54%) and present job (54%). Nonetheless, there are clear regional differences.

In India, the highest rated aspect is their social life (69%) followed closely by their health, family and religion (68% each). In nearly every country surveyed in Asia the lowest ratings go to either their present job (regional median of 60%) or their standard of living (58%). 

In Finland for instance, there is a small percentage of people who believe that there is a wealth of generosity in Finland, which paints the picture that maybe generosity is not as important for overall happiness among people and cultures. Still, because the other variables are so high-ranking, the positive feelings they elicit diminishes the negativity that the lack of generosity might bring.

What can we do to improve happiness in our own lives?

Researchers have found that we’re happier when we see the positive. This doesn’t mean we live in a dream world where we don’t see problems. It means we notice the positive. The good news is that we can train our brains. over time, to more often see the positive.

Here’s how:

1. Give compliments
2. Start keeping a gratitude journal
3. Start a family thankfulness tradition
4. Perform at least one act of kindness daily
5. Keep a journal and record what makes you happy and what makes you unhappy
6. Yoga and Meditations
7. Keep the right company
8. Don’t compare yourself to others
9. Help other people
10. Volunteer

To learn more about the Happiness Index read these news articles….

Changing World Happiness: https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2019/changing-world-happiness/ 

Social Environments for World Happiness: https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2020/social-environments-for-world-happiness/ 

Marriage and money help but don’t lead to long-lasting happiness: https://theconversation.com/marriage-and-money-help-but-dont-lead-to-long-lasting-happiness-140431 

Will the world be happier in 2020? Does the Report offer any information about COVID-19 and its impact on happiness?: https://worldhappiness.report/faq/ 

Ranked: The 20 Happiest Countries In The World: https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurabegleybloom/2020/03/20/ranked-20-happiest-countries-2020/ 

The National Archives in Kew, west London, is a rich repository of iconic documents and declassified confidential papers, some of them dating back to centuries. It has original documents related not only to Britain’s long colonial encounter with India, but also diplomatic and other official communication related to contemporary India. Declassifying secret papers and periodically releasing them to the public adds to the valuable resource.

One such file recently released revealed new information about a tense period in Assam that I had closely covered as a journalist for The Times of India in the late 1980s, when the secessionist United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) had unleashed waves of political violence.

The file triggered memories of my time in the state and the north-east region that reflects much of the best of the idea of India but has long faced neglect and worse from policy-makers in New Delhi, where a security-oriented approach has influenced policy and allocation of resources. The first person to enter my office in Guwahati with a press release was an articulate and politically sharp teenager, who was part of a demonstration outside the then home minister’s house – that teenager is today Assam’s deputy chief minister.

Another person I often interacted with was one of the leading functionaries of the All Assam Students Union (AASU) – he is today the chief minister. In Assam, particularly since the agitation of the mid-1980s, the path to political power has often gone through university campuses and student politics, best exemplified by Prafulla Mahanta and Bhrigu Phukan, who were AASU leaders during the agitation, signed the Assam Accord of 1985, and went on to set an example to others by soon after forming the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) government in 1986.

The declassified file relates to developments in 1990, days before the Mahanta government was dismissed and the Indian Army launched Operation Bajrang against the ULFA. It reveals that three of ULFA’s senior functionaries met a British diplomat in Dhaka and sought the UK government’s help to further its cause at the international level. The details reflect a phase in Assam’s contemporary history when it was not clear whose sympathies lay where, for or against the ULFA, and duplicity marked much political discourse.

It was also when the Bodo agitation was at its peak, with the late Upendra Nath Brahma, another student leader I got to know, and who went on to acquire iconic status, followed chapter and verse from the example of the Assam agitation and sought a separate state for the Bodo tribe.

The file shows that while the ULFA, which was banned by New Delhi in 1990 and whose leaders and members functioned from neighbouring Bangladesh, Myanmar and at one time also from China, was attacking British commercial interests in the tea gardens in Assam, but was seeking the UK’s help at the political level and offering a British diplomat posted in the high commission in Dhaka a tour of its training camps in Assam. In 1990, the Mahanta-led AGP government was a constituent of the National Front government led by V P Singh, but it was dismissed on November 27 after the NF government fell and Chandra Shekhar formed his minority government.

On October 2 of that year, the files reveals that ULFA’s three senior functionaries – general secretary Anup Chetia (real name Golap Barua), publicity secretary Sidhartha Phukan (real name Sunil Nath) and Iqbal (real name Munin Nabis) – met the diplomat, David Austin, who reported the meeting to London in a note described as “fascinating”. Austin wrote on October 4 that the ULFA’s “inspiration is the State of Israel. If Israel can survive surrounded by the hostile Arab world, then why not Assam surrounded by hostile Indian forces?”

He was shown photographs, including those of a training camp in the Lakhimpur district of Assam, and some of the outfit’s leaflets. The photographs included one of its commanders-in-chief, Paresh Barua, standing at the China border with a Chinese army liaison officer. He wrote: “The three men asked for help/advice in four separate areas: UK support in publicising the ULFA’s activities and aims; advice on whether the ULFA would be able to set up an office in the UK; an introduction to other Western diplomatic missions in Dhaka; and how to get in contact with authorities in Israel who may be able to help them”. He added that the ULFA’s propaganda effort was a “new one” and that they were able to “approach foreign diplomatic missions in Bangladesh without the possibility of RAW intervening – something it is unable to do in New Delhi”. Austin, however, declined the offer to visit the camps.

On November 5, diplomat D D W Martin in the British high commission in New Delhi described Austin’s note as “fascinating”, and wrote to the Foreign Office in London: “They have obviously now decided to target western diplomats. That they should do so tends to corroborate the periodic press allegations that the ULFA can operate with impunity in Bangladesh, perhaps even with the tacit complicity of the authorities,” he added. According to Martin, the China link mentioned in Austin’s note was “new and interesting”.

He wrote, “I have only heard it mentioned before by a Congress-I MLA in Assam, who alleged that the Indian Intelligence Services knew all about the Chinese involvement, but were keeping quiet for fear of damaging the process of rapprochement between India and China. During their meeting with David Austin, the ULFA were understandably silent about their activities against the tea companies in Assam. But it seems extraordinary that the organisation should make an approach to us on the political level, while at the same time, threatening our commercial interests in Assam”.

On Austin seeking advice on whether he should hold further meetings with the ULFA functionaries, Martin wrote that no such meetings should be held, stating: “The ULFA is a militant organisation pursuing violent means to subvert the established order in Assam. By pressurising tea companies, it also threatens British interests. Contacts with the ULFA would therefore be hard to explain to the Government of India.”

In the late 1980s and 1990, as the ULFA’s ‘publicity secretary’, Phukan had set up what Martin called a “sophisticated PR machine”, which was then focused on the Indian press, with journalists granted exclusive interviews with ULFA leaders. The journalists, he added, were “taken to spectacular press conferences in the bush and exposed to a variety of more or less impressive stunts designed to show off ULFA as a formidable fighting unit”.

This writer was among several journalists in Guwahati at the time who were given access to Phukan and other ULFA leaders, who expounded on their goals to secede from Assam and made declarations in the cut-and-thrust of agitational politics against the state government and New Delhi.

Since the time Austin and Martin wrote their dispatches in 1990, there have been several ULFA-related developments, including the army’s Operation Rhino, surrender by several of its leaders and functionaries, suspension of operations, and talks with New Delhi by a section of the outfit that has come over-ground. Since another section continues with the ULFA’s secessionist aims and subversive activities, the ministry of home affairs in November 2019 extended until 2024 the ban first imposed in 1990 under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967.

Modi-mania has hit a wall as India’s image takes a knocking around the world. It’s the Kisan Morcha, farmers’ front, gradually haemorrhaging Modi-ism. Everything was working fine for him until he decided to take ‘panga’ (mess) with a community that revels in struggles. How did it come to this?

Every few months, Prime Minister Modi gets a eureka moment and gets his zap machine to put another policy into action. It usually has to be double-quick. It is always a war-footing action on policy that he likes enforcing with surprise timing. From toilets, to money in every pocket and many more.

Some have been popular, such as Ram Mandir; others are works in progress, like a few lakhs in every pocket; and some are eccentric, such as Note Bandi, (change currency notes overnight) that economists are still baffled about. There were probably some mystic reasons for Note Bandi that have eluded the average academic. A lot of people suffered, and they did it for the greater good. Yet, no one knows yet what was that greater good was or is.

Similarly, the four-hour Covid lockdown notice that was expected to work faster than Kejriwal’s mobile office, led to much head scratching. Indian bureaucracy, not known for rocket speed at the best of times, was expected to deliver at cosmic warp time -space compression. Every Indian was to be home within 4 hours. Everyone knows what happened. The bureaucracy rushed home in cars while millions were left on the street to walk home several hundred miles for days on end.

The latest shot from the Modi’s super loaded zap machine was aimed at the North Indian farmers. Only this time, it hit a sandstorm. Nearly nine months later, it is continuing. Modi tried a bit of gentle Indian Police tactics, like lathi-charge, a couple of shots to kill, a few tortures, false cases and pressuring the ‘independent’ press to scream that India was facing its most serious threat since the 1962 Indo-China war. The world gasped in horror and began to reassess its view of India.

Now both sides in the farmer issue are engaged in a game of out blinking the other. Nothing is moving. The Punjabis have long experience on this, from the slow haemorrhaging of Abdali’s loot till he went mad, the draining of Mughal will and its slow disintegration, the five-year struggle for Gurdwara Act in 1920s, the two-year long demonstrations against Indira Gandhi’s Emergency when 80,000 Punjabis went voluntarily to jails. Nothing excites the Punjabis more than a cause to hold langar with some social comraderies, ballads of bravery, and narratives of martyrdom that brought ‘oppressors’ down. It is a community defined by struggles and it relishes such moments.

Something else happened too. Modi was the first Twitter-made leader in India. But a single tweet from popstar Rihanna blew it apart. Will Twitter bring him down as well? Made by Twitter, broken by Twitter? The social media platform has already patented its make-and-break power pack with Trump. Seems modern wars are fought and won on the social media now.

The Royal Soap

Meanwhile in good old England, the Royal soap opera has provided another knife-edge episode. The daughter-in-law has revolted and taken a future King with her to America in a sort of social exile. It’s the usual new wife and mother-in-law story. But it has divided the country and to some extent the Anglo Saxon world and its followers. Muskets are not out as most people prefer to sit by the TV or remain glued to their mobiles, sending Twitter shots against each other on whether Meghan has been wronged, victim of racism or whether she is an attention-seeking gold digger drama queen. Look around, plenty of similar stories in families. This just happens to be a State-owned and State-managed family. Henry (the VIII) might have dealt with all this slightly differently with the aid of his chief head chopper.

Even serious opinion writers have been writing psychoanalytic narratives. Some predicting irrecoverable damage to the Royals (there have been many such predictions over the years) while others pontificating the Firm (yes that’s what the Royals are called after the gangs of East London, believe it or not) will come out stronger and wiser.

Either way, the Royals may become very boring after a while and people will start asking questions such as, ‘what’s their purpose’. Particularly with the revelation that apart from cutting ribbons, the Firm doesn’t actually help anyone except itself. While Government smacks the commoners with more taxes and more ways to grab their meagre wealth, the Queen and her small family have found a way of using ‘royal’ power to protect themselves from the greedy Government. British Royals never used power to protect others, but themselves. This is leading to a new debate: What’s their purpose except protecting their wealth?

In fairness that is a silly question. Monarchs always say they rule on behalf of the people, but in reality, through history, they just build bigger and bigger palaces for themselves, buy more gold and diamonds etc. Why should the British monarch be any different? Ever heard of a King who prefers to live in a hut and say, ‘I will live here until all my subjects have a decent home?’ The last one who did, ended up walking out of the palace and starting a religion called Buddhism.

Meanwhile Meghan mela has offered a good distraction. People are no longer asking, how come Charles has immunity from his leaseholders. They can’t buy their leases like other leaseholders in the country!

Meghan has carried the soap on, with new twists, daggers and verbal gunfire and a royal husband in tow. If there was no drama, the Royals would have long passed their pass-by date usefulness in national entertainment. So, people should relax, not get too cross. Meghan has given a fresh lease to the Firm as English nationalism draws the wagons around it. Meanwhile, after this diffuses, wait for the next Netflix episode played in real life. Otherwise, the English would only have the weather to talk about. It’s a soap opera, and all soap operas thrive on drama.

Back to War

Good old democrats! No sooner did they sit on the chair in the Oval Office, the first missiles went showering in the Middle East. For all his sins, Trump’s biggest misdemeanours were that he created strife and deaths at home and left the world in peace. The most he did was say rude things like ‘rocket man’. And, of course, made the climate suit his moods. There were no sudden bombs raining from the skies on innocent families somewhere in the world, sacrifices as ‘collateral damage’ in a ‘noble’ mission.

The Left, or more precisely the liberal politicians, see war to bring lasting peace as their mission. They took over from the crusades. Wars to bring that final peace on Earth has been going on for a few thousand years. It is the liberal’s purpose in life now to change the world to what they think is perfect goodness. So, like Clinton and Nobel Prize winner Obama, Joe Biden has lost no time to get evangelic with the missiles. The bombs went out to Middle East.  

It may be the difference between the Right and the Left. The Right knows it is nasty but doesn’t have to prove it. It just knocks a few heads at home. The Left has to act as the goodies. But power is nasty, so they export the nastiness.  Wait for a few more thousand innocent, ordinary families dying in their sleep in the next four years. The democrats are home. Somebody needs to invent a sensor that ordinary families can put on their homes to assess the mood at Washington, so they can get out of the way as missiles rain down.

Hawaii is the best place on Earth to experience the wonder of rainbows because of its location and climatic factors, according to an atmospheric scientist at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa.

Rainbows are some of the most spectacular optical phenomena in the natural world and Hawai’i has an amazing abundance of them. In the recent publication, a scientist highlights the Hawaiian cultural significance of rainbows and reviews the science of rainbows and the special combination of circumstances that makes Hawai’ a haven for rainbows.

“The cultural importance of rainbows is reflected in the Hawaiian language, which has many words and phrases to describe the variety of manifestations in Hawai,” said author Steven Businger, a professor in the UH Manoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology. “There are words for Earth-clinging rainbows (uakoko), standing rainbow shafts (kahili), barely visible rainbows (punakea), and moonbows (anuenue kau po), among others. In Hawaiian mythology, the rainbow is a symbol of transformation and a pathway between Earth and Heaven, as it is in many cultures around the world.”

Why is Hawai’ the rainbow capital of the world

The essential ingredients for rainbows are, of course, rain and sunlight. To see a rainbow on flat ground the sun must be within about 40 degrees of the horizon. As the sun rises to higher angles in the sky during the morning, the height of the rainbow diminishes until no rainbow is visible above the horizon. The pattern is reversed as the sun lowers in the afternoon, with rainbows rising in the east and the tallest rainbows just prior to sunset.

Hawai’s location in the subtropical Pacific means the overall weather pattern is dominated by trade winds, with frequent rain showers and clear skies between the showers.

Businger outlines four additional factors affecting the prevalence of rainbows throughout the islands.

“At night a warm sea surface heats the atmosphere from below, while radiation to space cools cloud tops, resulting in deeper rain showers in the morning that produce rainbows in time for breakfast,” said Businger.

Another critical factor in producing frequent rainbows is Hawai’s mountains, which cause trade wind flow to be pushed up, forming clouds and producing rainfall. Without mountains, Hawai’i would be a desert with a scant 17 inches annual rainfall.

A third factor conducive to rainbow sightings is daytime heating, which drives island-scale circulations. During periods of lighter winds, showers form over the ridge crests over Oahu and Kauai in the afternoon, resulting in prolific rainbows as the sunsets.

Due to the remoteness of the Hawaiian Islands, the air is exceptionally clean and free of pollution, continental dust, and pollen. This is the fourth factor that contributes to the numerous bright rainbows with the full spectrum of colours.

Chasing rainbows

As Businger pursued his passion for finding and photographing these beautiful light displays, he began to imagine a smartphone app with access to Doppler radar data and high-resolution satellite data that could alert users when nearby conditions become conducive for rainbow sightings.

“After a few years of false starts, Paul Cynn and I finally connected with Ikayso, a Hawaiian smartphone app developer in April of 2020. I am very excited to say that our app, called RainbowChase, is now available to the public for free,” said Businger. (ANI)