Thaindian News

New Delhi, Dec 20 (IANS) hutan’s Prime Minister Jigmi Y. Thinley Tuesday said that happiness is the purpose and ultimate desire of every human being and for real sustainable growth, the needs of body and mind have to be attended to equally.

“As human beings, we have needs not only of the body but of the mind and it is when the two needs are equally attended that one is able to enjoy a sustained state of being that is called happiness. Happiness is not ephemeral and is only partly conditioned by external stimuli,” he said delivering the Fourth Prof Hiren Mukherjee Memorial Annual Parliamentary Lecture.

He spoke on “Gross National Happiness: A holistic paradigm for sustainable development”.

Regretting that GDP was being interpreted as an index of human happiness, Thinley said: “It is the ultimate desire of every human being and it is only natural that the primary role of the state must be to create enabling conditions for any citizen who chooses to pursue happiness. It is mainly for this role that the government must be held accountable.”

The prime minister of the himalayan kingdom said that ever since the concept of gross national happiness (GNH) was introduced to the world as an alternative development paradigm at the UNDP Asia Pacific Millennium Summit in 1998, “there is now in place a comprehensive set of indices comprising nine causes or domains of happiness. These provide for a holistic, sustainable and inclusive development model which can be measured through 72 variables”.

Thinley said that “we are at a crossroads” and “while accepting the many good that the GDP-based development model has done, it is time, if not too late, to accept that we need to relegate it to its limited use and establish a new architecture for genuine and progressive development of human society”.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said that his discussions with Thinley on different occasions gave him “great hope and confidence that our two democracies working together are poised to forge an even stronger partnership that will bring added prosperity to our people, promote our common security and strengthen our ancient ties of friendship”.

Welcoming Bhutan’s first democratically elected prime minister, Manmohan Singh said that ever since the parliamentary election in 2008, Thinley had worked to fulfil the solemn mandate of his people with great distinction.

Vice President M. Hamid Ansari said that the pursuit of happiness was an essential ingredient of a holistic approach to sustainable development and this was evident from the overwhelming support given by the international community in July this year to general assembly resolution on GNH.

Many would recall Lord Buddha’s dictum that the path to happiness starts from an understanding of the root causes of suffering, Ansari said.