Reported by: Biswajit Dutta
Written by: Sabah Mannan
According to the ‘World Happiness Report 2017’, Pakistan tops the list of the happiest country in South Asia. Globally, Pakistan is ranked 80th while Bangladesh and India stands at 110 and 122. Salahuddin Ahmed, former governor and economist of Bangladesh Bank thinks that Pakistan’s happiness depends largely on their political stability and high percentage of Gross Domestic Product along with average income per capita. However, economist A. B. Mirza Azizul Islam expressed doubts with the list that the UN created saying that even though the country has good foreign investments; its GDP growth rate is 5.2% while Bangladesh and India is 7%. According to Salahuddin Ahmed the other reasons of Pakistan being the happiest country is, “Pakistan also has good relationship with the US and China in terms of foreign investment. Except for some border areas, four provinces of Pakistan have successfully established strict law and order, especially Punjab and Sindh. The country has a very strong and powerful judicial system and Election Commission. Its people enjoy the power of freedom of expression even though there are some cases of fanaticism”. On the other hand Azizul Islam believes that there are no way that the Pakistanis are happy because the law enforcement of the country is very weak. Last Monday, ‘World Happiness Report 2017’ was produced by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) on the occasion of World Happiness Day. The UN has been publishing this report since 2012. To create the list of the happiest countries in the world, six criteria are taken into consideration. The six criteria include real GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, and freedom to make life choices, generosity, and perceptions of corruption in terms of government and business.