CDS (II) 2023 General Knowledge · Question 62 of 120

Correct — B, Bhutan. Gross National Happiness is Bhutan's own idea and Bhutan's own yardstick. The phrase is credited to the fourth king, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, who declared in 1972 that it mattered more than gross domestic product, and the country then built the idea into its institutions rather than leaving it as a slogan. The Constitution adopted on 18 July 2008 directs the State to promote conditions that enable the pursuit of Gross National Happiness; the same year the Centre for Bhutan Studies ran the first national survey and constructed a formal GNH Index. The framework rests on four pillars — sustainable and equitable socio-economic development, environmental conservation, preservation and promotion of culture, and good governance — which are broken down into nine domains including psychological well-being, health, time use, education, cultural diversity and resilience, good governance, community vitality, ecological diversity and resilience, and living standards. No other country has adopted it as the official measure of national progress.

• (a)Finland — The best-laid trap on the list. Finland has repeatedly ranked first in the United Nations-backed World Happiness Report, which is a wholly separate exercise begun in 2012 that ranks countries by survey responses. Topping someone else's happiness ranking is not the same as adopting happiness as your own official measure of progress.
• (c)Nepal — Nepal is Bhutan's Himalayan neighbour and is often confused with it in questions of this kind, but it measures development in the conventional way and has never proclaimed Gross National Happiness as its national metric.
• (d)Switzerland — Switzerland scores high on most quality-of-life and happiness rankings, which is why it appears here, but its official statistics are the ordinary national accounts. It has no equivalent of the GNH Index.

Gross National Happiness is an attempt to answer a question economists have argued over since the 1970s: whether national income measures what a society should actually be trying to raise. Bhutan's answer is a composite index built from survey data across nine domains, aggregated by a method related to the one used for multidimensional poverty measurement, so that a person counts as happy only if they achieve sufficiency in enough domains. Policy proposals in Bhutan are screened against the framework, which is what separates it from a purely rhetorical commitment.

The question rewards a single distinction — between a country that adopted a happiness measure and countries that happen to score well on somebody else's. Finland is the option built to catch a candidate who has read a headline about the world's happiest country. If you can recall that the World Happiness Report is published under United Nations auspices and ranks well over a hundred countries, while Gross National Happiness is a domestic Bhutanese instrument written into a constitution, the item collapses. Anchoring the exam: that position had not changed by the September 2023 paper and has not changed since — Bhutan remains the only country using GNH as its official measure, and the World Happiness Report remains the separate global ranking.

• The term Gross National Happiness is credited to Bhutan's fourth king, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, in 1972.
• The Constitution of Bhutan, adopted 18 July 2008, makes the promotion of Gross National Happiness a duty of the State.
• The four pillars are sustainable and equitable socio-economic development, environmental conservation, preservation and promotion of culture, and good governance.
• The nine domains include psychological well-being, health, time use, education, cultural diversity and resilience, good governance, community vitality, ecological diversity and resilience, and living standards.
• The first GNH survey and index date from 2008, built by the Centre for Bhutan Studies; the separate United Nations-backed World Happiness Report began in 2012.

• Choosing Finland because it tops the World Happiness Report. That report is a global ranking, not a national policy metric.
• Confusing the four pillars of Gross National Happiness with the four pillars of human development, which are equity, sustainability, productivity and empowerment.
• Assuming Gross National Happiness is only a slogan; it has a constitutional basis, a survey instrument and a published index.

Usually as a one-line country identification, sometimes inside a statements item pairing Gross National Happiness with its pillars or with the year it was proclaimed.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Constitution of which country directs the State to promote conditions enabling the pursuit of Gross National Happiness?

  • (a)Nepal
  • (b)Bhutan
  • (c)Sri Lanka
  • (d)Maldives

  Answer(b) Bhutan — the provision entered the Constitution adopted on 18 July 2008.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which of the following is NOT one of the four pillars of Gross National Happiness?

  • (a)Good governance
  • (b)Environmental conservation
  • (c)Military preparedness
  • (d)Preservation and promotion of culture

  Answer(c) Military preparedness — the fourth pillar alongside the other three is sustainable and equitable socio-economic development.