Devangshu Datta: Modelling a happy nation

VIEWPOINT

As America's founding fathers knew, happiness is a state of mind that can be more easily pursued than found. It is easy to tell if something makes you unhappy; much more difficult to see what makes you happy. However, wealth or the lack thereof, is usually a factor in the happiness quotient. So is health. It's likely that you will be extremely unhappy if you lack both.

"Prosperity" is a catch-all that includes these two indicators and others such as freedom of religion, gender and race equality, etc. While India has fair scores on many of these, lack of healthcare services is a reason for unhappiness. And, of course, per capita income is also low, even if it's growing fast and crossed the $1,000 milestone recently.

Small wonder then, that India's rank is as low as 46 on a sample of 50 nations in Legatum's global prosperity index. Or that there is an apparent disconnect between higher and lower income groups in "satisfaction" surveys like the Ipsos.

Some 46 per cent of the "elite" in India (politicians, business class, high-paid professionals) say that they were satisfied with the way things were going. Just one in ten members of the aam admi club professed to be similarly satisfied.

As of now, India has a middling GINI. There isn't that massive a difference between income levels""in fact, it's less than in many developed countries. However, there are big differences in freedom of choice and in access to wealth-creation opportunities, to quality healthcare; and also to "invisibles".

When I was a student travelling unreserved, it did not irk me that others travelled first class. It did irk me that certain people did not have to queue up for reservations. It also irked to see "their" phone applications processed quicker. It irritates me now to see "elites" jump queues at immigration counters and land registry offices. These "invisibles" make a difference to quality of life without being strictly quantifiable.

There is also a real chance that income inequality itself will grow in the next decade. That I think is inevitable. In a complex, liberalised economy, some people will have the nous to reap the maximum benefits from whatever opportunities arise. Others won't.

The composition of the "elite" may change somewhat but the differences between elite and AA are almost certain to grow. This happens at some phase in every developing economy and it doesn't necessarily get corrected in high-income nations. Income disparities in the US are more marked than in India.

This disconnect could lead to social stress with more random violence and crime. There is really no way of avoiding this. Every developed nation has gone through a Wild West phase sometime in history. "Elites" develop social and legal mechanisms to cope.

The American constitution offers aspiration aka the pursuit of happiness as a safety valve. Very few Americans actually make it from unmarried, teenage, ghetto mom to billionaire. But every American believes that there is a chance of doing so. The West Europeans offer their poor the prospects of education, healthcare and the dole instead.

India simply doesn't have either the money or intellectual resources to create a Euro-modelled nanny state. It has tried and failed miserably over a 50-year period. So it is now trying the US-style aspirational model.

One has no idea how this will pan out. But in places where the elites have failed to handle this phase dexterously, there has been either anarchy or a revolution, often with an associated bloodbath.

What is dangerous is that nobody believes that this could happen in India. We are inured to little mutinies. There are separatist movements across the north-east and north-west. There are Maobadi groups across central India. There is communal and caste tension. This has existed for decades and been contained. There's room for hope.

If the optimists are right, come the revolution, the AA will all travel by Air-Deccan. If the pessimists are right, it'll be Black Marias instead for the elite.