Corruption and happiness

The correlation between corruption and the sense of well-being in a society is irrefutable. Much academic work on the subject has been undertaken, and the fact continues to be borne out by the latest investigations.

The 2024 World Happiness Report, conducted by Gallup in partnership with the Oxford Wellbeing Research Centre (Oxford University, WHR), the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, and the WHR’s editorial board, includes “perception of corruption” in the life evaluations used in the latest survey.

Purchasing power, social and family support, life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, and generosity to others are the other factors surveyed that together show significant links to our sense of well-being.

Happiness is an elusive emotion, and I often wonder why we relentlessly pursue it, but the science reveals that our state of mind determines our physical well-being. So, almost in a primordial way, we are wired to seek happiness for our very survival.

It is worth bearing this in mind when we consider that the most powerful and highly resourced country in the world, which dozens risk their lives daily to enter, is also now one of the more unhappy places for its residents. For the first time, the US has dropped out of the Top 20 happy-people countries.

Previous World Happiness Reports showed that countries with low corruption levels have happier citizens, and they live longer as a result. I wonder how much of the growing discontent derives from the daily murder sprees in the US and also the terrible air of social, and political mistrust created by Donald Trump. He has undermined every US institution and every human virtue through his personal corruption.

Last week, our Prime Minister felt obliged to acknowledge what many TT citizens have long suspected, if not known, to be true. Dr Rowley reported that our state agencies are corrupt. The nature of the revelation, though, was particularly disturbing. Many, if not most, citizens already profoundly distrust the arm of the security services we most interact with – the police.

To learn that the Strategic Services Agency (SSA), which gathers intelligence to fight drug, gun, and people-trafficking crimes, has been infiltrated by criminal elements is perfectly unsettling. The SSA exists to keep us and our country safe.

What are we to make of the revelations about some pastor posing as a secret agent and his cover being blown, while gun battles rage in the capital’s public housing involving the police and friends of politicians?

The PM is right to deduce that citizens sheltering criminals and hiding important information contribute to the low crime detection rates, but people’s reluctance to help the police was not borne out by a telephone poll on a local radio station, in which about 65 per cent of responders said they would report criminal relatives to the police. That’s encouraging.

I would like to think that I would, too, but it never occurs to me to call the police when I need help. I know from experience that they are unreliable, at best. There is research evidence that my negative perceptions of the police could easily translate to other state authorities and involuntarily affect my general sense of well-being.

Unfortunately for the PM, citizens’ safety, freedoms, financial prosperity, social status, health access, etc., depend on the state, how it is run, and on what provisions are made for the people. Therefore the government is directly responsible for people’s happiness and sense of well-being. Dr Rowley knows that state corruption distorts the balance in society and creates economic inequality, spreads poverty, wastes critical human and material resources, and threatens the economy.

He admitted, too, that he cannot separate the government from the corruption in the SSA since the administration of government including public agencies – management systems and structures and accepted behaviours – is part of governance. The gangs are elements of the same failure at the heart of governance. Perhaps the most critical point is how corruption degrades the human spirit and leads to the crime levels we live with.

A young person told me of meeting another TT young person who earns a regular income from credit-card scams and justified it because corruption runs this country and it is stupid not to be part of it and to forgo a decent living.

I believe that disillusioned person is a victim of the failure of our institutions, our social structures and systems and may already be lost as a useful citizen, honest husband or wife, good parent or community member. S/he is in a downward spiral into further crime, isolation and increasing unhappiness.

For sure, it is proof of the widespread loss of a sense of what is good, right or even ethical. Our PM called urgently on society to contribute to fixing crime while the government fixes the institutions. I am not optimistic about that unless the government can restore trust in government first and help cure the ill-health and unhappiness at the heart of our society.