CURRENTLY dealing with political instability, economic decline, the Line of Control crisis, Senate horse-trading and terrorism, the people of Pakistan must celebrate that as it has jumped from 75th to the previous 80th in the list of World Happiness Report, 2018.

This list is prepared by independent analysts of UN Sustainable Development Solutions Networks (UN-SDSN) to check countries by their social happiness, economic development, psychological fitness, life expectancy, education, food, technology and communications, etc.

This time Pakistan improved its position. Amazingly India stood at 133rd, China 86th, Sri Lanka 116th and Bangladesh at 115th position.

This is not less than a blessing in the current period. These reports assist governments and people to make future investment plannings, trace out drawbacks and improvement in performance.

Considering the above-mentioned reasonably good performance if we can tackle the problems of poor health and education standards, honour killings, extra-judicial murders, law and order and troubled relations with neighbours, we can then expect to be amongst the list of happiest countries in the world.

Rana Waqas
Lahore

Published in Dawn, March 18th, 2018