Pakistan has outranked India yet again on the World Happiness Index, making Indians very very unhappy. Indian media commentators' strong negative emotional reaction to their nation's poor ranking betrays how unhappy they are even as they insist they are happier than their neighbors. Coming from the privileged upper castes, these commentators call the report "absurd", citing India's higher per capita incomes and its space program. They seem detached from the real conditions in which the vast majority of Indians find themselves. They fail to acknowledge the high levels of inequality and unemployment prevalent in their country. A CNBC report last year found that one billion Indians have a per capita income of just $1,000 a year, lower than that of sub-Saharan Africans. 92.5% of Indians live in conditions similar to or worse than those experienced by the poorest countries in sub-Saharan Africa. No wonder India ranks alongside the poorest sub-Saharan African nations in the World Happiness Report 2025.
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| World Happiness Map. Source: World Happiness Report 2025 |
Pakistan (109) has not only outranked India (118) but also ranked higher than Sri Lanka (133) and Bangladesh (134). The authors of the 2035 happiness report said new evidence indicates that engaging in acts of generosity and believing in the kindness of others are “significant predictors of happiness, even more so than earning a higher salary”. The family is a source of joy and support for most people, the report found. Couples who live with at least one child, or couples who live with children and members of their extended family, have especially high average life satisfaction.
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| Income Inequality in India |
An inequality report on India found that 92.5% of Indians live in economic conditions similar to those found in the poorest nations of sub-Saharan Africa. Only 0.5% of Indians enjoy incomes comparable to average Singaporeans, while 2% have incomes of average Polish citizens and 5% similar to Mexicans.
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| India Among Most Unequal Nations. Source: World Inequality Report |
Finland tops the World Happiness Report 2025 rankings, making it the happiest country for the eighth year in a row. It is followed by Denmark and Iceland. Other nations in the top 15 include Sweden, the Netherlands, Costa Rica, and Norway.
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| Wealth Held By Top 1% in Asian Countries. Source: Credit Suisse Global Wealth Report 2024 |
Even the higher-income Indians are unhappy. Millions of them are voting with their feet and leaving their country of birth in droves. India is losing its best and brightest to the West, particularly to the United States, at an increasingly rapid pace. A 2023 study of the 1,000 top scorers in the 2010 entrance exams to the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) — a network of prestigious institutions of higher learning based in 23 Indian cities — revealed the scale of the problem. Around 36% migrated abroad, and of the top 100 scorers, 62% left the country, according to a report in the science journal Nature. Nearly two-thirds of those leaving India are highly educated, having received academic or vocational training. This is the highest for any country, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.
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| Example of The Great Indian Brain Drain. Source: Boston Political Review |
Brain drain is defined as the loss of precious human capital of a nation. It is a “consequence of an education system designed for ‘selecting’ the best and brightest in an economy that is still too controlled and cannot create opportunities for its best and brightest”, according to Indian economist Shruti Rajagopalan. High-profile examples of India's human capital loss include Satya Nadella (Microsoft), Sundar Pichai (Google), Shantanu Narayen (Adobe), Arvind Krishna (IBM) and Ajay Banga (World Bank).
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| Foreign-Born STEM Workers in America. Source: American Immigration Council |
Growing number of Indian students are going abroad for higher education each year and 90% of them never return home after completing their studies. In 2022, the number of Indian students leaving the country for higher education reached a six-year high of 770,000. And a 2021 report estimated that around two million Indian students would be studying abroad by 2024.
Many developing countries are experiencing brain drain. But India is losing its best brightest at a much faster rate than others. Some call it "The Great Indian Brain Drain". This is the reason why Indians in the United States are the best educated and the highest earning group. In a recently published book titled "The Other One Percent", authors Sanjoy Chakravorty, Devesh Kapur and Nirvikar Singh explain this phenomenon.
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