In Pakistan, all is going well, its citizens are happy and content, doing much better than the average Bharatiya. Never mind that it is groping hard to make both ends meet, with repeated IMF injections of cash keeping it afloat with citizens battling over 25 per cent inflation. Also never mind that perpetual borrowing, or begging saved it from sovereign default in 2023 as also in 2022. Even as these lines are being written, Pakistan PM Shehbaz Sharif is in Saudi Arabia for begging/borrowing more.
Come to Nepal now and in there, things are much, much better than Pakistan, and its citizens are living a life of spiritual contentment and happiness. So says UN Sustainable Developments Network which has ranked Nepal at 93, Pakistan at 108 and Bharat much lower at 126 in what is now known widely as Happiness Index. In its findings/results released on March 20, the Network has given these rankings to these nations in the South Asia.
The UN body claims that it conducted a survey of 143 nations and ranked them objectively depending on how happy their citizens were. This is something the UN body has been doing on yearly basis for some time now and the results have been eerily similar all these years. Mercifully, this time, Sri Lanka has been ranked 128 and Bangladesh stands at 129 in these rankings. Mercifully because both these nations were some notches above Bharat for some years!
We need to ask whether these narratives are actually based on some scientific variables and whether we need to bother about these rankings. Absolutely no is my answer as I would never like Bharat to be like Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka or Bangladesh. Incidentally, a couple of years ago, Sri Lanka was ranked much higher than us living in Bharat, and it went broke thereafter, bankrupt if you please. No, I am very happy to be living happily (unhappily according to the UN body though) in Bharat any day than be in Sri Lanka.
According to Happiness Index 2024 rankings, Finland is the world’s happiest country for the 7th time in a row while Afghanistan is ranked as the world’s saddest country. Incidentally, I don’t and won’t envy them as Pakistanis celebrate this ranking along with Eid some days later. Let them celebrate on borrowed money, borrowed for repayment of interests on previous borrowings and salaries to its Army. Let them be happy with Pakistan’s 24th IMF loan as Bharat stopped treading that path in 1991 after seven outings. The score of 7 is any day better than the double digit number of 24 and counting.
When one sees rankings like these, compiled by UN staff, fattened on top salaries contributed as donations by wealthy nations, one seriously doubts their competence. As also the means employed, the methods and motives too. Are these results reliable, unbiased and trustworthy so that we initiate some corrective steps, if any? Frankly, one doesn’t need to give two hoots to such trash belted out by a body as exulted as the UN.
To be truthful, these rankings are part of deliberate, devious designs to paint Bharat in bad light as our journey to overtake the western countries one by one is sought to be thwarted. Such reports prove widely held belief that the UN often indulges in utterly biased blabbering. Dustbins are the most appropriate places for dumping such disdainful UN reports based on data manipulations.
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