MyTake

The world has progressed in speed and space, in wealth and health, in knowledge and wisdom and the process is going on. It has also expanded the horizon of our thinking and raised expectation from society, government and individuals. There are more visible democracies, there are larger and taller buildings as ever, age span has increased, there are more schools and hospitals, more people are getting above the poverty line, it gives a feeling as if it has become a better and happier place to live now. This is what has to be studied as to really whether the visible progress has been translated into better human well-being or not. Human Well-Being is a construct evolved from the philosophy of living well – mentally, physically, socially, and spiritually. Individuals tend to perform acts that (they think) provide them satisfaction and lead towards improving their state of ‘living well’. Fulfilment of human needs and having positive living environment around, contributes towards an assur...

Background of one of my forthcoming chapters... On #happiness , #income & #HumanWellBeing .... === Last 2 decades have produced voluminous literature on happiness, well-being, and quality-of-life. Objectively the world has become a better place to live; science has solved many problems and has made life comfortable and easy; economically last century has witnessed tremendous growth; per capita income grew by around 6 times whereas population grew by around 4.6 times; and the world GDP has grown by more than thirty times. Amid all these visible indicators the problems of depression, stress, health hazards, family disputes, work-life conflict, discrimination, crime, emotional imbalances, social alienation, climate change, etc. are hindering human progress. The inequalities are on the rise and aspiration levels for material well-being are high. This in result is affecting happiness and peace of individuals. The puzzle of income and happiness has been in the domain of research for...

The world is witnessing one of the worst pandemic of last one hundred years.  In one or the other way all citizens of the world are affected by this catastrophic occurrence causing huge losses of human lives viz-a-viz conditions of living.  The so called first world is the worst hit so far.  On March 22, 2020, the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi announced 21-day lockdown to be effective from midnight.  He was able to read the signals and looking at the size of the population and the kind of health infrastructure that is required to deal with such a menace, this declaration was timely and needed.  On March 26, 2020, the King of Saudi Arabia convened an extraordinary virtual session of G20 nations where all the leaders expressed their concern over this grave global pandemic and agreed to develop a concrete action plan to fight together.  The Prime Minister of India , emphasized on putting the human beings at the centre of such planning for global pros...

All of us have an inherent desire to live happy life. Organisations help us achieve our individual goals whereby contributing towards making employees happy. Finance, Marketing and Production are identified as the key functional areas of management and are considered as line function. However HR is traditionally considered as staff function. Though without people, no organisation can ever function, yet their participation in key strategic decisions of the firm is not welcomed. That has caused much harm to organizations and modern day organizations have started realising this which is visible in their overall strategies. Volumes of literature is created on the premise of productive worker, happy worker transformation. It has also driven the academia to explore happy worker, productive worker relationship. Whatever be the case the spillover is evidenced in many organizations which are thriving by putting people first. It is in this context that organizations have to devise appropriat...

[pc: https://www.livehappy.com/relationships/community/celebrate-international-day-happiness] The size of an economy and level of development is predominantly measured in terms of GDP. Economic progress has been determining the speed of development through the eyes of Kuznets and Stone via production, income and output. It has its roots in Adam Smith and the invisible hand as described in The theory of moral sentiments and The wealth of nations. Paul Samuelson viewed GDP as one of the great inventions of the twentieth century. None of these economists would have imagined that the nations would get so obsessed with GDP that all their policies and practices would target growth indicators surrounding GDP and the progress of nations would be measured and compared based on this key coinage.   It is discussed at length by economists and psychologists that improvements in GDP have not translated in enhancing life satisfaction of people.   Though their physical s...

[PC: http://www.mpnewsflash.com/anand-activities-to-be-introduced-on-experimental-basis] Around a decade back while interacting with Professor Suresh Tendulkar I suggested that we should have some question to track happiness level of people at national level by having a question or two in the National Sample Survey conducted, as it is done in the US through General Social Survey. My suggestion was driven by the fact that we lack data on happiness from India and the world depends on some unorganized data collected through a very small sample size. He showed concern for the issue and replied that it is not proper time for India to go for this as there are sizable amount of people living below poverty line and not just this, people are dying out of miseries and the size of such population is not small. Around the same time Adrian White of University of Leicester developed World Map of Happiness compiling secondary data of 178 nations in which Bhutan had 8th rank and India ...

One of my friends was looking for a house and a broker was taking him to different places and was helping him choose the best. Most of the explanations of the broker were on the proximity of the houses with the hospitals, schools, bus-stand, banks, airports, national highway, etc. The argument of my friend was that these are not the places that I would like to visit every day, rather I need to look at the proximity to my workplace where I have to go every day. This is a real concern apart from the utilities one looks for in the nearby vicinity. [PC: https://roselawgroupreporter.com/2014/09/money-ranks-gilbert-among-livable-cities-phoenix-among-best-bargains/] While attending a conference on Livable Cities, I got to learn that there are three important components to assure livability, that are: place of stay, place of work, and ease of commuting between the two, i.e., facility of transportation and commuting time. For urban planning and for assuring better human well-be...

Sitting in the Vivekananda Hall at the Delhi School of Economics on the day of his birth anniversary while witnessing the discussions on Digital Revolution and the future ahead, I get reminded of the worldview Swami Vivekanand portrayed through his preaching and practices. The inscription in the hall reads - May I be born again and again, and suffer thousands of miseries so that I may worship the only God that exists, the only God I believe in, the sum total of all souls – and above all, my God the wicked, my God the miserable, my God the poor of all races, is the special object of my worship . The farsightedness of his thinking and the depth in his beliefs brilliantly blended the universal conception that science and technology is trying to bring together by making the world look like a village and the flattening is proving to be a temptation for an entrepreneur and enterprise. Yes we are all beholding digital journey into the new world and as Nandan Nilekani had told Thomas...

ORGANIZATIONS strive for better firm performance. In competitive environment it becomes a greater challenge to compete with their previous performance viz-a-viz the performance of the rivals. In all these efforts employees play key role. Employees work in organizations to achieve their individual goals.    They put efforts to attain organizational objectives and goals which indirectly helps them achieve their goals. This healthy and complementary relationship keeps adding value to the organizational efforts and achievements. The prominence of human relations school has proven that satisfied and happy employees would be more productive and result oriented. However many times organizations have focused more on customers and clients than employees which has its own wells and ills. But for visioning sustainable competitive advantage and to be a successful player in the long run, organizations have to start believing in prioritizing the focus on employees rather than customers. ...

During the monsoon of 2005, I was in Hongkong for an international seminar on Happiness and Public Policy at Lignan University. One of the evenings while we visited IFC mall, a big board displayed in one of the lobbies of the mall caught my attention which read as - Whoever said money can’t buy you happiness simply didn’t know where to go shopping. It seemed as if shopping made people happy provided one had money to spend. Elizabeth Dunn of University of British Columbia suggested through research that spending money on others makes us happier than spending for ourselves and further it is the experiences that we pay for adds to our happiness much more than the material things that we buy. Investing in others makes us feel happier and healthier even when it might make us poorer by few bucks. Seminal contribution of Richard Easterlin (Easterlin Paradox) help us understand the relationship between money and happiness much better. Increase in incomes (at national level) does not ...

Government and industry face a dire challenge of responding to the expectations of the citizens. Government responds through public policy and industry through products and services. In independent India our economic policies were driven with a unique model of mixed economy whereby addressing industry and society. Welfare of the people was the primary concern and an intention of following Gandhi’s principles was initially visible. Gandhi who believed in small scale industries and village oriented economic policies had strong view on self-sufficiency concept which questioned western model of economic development. Nehru was all for socialistic pattern of society hiding away his thinking on capitalism. Nehru’s contribution is acknowledged in creating the temples of modern India. Or to say it laid the foundation of India’s economic development. Our grandparents always emphasized on the moral learnt through the story of Rabbit and the Tortoise – slow and steady, wins the race. It ...

The existence of organization, big or small, state owned or privately owned, profit making or non-profit making, is initiated with some purpose in mind and in that direction objectives are outlined. The organizational activities are designed and the task to perform those activities is assigned to the employees or workers as the case may be. The performance is evaluated from the perspective of organizational objectives. During the course of its operation, the organization at times faces competition from other organizations or with past performance or with situation. These forces of competition compel the organization to draft winning strategies so that each one of them can perform better than the other. And this is what keeps an organization on toes and organizations keep surviving like this for years. Just like human beings. The human life keep facing challenges, ups and downs throughout and this is what makes life interesting as well as worth living.  Individuals perform t...