Are We Happy Yet?

Some places are known as earthly dens of sweetness and light, where the residents flit from one fulfilling pursuit to another. Others are sad, abject places where even angels fear to tread. So how does Jakarta stack up in the pursuit of happiness, asks M. Taufiqurrahman.

Jakarta is not a happy place. At least, that’s what some of its residents say.

“Jakarta is giving me a hard time,” says Elsa, a woman in her early 60s. “I can’t go to hotels or shopping malls anymore because I am afraid of what the terrorists may target next. And on top of everything, the traffic seems to be getting worse by the day.”

Her face carries a look of misery as she is approached at one of the city’s swankest malls. Eventually she volunteers that she knows why she is out of sorts.

She is living in the wrong country.

“I wish I lived in Singapore,” says Elsa, who often visits her grandson in the city-state. “It is a happy place, very tidy and people lead orderly lives. They don’t try to break the rules.”

She is not alone in believing that the grass is greener on the other side, whether that other side is Singapore or another city promising happiness.

“This city is static,” says Ciptadi Sukono, who lives in a suburban residence south of Jakarta. “Other than new high-rises and trendy cafes, nothing much is happening here. If I were offered the chance to live in London or Bangkok, I would be willing to trade my loyalty.”

But like so many of the capital’s residents, the 36-year-old manager at a multinational corporation seems torn. He admits Jakarta is not such a terrible place to live and, from his travels in Southeast Asia, is comparable to Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Bangkok or even Elsa’s pick of Singapore.

For while it may lack Bangkok’s sense of cheerfulness or Manila’s easy-to-navigate malls, it has an abundance of creativity and culture, Ciptadi says.

“This last trait makes Jakarta a happier place than dull Kuala Lumpur or bland Singapore,” he adds.

But that is his only concession to Jakarta, adding it contributes almost nothing to his own happiness.

Were it not for his family, Ciptadi would have packed his bags long ago.

People like Elsa and Ciptadi add credence to the assertion of Eric Weiner, the grumpy correspondent for National Public Radio, that Indonesia is an unhappy place, made in his best-selling book The Geography of Bliss: One Grump’s Search for the Happiest Places in the World.

We may not be as glum as folks who live in Zimbabwe and Burundi, two countries that always come at the bottom of the list of the world’s happiest countries, but in the World Database of Happiness, compiled by Ruut Veenhoven of Rotterdam’s Erasmus University, Indonesia appears in the middle range, well below Mexico, Guatemala and El Salvador.

In 2007, a survey by the Frontier Consulting Group Indonesia came up with a similar result.

After interviewing 1,800 people in six cities, the consulting firm found that the Indonesian Happiness Index stood at 47.96, which put Indonesia below the average of 50. Simply put, Indonesia is not so happy.

The survey also found that people in Jakarta and Medan are among the most miserable, with their cities ranking fifth and sixth, respectively.

In Jakarta, how can we see happiness through the thick smog blanketing our view, where it takes an eternity to get from one point to another, where terrorists are always lurking, where misery parades outside our tinted car windows at almost every turn?

Indonesia has a long way to go before it becomes like United States, a country where happiness has become a multibillion dollar industry — which has in itself prevented Americans from being happy — but the cottage industry of self-help gurus, purveyors of kitchen-table wisdom and spiritual empowerment classes indicates that we are not as happy as we think we are.


What about our claim to being a religious society? After all, more religious people are said to be happier.

Research in 2008 from the Paris School of Economics found that a sense of contentment was registered among religious believers in Europe. The survey findings suggested that religion could offer a “buffer” that protected from life’s disappointments.

Spiritual guru Anand Krishna argues that the abundance of religiosity here contributes little to our sense of happiness.

“I don’t think that people who are meditating and put on a plastic Buddha smile are truly happy,” Krishna says, referring to believers in general and his thousands of disciples who diligently practice yoga and meditation in his multiple-location ashrams.

Krishna says that adhering to a religion does not bring out altruism in people. “Religion for most people is like sin laundering. They do bad things and then ask for absolution from God. It does not inspire them to bring happiness to others,” he says.

As a consequence, believers are prone to radicalism. “These people equate religion with rituals and they think that building more mosques and churches will make them religious people,” Krishna says.

Democracy also has done very little to make people happy, he claims.

“The sad thing about Indonesian democracy is that it brings only happiness for dummies. They are too busy scrounging for life and have no political awareness about what goes on around them, yet they feel as if they are happy for being free to vote,” Krishna says.

Misery does love company. In Krishna’s view, politicians are to blame for spreading unhappiness.

“Politicians seem to forget that politics is the means to bring happiness to people. But instead they are busy fighting over money and power.”

Krishna disagrees with University of Michigan political scientist Ronald Inglehart, who argues that democracy has a positive correlation with happiness.

Inglehart makes his claim based on long-term evidence from two countries that democratized in the early 1980s, South Africa and Argentina, indicating that the happiness level rose after the transition.

In Mexico, the happiness level was found to have significantly increased in 2000, the year in which free elections finally put an end to one-party rule by the Partido Revolucionario Institucional.

But no matter what the scientific research found, visual artist Irwan Ahmett thinks Jakarta is a happy place for a completely different reason.

Irwan, who held an exhibition last year on the meaning of happiness, says that Jakartans’ penchant for breaking the rules makes the city a happy and freewheeling place.

“Go into any kampung and you will meet smiling faces, kids stopping traffic so that they can play street soccer, people having wedding parties at any given intersection. This is a happy place full of happy people.”

He believes that the unpredictability of life in Jakarta is conducive to creativity, a boon for an artist like himself.

That the Indonesia has weathered the worst financial crisis in recent memory, gone through string of sectarian conflicts, recently dealt with terrorism attacks and yet came out in good spirits indicates that happiness has never been in short supply here, Irwan says.

Unlike Krishna, he also attributes the abundance of happiness to religion.

“Only religion that can provide a roadmap to happiness; capitalism or government can only provide fleeting solutions to our happiness problem,” he says.

“This also explains why we have a high concentration of mosques in poor urban areas.”

Abdul Azis, a 43-year-old street vendor who hawks ketupat sayur under the Kebayoran Lama flyover, believes steadfastly in the saving grace of religion to help him through his rainy days.

Recently, God worked wonders for Azis by freeing him from loan sharks who constantly hounded him for payments of hefty interest.

“I never forget to pray five times a day, and in my prayers I never forget to ask God to get rid of those loan sharks. I will be the happiest man if God answers my prayers.”  

Religion may have helped Azis survive in Jakarta, but his move to the capital from a small village in Majalengka, West Java, 20 years ago was motivated by the promise of happiness that would come with money.

His quest did not turn out the way he wanted. He has since been forced by circumstances to separate from his family, one of his most important sources of happiness.

“I have to leave my wife and kids in Tanjung Priok so that they could deal with the loan sharks, while I had to move to Kebayoran Baru to start a new business there.”

At his rented room nearby, the conditions are nearly unbearable, and he has to fight with other tenants for water and use of the bathroom.

But there’s an upside too, he says: “I am happy to be here because business is good.”

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