Robert Buddan

As we enter another budget year, we will be given gross domestic product (GDP) data and targets in March/April by which to measure and judge our progress. But these are economic measurements of material progress that many believe do not measure what countries should really aim for, which is the happiness of their people.

A year ago, the president of France, Nicholas Sarkozy, asked two very important persons, Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen, to develop a well-being/happiness index in order to have a better measure of what governments and societies should aim for. Both men are Nobel Laureates in economics, the very discipline that gave us the GDP.

People have been dissatisfied with the GDP measurement for some time and a recent survey explains why.

LOW RANKING

Residents sit on the waterfront against a backdrop of the Singapore skyline in this October 16, 2006 file photo. Singapore is often hailed as a model of economic success but its people say they are generally unhappy about life. - File

Singapore, a model some say we should follow, a country that is the richest in Asia after Japan, and ranked as one of the most efficient and least corrupt, scored among the lowest in a well-being survey.

Singaporeans were dissatisfied with their lives. They rated their country low on freedom to develop as a human beings and to make personal choices. Singapore has produced very obedient people with robot-like efficiency for a culture that prizes social orderliness. But many less efficient and less regimented countries scored better than Singapore on well-being.

As long ago as 1972, the king of Bhutan, a small country in the Himalayas, called for a measurement of happiness, a Gross National Happiness Index, based not on the western values of material production, but on Buddhist values of right livelihood, compassion and sharing.

No one paid much attention to the Buddhist king, Jigme Singye Wanchuck. Instead, authoritarian and capitalist Singapore became the popular model, and Lee Kuan Yew, its celebrated leader, became 'king'.

QUALITY OF LIFE

However, since the 1990s, more quality of life indices have emerged to better balance out the dominance of the GDP, the most popular one being the Human Development Index of the United Nations.

Others have developed a Genuine Progress Index, Gross Happiness Index, and the Happy Planet Index, and western countries like Britain, Canada and France are showing more interest in measuring quality of life. The Happy Planet Index of Britain, which describes itself as an index of human well-being and environmental impact, ranks Bhutan at 13 and Singapore at 131 out of 178 countries.

Joseph Stigliz resigned as chief economist at the World Bank in 1999 in disillusionment with the way the world economic order worked, and he, too, wants a broader and better measure of development.

He has a good partner in the Indian economist Amartya Sen, who has concentrated his studies on the well-being of people, such as their access to health and education. They believe the GDP measurement can lead to more harm than good.

It does not measure damage to the environment and depletion of natural resources, the quality of spiritual and cultural life, the degree of freedom and sense of safety, the closeness of family, and the peacefulness of communities.

It obscures gaps between rich and poor. GDP can, in fact, be rising while people are actually becoming more dissatisfied with their lives. Globalisation now has countries competing to achieve high GDP rates by chasing after investments and into free trade agreements that do not protect their environments or health and labour standards, and that damage their food, air and water quality and the quality of life itself.

COMMUNITY-BASED MODEL

New developmentalists are saying that if the aim of progress and development is happiness and well-being, there must be something wrong if emotional breakdown, depression and suicide are increasing. A community-based model of development might be a better alternative to achieve happiness and a better quality of life.

It is more people-centred because it involves people in making decisions that affect their lives, such as decisions that can preserve their rivers, beaches, forests and air quality. It is more communitarian because it recognises that common values and interests are better guides to satisfying the greatest happiness of the greatest number.

It is more developmental because it starts projects from the bottom up among villagers and farming communities, rather than depending on trickle down where benefits often do not reach all the way down to the poor.

It is humane because it relies on people's sense of fairness and compassion rather than impersonal forces of the market or bureaucratic forces of the state to determine who gets what. It is also more democratic because it comes closest to government of, by, and for the people, since the people are engaged rather than simply told what and what not to do.

The problem with the community-based model is that it can only work if it succeeds in displacing traditional and existing systems that undermine happiness, such as local don man systems, clientelism, cronyism, and landlordism. It also needs to develop trust in local institutions by making local government, police, fire, school, and educational services more efficient and fair.

It needs a new business partnership model to replace the family and corporate business models that take out of the communities without putting back into them.

SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE

It needs a new investment model for investments to be more socially responsible and so do not destroy environments, the safety of residential areas, or the community bonds and networks that are vital to the survival of the community. It needs a spirit of community that can override political partisanship when the interests of the larger community are at stake. Finally, it also needs to re-educate citizens into the responsibilities of citizenship, such as participation, volunteerism, cooperation and peace, and of the balance between rights and responsibilities.

NATIONAL LEADERSHIP

The model needs something else. It needs national leadership that can champion such a model. The People's National Party had voiced support for a community-based model.

The Jamaica Labour Party needs to articulate some model of development. It needs to talk more than about the need for investments, jobs and economic growth.

It needs to say how its model will engage people through their communities to make their lives better and more satisfying.

The budget debate is largely about the macroeconomy, not about the social, economic and political state of communities and the life of the people within them. A good innovation might be to require parish councils to engage in their own budget and development debates by reporting to their parish development committees on their revenue and spending measures, and on how parish development projects will engage people in the parishes.

The Government needs a clear vision for the ministry of local government and a role to coordinate all of this.

The work of the local government ministry has been downgraded to a department of local government in the Office of the Prime Minister under a junior minister.

Local government is seen as a burden on the cost of government (GDP), rather than the value it has for bringing people into government in the context of a happier model that engages them in controlling their environments. That is the direction in which the concept of 'development' is moving.

Robert Buddan lectures in the Department of Government, UWI, Mona. Email: Robert.Buddan@uwimona.edu.jm