Flinders University's School of Environment Australia to measure the wellbeing of people of Assam with IIT-G

Updated on: Friday, April 12, 2013

A team of researchers from Flinders University's School of Environment, Australia, is helping the state government to measure the wellbeing of its people.

Adapting Bhutan's Happiness Index, Flinders University and IIT-Guwahati will jointly assess the state's well-being index. The chief minister's office said this index will be combined for the first time with the United Nations Development Program's Human Development Index (HDI) for preparing the 2014 Assam Human Development Report.

The CM's office said the massive exercise involves 800 interviewers reaching out to more than 40,000 households in 27 districts of the state. "Two hundred leaders of the field staff have undergone training for the interviews. The field work is expected to take eight months and the report will be ready by the middle of 2014," it added.

The chief minister's office quoted Udoy Saikia, senior lecturer and associate director of Applied Population Studies at Flinders as saying, "The value of blending the two key indices is that it will improve the ability of policy-makers and analysts to understand and design remedial strategies to tackle multi-dimensional poverty." The well-being index covers nine dimensions - standard of living, physical health, psychological and emotional health, education, culture, use of time, community vitality, environmental concerns and governance. The well-being component of the project was formally inaugurated by chief minister Tarun Gogoi in December last year.

Along with Saikia, Dr James Chalmers and associate professor Gour Dasvarma, are members of the technical working group of the survey and is working with development experts from IIT-G.

Flinders University's School of Environment Australia to measure the wellbeing of people of Assam with IIT-G

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