On April 28, Hariman Sharma, a farmer from the hills of Himachal Pradesh, walked up barefoot to Rashtrapati Bhavan’s Durbar Hall to receive the Padma Shri from the President of India. He had developed a new variety of apple that could be cultivated in tropical or sub-tropical climate regions, potentially enabling it to be grown almost anywhere in our country. Sharma is not a government scientist or a researcher in a multinational biotech company. He is a common man.

What does it mean to be a common man in India? A battle to make ends meet? Stealing moments of happiness before harsh reality creeps up? The World Happiness Index 2025, an initiative of Gallup, the University of Oxford and the UN’s Sustainable Development Solutions Network, ranked India 118th among 147 countries. The ranking is based on people’s self-evaluation of their lives. So, we have ranked ourselves lower than most of the world.

A large portion of our economy thrives on our perceived unhappiness. From Bollywood to the health-supplement industry, everyone........

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