Commentary by Abd Ghani Hamat

IMPLICIT in our quest for high income is the attainment of well-being, or happiness.

A higher gross domestic product (GDP) means more money in the pocket and a better quality of life. That's a simplistic view, and we know it. Poor people also can be happy in their lives.

So, what's the point of rushing to fatten the wallet if we are none the happier for it?

It's intriguing to imagine how our lives would change when Malaysia becomes a high-income economy in 2020. Would our society be any different after the addition of one or two LRT lines in Kuala Lumpur or our ability to produce a race-winning F1 car?

The discourse thus far has focused on the required GDP growth rate and the economic constraints that stand in the way of our achieving the gross national income (GNI) per capita income target of US$15,341 or RM50,627 (at 2000 prices) in 2020.

Last week, the Economic Planning Unit (EPU) held a briefing on the macroeconomic prospects and strategic directions of the 10th Malaysia Plan (2011-2015). And by the end of the year, we will also be clearer about the government's proposed economic model — which some commentators believe is less of a "model" than a "plan", as in an industrial development plan or outline perspective plan.

Whatever it is, most of us will feel the draught of the high-income quest, as the private sector is expected to lead the chase. So it is pertinent at this juncture to think of the corollary, and the side effects, if any, of the quest on society.

Can we defend, or even strengthen, our value system in the face of the draught?

Much has been said about the need to build the country's human capital, but we have heard no one talk about nurturing social capital, the bond that holds society and its value system together.

Which way is the EPU's strategic directions taking us? Is it towards capitalism of the Scandinavian version — one that reflects egalitarianism, according to Jagdish Bhagwati, Economics and Law professor at Columbia?

The EPU listed six items under its "Quality of life of an advanced nation" — enhance public safety and security; commit to the delivery of efficient public transport; ensure access to quality healthcare and promote healthy lifestyle; mainstream sustainable development, nurture civil society; and intensify preservation and acculturate appreciation of culture and heritage.

Certainly, we need quality healthcare, efficient public transport system and preservation of our heritage. But it should not only be on the basis of personal convenience or belief; we must also want it, and care for it, for the collective good of society.

Social capital attaches value to reciprocity in communal bond, says Robert Putnam of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

A classic example of this bond is seen in the Parent-Teacher Association (PTA), in which there are simultaneously public (societal) returns and private returns. What is good for the family is good for society and there should be joy in sharing and improving the goodness.

Such bonds are a critical component of national happiness, much as human capital is key to economic growth.

Jim Jubak of MSN Money observed in a mid-October article that deeply embedded in classical economics is the assumption that increasing GDP is the same as increasing the quality of our lives.

"(But) GDP famously doesn't care about how happy we are with the results of our economic activity," he said.

He mentioned the case of the tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan. Despite its very small GDP, Bhutan ranked eighth in a global study of national happiness by Adrian White of Leicester University.

Jubak believes it was its king, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, who had coined the term gross national happiness (GNH) in 1972! The king thought his subjects needed something more than GDP to be happy and began to search for the answers.

Now the country has a GNH index based on surveys of more than 1,000 households. The survey has almost 300 questions, including: How stressed are you? Have you ever thought of suicide?

Denmark, Switzerland and Austria were the highest-ranked countries in White's survey. Malaysia came in at 17, second in Asean behind Brunei (9) but ahead of New Zealand (18) and many developed countries including the US (23), Germany (35), the UK (41) and Japan (90).

Bhutanese happiness is generated by people being kind, caring and generous towards each other, he concluded.

So, we haven't done that badly according to the survey. But will the economic changes we are planning be able to improve our GNH ranking or only bring complications?

And GNH is nothing to scoff at, Jubak warned. "There have been global conferences on GNH," he said, adding that it took economic and fiscal crises to point leaders of the developed Western economies to its importance.

Post-March 2008, we can see that people are becoming more assertive in their expectations of government and public institutions, which have since become more pliant generally in their attitude towards governance and reforms.

The risk with any reactive move is that once the tensions of public debate ease, procedural rigidity sets in, displacing reasonable latitude and stifling the social capital, which is so crucial to the country's nation building given its racial make-up.

Maybe the 1Malaysia concept is a distillation of this essence. But we have had countless other slogans before. They seemingly failed due to the prescriptive dimension in their application. They were seen as a tool of social control, not an investment in social capital.