News Brief
India Left In Stitches As Global 'Happiness Index' Puts War-Torn Palestine, Ukraine Ahead
Women practicing laughter yoga.
The World Happiness Report for 2024 was released on Wednesday (20 March), with Finland retaining its top spot on the index for the seventh consecutive year.
The annual UN-sponsored report ranked India at 126th position, the same as last year, in the happiness index.
The happiness ranking is based on individuals' self-assessed evaluations of life satisfaction, as well as GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom, generosity and corruption.
Israel too made it to the top five of the ranking.
Meanwhile, Afghanistan was deemed as the least happy country, after Congo, Sierra Leone, Lesotho and Lebanon.
India ranked 126th while China ranked 60th, Nepal at 93, Pakistan at 108, Sri Lanka at 128 and Bangladesh at 129th spots.
Interestingly, even the war-torn countries including Palestine and Ukraine were ahead of India in the ranking.
While Palestine ranked 103rd in the index, Ukraine was placed at 105th position.
Myanmar, where a civil war is going on between the Army and rebels, have been placed at 118th spot in the index.
Afghanistan, plagued by a humanitarian catastrophe since the Taliban regained control in 2021, stayed at the bottom of the 143 countries surveyed.
Further, for the first time since the report was published more than a decade ago, the United States and Germany were not among the 20 happiest nations, coming in 23rd and 24th respectively.
Responding to the report, many social media users expressed surprise and amusement that despite the ongoing conflicts in Palestine and Ukraine, these nations ranked higher than India on the happiness index.
"On the eve of the biggest elections in human history, the anti-India fraudsters behind the "global index" racket are at it again. Now they rank Bharat BEHIND devastated countries like Palestine, Ukraine & Pakistan on their World Happiness Index," BJP leader Baijayant Jay Panda said in a post on X.
"The Happiness Index for 2024 is out..... evidently Indians (rank 126) are less happy that Palestine, Pakistan, Myanmar, Russia and Ukraine," economist and EAC-PM member Sanjiv Sanyal wrote on X.
"This is not an index that came out some time ago. This came out yesterday i.e. well after the war in Israel-Palestine began. Ironically, the same organisations that publish such ridiculous indices are also trying to raise money in India for "aid" to some of these happy places," Sanyal added.
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