What makes people of country happy? Is it economy? Is it environment? Is it education? Is it government policies? Well all of these do contribute to people’s happiness in a country. But, it is not necessary to be higher economic pace and growth always. People are happier when they don’t experience inequality in distribution of wealth; people don’t mind paying taxes when there is fairness in tax structure. People are happy when government practices transparency in the implementing policies. People want safety, people want welfare, people want good infrastructure, hygiene and people want good quality education.

Corruption undermines government revenue and, therefore, limits the capacity of the government to invest in productive areas.  Corruption distorts the decision-making in public investment projects. It’s been observed the higher the level of corruption in a country, the larger the share of its economic activity that will go subversive, beyond the reach of the tax authorities. Corruption discourages entrepreneurship and innovation, it only encourages inefficiency. It dislocates the human resources.  It creates uncertainty among the citizens. And, it diminishes legitimacy in all walks of life and increases crimes.

In all countries there are rich and poor; but when the levels of inequality are low, and the welfare systems are strong, the citizens are happy. People don’t mind paying higher taxes. Look at Denmark, it ranks 158th in the world and Switzerland is even worse, at 174^th in the World & Economic Ranking standards.

The World Happiness Index Report is an annual publication of the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network which contains rankings of national happiness and analysis of the data from various perspectives. The first World Happiness Report was released in April 2012. In a high level meeting of UN well-being and Happiness were defined as new economic paradigms which drew international attention.

The report primarily uses data from the Gallup World Poll. Gallup is a credible polling organization. It is respected highly in media. Nevertheless, all researches including polling have some weaknesses which depend on the various methodologies and details of the poll and its questionnaires. Each research has few statistical limitations. Gallup ensures that each annual report is available to the public to download on the World Happiness Report website.

Happiness index is measured using parameters like Housing, Income, Work, Community, Civic Engagement, Education, Environment, Health, Life Satisfaction, Safety and Life-Work balance etc. Each report is organized by chapters that delve deeper into issues relating to happiness. The chapters also include mental illness, the objective benefits of happiness, the importance of ethics, policy implications which lead to subjective wellbeing. The report is based on how strong a country’s social foundation and social trust is.

Bhutan is one of the Buddhist Kingdoms in the World and so far has preserved much of their culture since the 17th century. Even with globalization, Bhutan follows its Buddhist culture. It allows a certain number of foreigners into the country each year, and the two hundred dollars a day that must be paid by every traveller is a deterrent for many. Internet, television, and western dress were banned from the country up until ten years ago. But over the past ten years globalization has proved to be a challenge to this tiny nation. Things have begun to change, but they are trying to balance things in their own way.

Bhutan is the only country in the world that has a ‘GNH’ which is “Gross National Happiness.” The process of measuring GNH began when Bhutan opened up to globalization. It measures people’s quality of life, and makes sure that both material and spiritual development happen together in its citizen’s lives. Bhutan has balanced it rightly so far.

Happiness is very important to both individuals and as a country. A happy individual is productive and creative. As human beings, although we possess cognitive abilities and are highly “thought” oriented, the quality of our lives is determined by our emotions. A happy human is emotionally strong because happiness protects heart, it strengthens immune system, it helps in combating stress, it found that happy people have fewer aches and pains.

All Nordic countries are among the happiest countries on the planet, as are Switzerland, the Netherlands, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Finland is the winner in 2018 report. Finland’s 5.5 million residents enjoy more forest per square mile than any European country. They have maintained extremely high environmental standards. It’s a peaceful place on Earth. Its immigrants are also happy. The World Happiness Report made particular mention of the consistency in happiness between them and local born residents.

In 2018 World Happiness Index Report, India ranks at 133^rd place with a drop of eleven places since previous report. Pakistan is ranked 75th, while Nepal ranked at 101^st, Sri Lanka at 116th position and Bangladesh at 115^th, Bhutan at 97^th place. If you wonder which is the world’s least happy country? It is Burundi, followed by Central African Republic, South Sudan and Tanzania, due to condemnation of life in Africa.

The business world needs to cope with the rapidly changing sustainability landscape while balancing their financial performance and growing costs of energy and raw materials. The sustainability performance question spans diversely with academic disciplines such as human resource management, marketing, economics, accounting, tourism, operations, law, governance, supply chain and many more. Although handling a fusion of these diverse disciplines is a tough job, yet, being realistic is most important for survival of the planet.

For many of us, the meaning of sustainability remains elusive. Some equate it to environmental wellbeing while others think of sustainability as equivalent to corporate social responsibility. Let us understand this: business sustainability refers to the ability of firms to respond to their short term as well as long term performance needs without compromising on their future growth that requires the natural and human resources available in the external environment. One more fact is that the balancing of economic, social, and ecology is fragile in nature. Therefore, sustainability encompasses voluntary corporate strategies geared towards an integration of environmental, social, and economic objectives into the fabric of the organisational life (Quinn & Dalton, 2009). Let’s look at some brilliant examples of how companies are innovating.

The world’s largest shipping companies such as DHL, UPS & FedEx need to bear tons of maintenance fees for the maintenance of their vehicles, as well as the costs of oil and gasoline to keep them running. As an alternative to that, and also to cut through busy and crowded streets, each of the companies has been innovated various new delivery methods. DHL has set up couriers on bicycles in nine European countries so far, including its most recent entry in a few German cities. The company replaced 33 trucks with 33 cargo bikes in the Netherlands, which DHL estimates saves them $575,000 annually and reduces carbon dioxide emissions by 152 metric tons per year. The company knew customers were asking for a “cleaner transport alternative” to the gas-guzzling trucks, and the bikes as part of clean environment solution. The efforts of DHL are highly appreciable for it aims to utilize bicycle couriers in the next few years anywhere in the world to improve their customer service and effectiveness.

Cargo bikes are also taking various forms for FedEx and UPS — each of course with the company’s standard logos and colour schemes. FedEx began piloting electric tricycles in Paris as early as 2010, and UPS expanded its use of electric Cargo Cruisers since 2012 in several European cities. Other businesses like Whole Foods and Ikea are also experimenting with delivery through bicycles.

LanzaTech is a clean-tech company that’s revolutionizing the way the world thinks about carbon waste. The company uses a bacterium for its fermentation, Clostridium autoethanogenum, which eats carbon monoxide and emits ethanol without using water or land resources. The company treats carbon as an opportunity instead of a liability. LanzaTech’s proprietary microbes capture and recycle waste gases before they are emitted as greenhouse gases, reducing harmful nitrous and sulphur oxides by over 85%. Essentially, they’re turning air into something of value. The company estimates it can apply its process to 65% of the world’s steel mills, with the potential to make 30 billion gallons of ethanol, or 19% of today’s current jet fuel demand. Kudos to this company!!!

Google’s Nest: uses a system that turns food waste into compost or that a shipping company is doing what it can to cut down on emissions, there are also companies providing you with direct ways to impact the environment yourself. One of those is Nest, the smart thermostat system that was acquired by Google in 2014. According to Nest, half of your energy bill is affected by your thermostat alone. The company estimates that by using a programmable thermostat that automatically adjusts for sleeping, when you’re awake, and other learned routines, the system can decrease by about 20%.

In India, Jain Irrigation Systems Ltd is a diversified entity with turnover in excess of one billion dollars. The company has a global presence with 30 manufacturing bases spread over four continents. Through its 6700 dealers and distributors worldwide, the company has reached over 4.5 million farmers. This is world’s second largest Micro-Irrigation company. Its Micro-Irrigation Division manufactures a full range of precision-irrigation products. Jain irrigation provides services from soil survey, engineering design to agronomic support. It nurtures a sprawling 2000 acre Hi-Tech Agri Institute including a Farm Resource R&D, Demo, and Training & Extension Centre. It also undertakes turnkey projects for agricultural and irrigation development with holistic & integrated approach. Over 1500 agri and irrigation scientists, engineers and technicians are engaged in offering services for complete or partial project planning and implementation e.g Watershed Development through Wasteland Transformation, including crop agronomy, protected cultivation etc.

Their Tissue Culture Division can produce 80 million plantlets of banana at full capacity and has established matching primary and secondary hardening facilities as well as independent R&D and virology labs. Similarly, a modern Bio- tech lab equipped with all modern and state–of–the–art facilities meet the needs of continuous genetic improvement and validation program in cultivators of onion, banana, mango, pomegranate etc. They process tropical fruits like mango, banana, and pomegranates into purees, concentrates, juices and IQF products. The Dehydration Facility dehydrates onions & vegetables. The Spray Drying Unit processes gooseberry and other fruit purees into powders. The best part is that agricultural and fruit processing waste is converted into biogas to generate power of 1.6 MW capacities along with waste heat for refrigeration and soil conditioner.

Unilever’s Sustainable Living Plan: Unilever in 2010 launched its blueprint for sustainable business, named the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan. Sustainable living brands, including Dove, Lifebuoy, Ben & Jerry’s and Comfort are integrated into the contribution they make to the world and into their products’ ingredients and lifecycle. The consumer goods giant says about 50 percent of its growth in 2014 came from sustainable living brands, which also grew at twice the rate of the rest of the business. Not only are Unilever’s sustainable living products more profitable than standard products by 2 gross margin points, these products also drive other top-line benefits, Unilever says. This purposefulness and sustainable living plan attracts and retains young talent. No wonder, Unilever is among top 3 most sought-after employers globally. About 50 percent of graduates cite Unilever sustainability credentials as the main reason for wishing to join the company.

GE Ecomagination: GE’s Ecoimagination line of products and services has generated more than $200 billion in revenues since GE started the program 10 years ago. Revenue from Ecomagination products totalled $34 billion in 2014, representing about 30 percent of total GE sales. A key success factor for Ecomagination is to reduce energy and water waste in manufacturing, Intel Corp works with GE to develop advanced manufacturing and digital optimization techniques to increase resource productivity in manufacturing.

Ikea Sustainable Home Products: This Company contributes to a more sustainable life at home for consumers. Its entire lighting range is now LED. It plans to become resource and energy independent which means helping to replace the industry with key raw materials like cotton and wood, investing in renewable energy and becoming more efficient in operations and supply chain. Ikea wants to make every product more sustainable while keeping the quality, function, form and affordability for their customers.

Conclusion: The environmental aspect of sustainability considers the impact of organisational activities on natural resource depletion, pollution and emission management, waste management, and energy and resource use among others. The social aspect of sustainability reflects on the social obligation of the organisation to the communities by managing issues such as poverty, income inequality, disease, access to health care, clean water, sanitation, education and broader societal problems that organisations are increasingly called upon to solve. Finally, the economic aspect of sustainability concerns the viability of the organisation to financially thrive in a competitive marketplace by balancing both environment and society.

Every monsoon, millions gallons of water goes in the sea directly. Which if stored, can sort out the glaring water requisite. Experts have advised rainwater harvesting on various platforms. But, many housing societies in the city are using the technique for combating water shortages, their action is credible.

So what is rainwater harvesting?

The concept is to accumulate the rainwater when it falls. A large portion of rainwater that falls on the earth’s surface, runs-off from streams to rivers and finally to the sea. An average of 8% of the total rainfall recharges the ground water table. Hence, most of the rainfall is wasted through surface run-off. The technique of RWH involves conserving rain from catchment surfaces such as roof-tops, plain and sloping ground surface. The rainwater that falls on these areas is then diverted into ponds, vessels or underground tanks for storage.

I think, it’s high time, if we don’t act now the water crisis might create mayhem. It is the need of the hour – the housing complexes should have proper rain water harvesting system and draw groundwater for non-drinking purposes. Let’s assume, even if water from bore-wells is used for toilet flushing (50 lpcd) and cleaning (10 lpcd), the load on the piped water supply will come down to 50%. This means that the same piped water supply will be sufficient for double the population. Recycling of the water used for washing is possible by re-using it for watering the garden will further bring down the load on the overworked system. Desalination of sea water will eliminate the need to set up newer projects that require transporting water from 100km at a high capital cost; it will also make that resource available to other needy water scarce areas

Johan Rockstrom, internationally acclaimed environmentalist and executive director of Stockholm Environment Institute during his visit to s Symbiosis International University as a part of ‘Sweden India Nobel Memorial Quiz’ spoke to Indian Express on seriousness of RWH. In his interview he said that the world has to get ready to face climate changes which pose serious threat to water resources; as there is inconsistency in the rains. We are already witnessing long dry spells in some parts of the world while other parts experience floods. Though there is unevenness in rain pattern, the amount of water has remained almost the same. The need is to tap this available water effectively.

He proposed rainwater harvesting as one of the viable option as it would also provide fresh water for use. To meet the demand of its rising population, India will not only have to manage its water resources well, but will also have to see that the quality of water is good, both for drinking as well as agriculture purposes. In terms of river linking project in India, he said though it faces some disadvantage as it could pose serious environmental issues, it should be carried forward as India is already facing crisis situation in water resources.

The eminent expert also said expanding irrigation projects would not help in a great way as there is not much potential for irrigation in future. The rivers are drying up and fresh water resources are reducing.  According to Rockstorm, India can lead in the green revolution by using innovative techniques in water management. His institute is doing collaborative research with TERI (The Energy Resource Institute) and CEC (California Energy Commission) and some good results are established so far. There is lot of funding available at the international level in the area of water resource management; collaborative approach can help develop the innovative techniques.

Lack of awareness is the biggest hurdle in the implementation of rainwater harvesting. Let’s get ready to solve it on war footing.