Gross National Happiness

When the king of the Himalayan nation of Bhutan was crowned in 1972, he declared he was more concerned with Gross National Happiness (GNH) than with Gross Domestic Product (GDP). GNH is used as an indicator that measures quality of life and social progress of a nations while GDP measures the amount of commerce in the country which comprises 4 main categories: Consumption expenditure, Investment Expenditure, Government and Net Export. GDP merely accounts for the production made by the nations and ignore the cost of pollution, security and well fare of the society. It has been increasingly important to look beyond GDP in measuring a nation economy growth. GNH is a key indicator in directly assess the changes in social and psychological well-being of populations.

GNH incorporate the life satisfaction, personal development like trust and cooperation, stress and depression in determining the growth of a country. In my opinion, I feel that this is very important. In these days, people focusing on earning money to fulfill the wealth desire of themselves. They think merely for themselves and might ignore the welfare of society. A nation with high GDP is deemed to be a strong country. Nonetheless, her population might be 'sick'. They might not lead a happy and relax life in line with the strength of their country as indicated by the GDP figure.

Yet, using GNH alone might not be sufficient to determine the economic growth of a country since GNH is based on a series of subjective judgments about well-beings. Hence, comparisons between nations becomes problematics and difficult due to the non-existence of a so called standard scale on what is considered happy and what is not. Sooner or later, I believe, we will come out with a new economic index in which it incorporates the benefits and features of both GDP and GNH.