The Madhya Pradesh Government, which has formed the Anand department first in the country, has taken a unique initiative while expanding the activities of the Anand department.
A Happiness Index International workshop is being organised at Bhopal on February 22 and 23. Experts from the United States of America, Dubai, Canada and other countries besides India are participating in the workshop, being organised with the collaboration of Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. The State Anand Sansthan has signed an agreement with the Indian Institute of Kharagpur to identify happiness index, measures to make people happy and its development. The workshop will begin at 10.00 a.m. on February 22 at Jehanuma Palace Hotel. Participants of the workshop will also meet Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan.
A total of 4 sessions, 2 on the first day and 2 on the concluding day will be held in the workshop. The Additional Chief Secretary, Anand Department, Iqbal Singh Bains, Chief Executive Officer of the State Anand Sansthan, Manohar Dubey, Prof Raj Raghunathan (USA), David Jones (Dubai), State Election Commissioner R Parshuram, Prof MK Mandal, Prof P Patnaik, Prof P Mishra, Prof J Mukherjee, Janamoni, Girja of IIT Kharagpur and other participants will take part in the workshop. Similarly, Prof Prateep Nayak, Samdu Chetri, Radhika Punshi, Prof Poornima Singh, Prof RC Tripathi, Prof Rekha Singhal. Prof SS Rekhi, Prof lilavati Krishnan, Prof Janak Pandey, Prof Kamlesh Singh, Prof Vijay Kumar Shotri, Rajul Asthana, Akhilesh Argal, Prof Ganesh Bagdia, Prof RS Pillai, Prof P Mishra, Vishwapati Trivedi and Prof Rajshekhran Pillai will participate in other sessions.
Notably, the work on various ideas to determine the level of happiness index has been undertaken in Madhya Pradesh. Work to enhance the level of happiness has been carried out in Bhutan and other countries by increasing the materialistic facilities, whereas in Madhya Pradesh, activities have been conducted by considering the increase in internal and outside happiness, following a fundamental method.
The workshop being organized at Bhopal is important because arrangements have been made in Madhya Pradesh by determining its own happiness index to enhance the level of common men’ happiness, different from the index adopted by other countries.
Taking benefit of the experiences from the works carried out in other countries in this field, the Anand sansthan has implemented several different programmes in the state in the past.