Is being happy with Pakistan’s happiness ranking justified?

The position of Pakistan in ‘Human Development Index’ is 147 out of 188 countries. HDI is a composite statistic of three elements namely, Life expectancy, Education and Per Capita Income. Infant mortality rate in Pakistan is the worst in the world according to a UNICEF report. Corruption is rampant and most Pakistanis with some guts want to leave the country for greener pastures abroad whenever given a chance and according to surveys Pakistanis speak ill of the conditions in their country when abroad unlike Indians who praise their country when abroad.

Taking all these factors into consideration it looks strange when we hear that Pakistanis are happier than their neighbours in the region. Being naively happy and contented is not a good sign. We should be worried where it warrants and try to improve things. Being happy with ‘something is better than nothing’ is somewhat behaving like Stalin’s chicken. .. CN report, 27 Mar 2018

One thought on “Is being happy with Pakistan’s happiness ranking justified?

  1. The article is true and correct. There are 2 things very correct about the article and 2 things very objectionable.
    Correct #1: Pakistan is lagging behind providing life essentials to its people, which is not impossible as many countries are doing this in terms of safety health, life expectancy and education.
    But, it can’t be expected from government.
    Solution: People should start helping each other, volunteer their time, money and knowledge for making infrastructures like roads, water wells, micro-dams, community halls and health service centres. Governance has become a billion dollar business, run by either goons who are corrupt or forces, who are competing with civilians for power, so don’t depend on them.
    Correct#2: Stalin’s chicken is correct example. Most of the governments around the world are doing this. And people should divisively and cleverly prevent system from dis-empowering themselves, not by trying to overthrow/disrupt the system. That is not going to work for now, and until people across the world unite against oppression. Unfortunately, politicians are united across the world and they share their success tactics to control public.
    Solution: Right public can stop supporting oppressors and helping the helpless public, with our limited resources.

    Objectionable#1: Its not good to make people scared or sad or unhappy, to do something about the short comings. Happy people are more creative and successful. And a little bit of risk and stress is good for personal development. Influential people and media need to create this balance.
    Pakistan actually has a lot of happy people, because country`s food resources are capable of feeding more than 60% and climate is good enough to live a low cost, low energy consumption life. Moreover, people are good-hearted and share food and living with poor. This makes it easier for any Pakistanis to live an easy life, even if he is a junkie. I personally know a Brit and 2 Germans who came to Pakistan and never left. According to them, this is one of the most stress-free countries to live, if you are capable of doing even a little bit of hard work, and compete.
    What to do: We need to spread real education (ethics/religion, maths. science and civics awareness) to people and encourage them to improve their condition with mutual collaboration.

    Objectionable #2: UN and different international data is good to follow but not blindly. Some of these data streams are good for guidelines but not exactly applicable, as their numbers indicate.
    E.g.1: Life expectancy is low, and infant mortality is high; but birth rate is high in Pakistan which slightly balances out, since it creates a problem of not having enough life time for a person to complete life plans but solves the problems of aging population support and risk of declining population growth.
    E.g. 2: Per capita income is low, but Pakistanis don’t need a high per capita income, $ 1500/head is enough to sustain a healthy family life in most parts of country, and $2500 is enough in metro-cities. It is a common observation that beyond this income 75% people with high income start wasting resources. Only 14% use extra income for family improvement and entrepreneurship, and only 11% use/ donate this extra money for important causes like orphan and poor support, science/ research/ education improvement. Other don’t understand how important these things are for international competition of a nation. So don’t target a per capita income of more than $1500 until our national education level (plus awareness quality) is like Germans and Scandinavians.

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