THE REAL PRICE OF HAPPINESS

Mankind’s life remains an unending quest for happiness. It is the purpose of life and all human actions are guided towards goals that are supposed to give happiness when achieved. Naturally, human being’s obsession with happiness is understandable. It is this obsession that makes humans find out the ways and means to achieve happiness. Sometimes, they are so concerned that they carry out researches to find out what are the determinants of happiness. The latest in this line is a recent research carried out at Purdue University of the US where researchers carried out a study of some one million people across 164 countries to find out what gives people happiness. They, in fact, tried to measure happiness in monetary terms and came to a baseline figure at $95,000 for life evaluation and $60,000 to $75,000 for emotional well-being. So in terms of Indian Rupee, it certainly is a mind-boggling figure. But the research published in Nature Human Behaviour leaves more questions to be answered than those it answers. The question that is foremost is what is happiness? And is it possible to measure it and lay down a benchmark in monetary terms so that anyone having that specified amount can achieve happiness? Well, both these questions are not easy to answer. Particularly, because happiness is a relative and dynamic concept that cannot be expected to be stable. Thus, there cannot be people who will be found to be happy for all times to come. Happiness and sadness are rather complementary, that is, happiness is experienced only when you compare it with sadness. Having a certain amount of money cannot be the magic wand for happiness.

The researchers themselves state that the amount of money they think is minimum for happiness varies with class and region. So, it is not how much money you have, but how much that money can buy that gives happiness. But there is a catch. What people may want to buy will depend on socio-cultural and psychological factors. And sometimes you can buy something, you do buy something, yet you are not happy. Therefore, it is important to understand that this whole happiness business is not actually happiness business. Happiness is a different construct altogether. It is a felt state. Parents feel happy when their infant child kicks and giggles. Husbands feel happy when they can make their wives smile. Young men are happy when India beats Pakistan in cricket. The list is unending. And in each of those cases, the subject feels happy not because of anything he does or buys. He is happy just because he feels happy. The construct, happiness, is a state of mind — ephemeral and difficult to define. It is a unique combination of the head and the heart, an individual attribute. More importantly, it is not something that can be purchased for a price. Happiness is priceless and there cannot be a materialistic way to define it. Happiness is best understood in spiritual terms as ananda or bliss.

It is that feeling which is difficult to describe. But, yes, it gives you a sense of feel-good. And the best part is that you just need to be happy. Don’t wait for your income level to reach a certain stage.

Even the poor are happy. And even the rich are miserable. Let happiness be an unconditioned response.  It is a kind of enlightenment, linking it with pleasure is getting it all wrong.

ADS: LYING CREATIVELY?

There was a very interesting commercial shown on the television sometime back. The advertisement was about the promotion of a ceiling fan. The commercial started with a simple looking person going to a shop that was selling electrical goods. He wants to buy a fan and asks the shopkeeper to show him a good fan that meets his needs of both quality and cost. The shopkeeper shows a fan of a certain company and recommends the brand to him suggesting that it matches all the features that he is looking for. Before taking a decision the man asks a final question as to what is the main reason the shop keeper is recommending it. The shopkeeper says it has PSPO. Naturally, being unable to decipher the meaning of the term the man innocently asks what is this PSPO. And all hell breaks loose as if the man has committed a cardinal sin by not knowing what PSPO is. The people all around look at him with contempt, shouting that he doesn’t know PSPO. The ad was popular and effective but the question remains what is this PSPO. Well, there was a fancy coinage given to unscramble the acronym, though whatever that meant may again be open to interpretation.

However, someone once asked the ad guru who had created this punch line — woh PSPO nahin janta (he doesn’t know PSPO) — as to what the acronym meant. The rather witty retort was that even he didn’t know. Moral of the story? Try to remember the same, age-old, school-time adage our grammar books had taught us — look before you leap. In the present case, it means don’t buy anything just on the basis the claims made by the seller. And not just products. Even the ideas. In fact, in the present times ideas are proving more harmful than the products because they have a far longer shelf life than the products. Moreover, for the claims made by marketers promoting a product there are certain regulating agencies like the Advertising Standards Control of India (ASCI). Recently, the ASCI upheld complaints against 200 misleading ads out of over 300 advertisements of top companies that were pointed out relating to subjects like healthcare, education, etc. But what about the ideas that political parties propagate or even the many religious gurus proclaim. Well, the masses are gullible and they can be misled by those falsifications, the proclamations which the innocent may buy. Educating the masses may not be easy and well-nigh impossible. Do we not need some kind of a monitoring on the claims and the promises which are made? Lying has always been regarded as a sin. But what about institutional lying which the political parties are resorting to. Former British PM and statesman had in a rather tongue-in-check remark once said that there are three kinds of lies — lies, damn lies and statistics.

He probably forgot about the fourth and the damnest of the lies — politics. It has the maximum impact on the maximum number. It was for this reason that politics without principles was mentioned as one of the seven deadly sins by Gandhi. The saving grace, however, is that as former US President Lincoln had said, you can fool some people all the time, all the people sometime, but not all the people all the time. Nevertheless, watch those advertisements promising you the moon.

TREND OF THE TIMES

A man shall do all the rational things but only after exploring all other possibilities” — famous words from Keynes spoken long back. But it seems people are now doing the rational things. Of course, they are doing it after exploring all other possibilities. So the most popular course in Harvard University is the one on how to be happier, a course that teaches positive psychology. The topics discussed include happiness, self-esteem, empathy, friendship etc. Similarly the most popular course in the Yale, another famous US university, is again one on happiness, which discusses psychology and the good life. Certainly these are the trends of the time as the once highly popular course MBA is losing its sheen in the US, the very place from where it was popularised. They are now discussing the validity of the MBA curriculum as debates in classrooms centre around corporate misdemeanours in organisations that shot to prominence due to the overnight growth in profitability, whatever way. It is now being realised that what management education should focus on is values, ethics, integrity, and character. This is what one of the most prolific writers of management, Peter Drucker, would have perhaps meant when he said, management is doing right things. Though he never categorically mentioned what those right things are, yet the indications were clear. As we move ahead in this age of commerce anxiety, stress, unhappiness, greed and envy become the defining features. Anxiety as your purpose in life is misplaced. And this causes stress resulting in unhappiness. Greed and envy are the emotions that act like fuel in fire. There was a time when most people were driven by a mission. What is my purpose in life? It was not an existential crisis but a definite objective to do good in this world. But the times changed and the driving force became vision. Where do I go from here? That is, my status, my position in years to come. Envy thus gained preponderance and conflicts of choice started arising. These are different times. The motivating force that has become prominent is commission. How much do I get? So it is now both envy and greed that dominate. In the process the casualty number one is happiness. Children are unhappy. Parents are unhappy. Families are unhappy. Societies are unhappy. Slowly but certainly the futility of our objectives and actions are becoming obvious. So we are trying to find that elusive happiness which we kept on chasing like a mirage in our quest for material gains. There is apparently nothing wrong in seeking material prosperity. But the point is at what cost? The hankering for material prosperity has made man impatient and he is always on tenterhooks. This is dangerous. The medical science also accepts this even though many medical practitioners carry on their business as usual. But that apart, let us examine this happiness business. Can happiness be taught? Well both yes and no. Yes for those whose minds are humble and amenable to reason, and who believe what they learn. And no for those whose egos are so powerful that they block all rational knowledge. Nevertheless, if what is happening on the happiness front is not just a fashion but realisation, we may take this as a step forward for humanity. A quest for some higher level of consciousness. Yet, it is still a long way to go. How long? Well, let us wait and see.

AN INDIAN RENAISSANCE

Development of nations as a result of human efforts and history has established beyond doubt that sincere attempts at human resource development plays a crucial role in this. This is where the role of education becomes critical. But what’s unfortunate is that the education policy of our country has seen more trial and error than genuine experimentation. It won’t be exaggeration to say that Macaulay still rules from the grave. There have been attempts to reinvent Indian education in the past, the two important policy initiatives being those of the years 1968 and 1986. However, lofty ideals notwithstanding, those policy initiatives at best proved cosmetic and missed the point that the first requirement is to unshackle the education system from the vice-like grip of Macaulay-ism. It needs to be understood that the education system for India developed by Macaulay was with a definite and far reaching objective — to instil some kind of an inferiority complex through a systemic design to perpetrate colonial rule.

The curriculum, the teaching, the monitoring were all means to make the Indian people realize that Indian-ness is retrograde and believe that the Indian culture and the Indian thinking was sub-optimal and regressive. Seven decades down the line it is still difficult to convince a large section of the Indian populace that we, too, can represent quality and excellence. Not just in technology but also in thoughts and ideas. It is against this back drop that there is need to revisit what we teach in schools.

The lessons, the curricula, the personalities, the history and even the literature. It is time for applying some kind of a business process reengineering as far as school education is concerned. The school years are the formative years and the lessons taught in schools have a lasting impact on the minds of the pupils. We still believe that Indian writers are poor country cousins of the native English authors and Indian literature is a substandard copycat of the West. Changing this mindset is important. Shakespeare or Wordsworth or Milton is not objected to, but Tagore, or RK Narayan, or for that matter Anita Desai, or Naipaul can also find place on the same pedestal. In fact, if Mark Antony’s speech is class, Nehru’s ‘Tryst with Destiny’ is no less a work of oratory.

And The Discovery of India is a wonderful piece of literature. On November 21, 2005, while speaking at the 37th Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Lecture the legendary Singapore leader and strongman Lee Kuan Yew while talking about the role of India in Asian Renaissance, expressed his admiration for the Discovery of India as well as the ‘Tryst with Destiny’ speech. Similarly, the more than 60-page note of dissent of Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya to the Indian Industrial Commission in the year 1918 is an equally elegant piece of writing. Even the Bombay Congress centenary speech of Rajiv Gandhi in 1985 is a class apart. Writings of Vivekananda, Radha Krishnan, Shri Aurobindo and Mahatma Gandhi all are classy pieces of literature and must find more place in the English literature courses taught at Class X and XII levels in India. It is time the framers of school curriculum at NCERT thought of giving Indian writers their due. Literary works of Indian authors are comparable to the best of the West but we somehow lack the mindset to accept that. The point is that if we do not recognise the worth of our litterateurs why others will?

THE ESSENTIAL BHAGAVAD GITA

There is a story from the Mahabharata that when Arjuna had returned to Hastinapur, he one day requested Krishna to repeat the Gita. The Lord then admits that he will not be able to do it with the same effect as he could in the battlefield because he was then in the full state of yoga. This is the essence of Gita — your best comes when you are fully involved and do not get distracted by other thoughts. Life is like the battle of Kurukshetra and complete dedication to the cause can bring the best in you. The Gita is a philosophical narration that enlightens the wandering mind of the reader with a yogi’s wisdom. Yogi is a person who is above desires, attachments, fear, pride, and doubts. This is why Lord Krishna is also called Yogeshwar. He symbolises both the softness of love and the toughness of strength. The theme of the Gita is unrelentingly logical and uncompromisingly scientific. It was due to this unique quality that the Gita could deliver the all-important lesson of life to Arjuna: Duty for duty’s sake. No lust for rewards, no fear of losses, just pure and committed effort to uphold the path of dharma. Arjuna’s intellectual hesitations and mental doubts were initially making him suffer in disbelief on himself giving him a conflict of choice, a dilemma difficult to resolve. But gradually as the Gita unfolds, Arjuna’s confidence soars and his belief system gets strengthened. The Gita, in a way, is the sum and substance of the Upanishadic teachings as symbolised by the declarations called the three Mahavakyas: That thou art, Iyam atma brahman and aham brahmasmi.  The main focus of the Gita is on the existence of the imperishable brahman. Spread over 18 chapters, the central lesson of the Gita is the importance of commitment to duty without craving for the fruits. Duty or karma is the purpose of life and devotion to that duty is the quality of a yogi. To be a yogi is not to denounce the world and walk away from the vicissitudes of life. Rather it is to retain the purity of purpose despite being in the thick of things. Denouncement is often misunderstood as withdrawal. It is not. It is to stand up and fight your battle for the cause of duty. To understand the concept of duty, there is a need to comprehend the idea of knowledge. The elements of knowledge include moral qualities and ascetic practices which are the basis of spiritual awakening. The spiritual awakening leads to complete control over mind and absence of attachment for objects of the senses, which in the real meaning of detachment or vairagya. It is a state of evenness of the mind that is thus relieved of the preoccupation with attachment and affections. Once this state of evenness of mind is achieved, a condition of tranquillity will prevail, giving the ability to take the right decisions. Our decisions go wrong because of the vacillations of the mind. The objective of the Gita is to help the individual reach the state of stable mind. The Gita teaches perseverance in the face of impending threats. It calls upon us to dedicate our mind, body, and soul to pure duty and rewrite destiny. It provides strength in times of distress, spark in times of darkness, and helps snatch success from the jaws of failure. The essence of the Gita is to meet the challenges of life with determination.

REINVENTING EDUCATION

In most of his addresses, Pranab Mukherjee, the former President of India, always expressed concern about the ‘value’ crisis in society and talked about ‘resetting the moral compass’ of the nation. Pranab babu is a serious scholar and when someone like him talks about something, it is time for all of us to sit up and listen and do some soul-searching. Yes, it is time for introspection and find out what has gone wrong and why. The answer may perhaps lie in education. It may be recalled that it was in the month of January 1906 that the idea of the Banaras Hindu University was crystalised at a meeting of Sanatan Dharma Mahasabha at Allahabad presided by Jagadguru Sri Sankaracharya of Govardhan Math after Malviyaji’s idea of Hindu University was mooted at Varanasi in 1904.

The interesting thing to note is Malviyaji’s idea of education which offers cues for present-day problems. Malviyaji’s view was that education should not only create technocrats and bureaucrats but also men and women of integrity and values. He was of the firm belief that without values, education could not be effective. This is what he had to say in proposing the scheme for the BHU in 1905: “Mere industrial advancement cannot ensure happiness and prosperity to any people; nor can it raise them in the scale of nations. Formation of character is even more important for the well-being of the individual and of the community than cultivation of intellect.

Hence, the proposed university has placed formation of character in youth as one of its principal objectives. It will seek not merely to turn out men as engineers, scientists, doctors, merchants, theologists, but also as men of high character, probity and honour. It will be a nursery of good citizens instead of only a mint for hallmarking a certain standard of knowledge.” This is the crux of the issue. Education needs to reorient itself towards developing good citizens rather than professionals with a nose for commerce only. Malviyaji was guided by the excellence of our past educational traditions as embodied in the Takshashila and the Nalanda, together with the achievements of modern Western schools of learning like Oxford, Cambridge, and the Sorbonne. India was a world leader once upon a time and known for its value-driven society.

It was this India that was described as sone ki chidiya (golden bird). Whatever that meant can be open to interpretation but the fact remains that famous Indologist, AL Basham, wrote a full volume on A Wonder that was India. Things appear to have changed over the ages and India is getting known more for the wrong reasons. Something is certainly amiss. If India is to find its pristine glory, the preeminence of values and ethics need to be reestablished. There is need to realise that it is time we reemphasised values and ethics to meet the challenges of the present century. Education has to undergo a paradigm shift and move from teachers’ driven model to learner-centric approach so that it illuminates the minds of the students rather than only filling them with information. Let every educational institution rededicate itself to do what an educational system should be doing — showing the right path to society. In the end, we may remember what Robert Browning had said: “Progress is the law of life, man is not man yet.”