The New Parameters Of Economy-I

Mihirjha

If you happen to go through the magazines these days and accidentally come across a news related to Mr. Chidambaram, you might find his pen or specs or several other things missing but a placard in his hands with a text in bold letters, “India’s GDP is 8.8″ shall never be missing. The Indians on the other hand never miss an Opportunity drawing a sense of pride from these stats. I stop for a moment, pause and think whether the much talked about century long traditional parameters of the Economy based on the money-centric approach of utility, production and consumption has anything to do with the well being of the common mass or not and end up on the other side with umpteen no. of questions unanswered. I look for the definition and end up totally confused with mind-boggling jargons. Things like this leave me confused and I move to other much talked about nations and their economic policies. I search for Americas, UK, China and to your utter bewilderment end up with Bhutan where the Barometer to measure the progress is Happiness and not the Money. This country lays more stress on the Qualitative aspects rather Quantitative ones.

The neo-classical economic indices like GDP,GNP, PPP etc, do not reflect the inequality of resource distribution arousing out of the huge differences in the assets of a capitalists and the common beings. It gives imbalanced human development resulting into a vast gap between different sections of people and environmental degradation making life even worse to live in and account for economic utilization of the resources from the point of capital productivity and not from the point of view of the satisfaction and pleasure of the common man. The Gross National Happiness Concept directly addresses the subject and their major concerns such as their cultural and social well being in contrast to other concepts which remains confined only to the Monetary Parameters of the state. The most exclusive characteristics of the concept lies in the fact that it gets straightway to the common mass and shows concerns for their cultural and social well being without getting much into the technical complexities as is the case with other concepts. Although the concept was first pronounced by his Majesty, the King in his speeches soon after acceding to the throne in 1972,it was first introduced to the international community in the autumn of 1998 at the Asia-pacific Millennium Summit in Seoul. Though the term till now has not been coined with exactitude and researches are still on but according to International Institute Of Management, USA it is the index function of the total average per capita of the economic, environmental, social, physical, mental, political and workplace wellness each of which to be evaluated via direct surveys and statistical measurements.

The GNH concept, on the contrast tries to alleviate the loopholes of the traditional money-centric approach by introducing four pillar objective approach at macro level resulting to more satisfaction, happiness, welfare and subject oriented approach to the state. The four pillars of GNH are 1.Balanced Equitable Development 2.Environmental Conservation 3.Preservation and Promotion of Culture & Heritage and 4.Good Governance. Until now 3 International Conferences have been held. In the recently concluded 3rd International Conference on GNH between 22nd and 28th November 2007 in Bangkok, Thailand, Groups and Individuals encouraged others to mirror their own authentic efforts with GNH developments in Bhutan and appealed to the rest of the world to contribute to the “Globalization of GNH” so that it becomes a new parameter to measure the standard developments. Thus the concept of true GNH or a more society-oriented approach requires each constituent of the national economy and society irrespective of the factors whether they are rural population or the urban one, whether their gender is male or female, whether the age group they belong to is young or oblivion, whether one is an agnostics or an ardent devotee, whether one is a Communist or a Marxist, and likewise every constituent of the state to be “develop-enabled”. The emphasis is on satisfaction of the subject. The point is to work on the grass-root level and to look for equality of every human being in its true spirit.

A similar concept which also evolved almost at the same time when the GNH concept came is that of “Capability Approach”, professed by the great Amartya Sen but at the micro level in contrast to GNH which is at macro level. I shall deal this approach and also several other aspects of the concept like, “What exactly Happiness is?”, in the coming issues.

NOTE: The terms and definitions used and defined here have been taken from wikipedia, google search and official websites of Bhutan government and the same is acknowledged herewith.