ranking in World Happiness Index 2023

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has dismissed the World Happiness Index 2023, which ranked India among the least happy countries. Interacting with students during BJYM Yuva Samvada at the RV Dental College in Bengaluru, Jaishankar cited an example of his friend from Singapore who once said Indians looked happier than Europeans.

“You should actually tell everybody to come to Bengaluru – you can see which is the world’s happiest place, particularly on a Friday night,” the foreign minister said while replying to a question on the World Happiness Index 2023. 

“I don’t know how these guys make up those indexes. A Singaporean friend of mine told me – every time he travels out, he says ‘I just have to go to some place and look at the faces of some people, that is my happiness index’. His sense was people in Europe did not look that happy. People, to him in India, looked very happy. I’m not necessarily saying I will make an index out of it, but these are all mind games that people play,” the minister said.  The happiness report is a publication of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, powered by the Gallup World Poll data. As per the report, Finland is the happiest country in the world while  Afghanistan is the most unhappy nation. India came at the 126th position out of 137, behind Pakistan (108), Sri Lanka (112), Myanmar (117), and Bangladesh (118).         

Last week, filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri rejected the rankings, calling it ‘crap’. He said questions asked to measure one’s happiness were Western. He said that Western countries would fare badly if people there are asked questions like, how many days they ate with their family and if they can depend on their family for a lifetime.   

“All these Indexes are crap as their questions are so western. Ask Westerners “How many days in a week you eat meal with your family?” Or “Can you depend on your family for a lifetime?” And you will find most western countries at the bottom and India at the top of Happiness Index,” he wrote on Twitter.