Does this spark joy?

Clap along if you feel like the World Happiness rankings don't really matter

- SEEMA GOSWAMI

There was much angst on social media when the annual World Happiness Report was released recently, and revealed that India ranked a lowly 125 (out of 137) on the index. India's position improved from 136 in last year's report, but it still came below its neighbours Pakistan and Bangladesh. And strangely enough, even the two nations that are tearing themselves apart in a war - Russia and Ukraine - were ranked above India.

But even as pitched battles were fought on Twitter about how the questions asked in the survey were skewed towards Western societies, and how the survey was biased against India, an entirely different question was agitating my mind.

What does happiness actually mean? Is the definition the same for every person? Does it depend on extraneous factors? Or does happiness lie deep within ourselves? And is it up to each of us to excavate and find it? And in the context of the World Happiness Report, does it even make sense to measure happiness on a sliding scale?