Expected outcome
At the completion of this course students are expected to learn about the following:
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The ideas of happiness and unhappiness.
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The ideas of good society.
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Relationship between individual values, social structure and social values.
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Nature of social change in India.
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Approaches to social change and transformation in India.
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Evaluate the processes of change from one’s own standpoint.
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Develop a moral approach to social and professional issues.
I would like to end this lecture by saying that Bhutan is the first country which makes happiness as the goal of planning. It defines and plans to achieve what their planners call Gross National Happiness (GNH). The Centre for Bhutan Studies has published proceedings of conferences that it has been holding on GNH. Worcester operationalizes GNH as consisting of seven elements, viz. food, water, shelter, health, education, clothes and happiness and love (Worcester, 2004), indicating that money is important so long as it satisfies the basic human needs without causing stress, depression and family conflicts which could make a person unhappy; after all love and happiness are also important. But then what is happiness that requires a self-referential definition of it. In the following lectures we will examine how the various authors who have looked at GNH of Bhutan from diverse perspectives have understood by the concept of happiness at individual and societal level and by the linkages between the two. One concept that combines the subjective happiness with social happiness is the concept of Happy-Life-Years (HLY). Veenhoven defines happiness as “ the“the degree to which a person evaluates the overall quality of his present life-as-a-whole positively. In other words, how much the person likes the life he/she leads (Veenhoven, 2004).
The course would not support or reject any particular religion, ideology or framework of values. The students are encouraged to develop their own position on the issues involving individual and social challenges.
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