BHOPAL: A year after signing of an MoU between the state government’s department of happiness and IIT Kharagpur regarding development of a happiness index, even the procedure on how the survey would be conducted is yet to be finalised. To begin with the government was keen to come up with the happiness index before the assembly elections scheduled in November this year, but going by the slow pace of work, it seems that people are unlikely to know how happy they are in the election year.In May 2017, the MP government had signed an MoU with IIT Kharagpur for development of a happiness index for measuring the well-being of the people in the state. The key components of a survey like questionnaire, sample size, parameters and indicators have not been finalised as yet, besides, there has been no appointment of volunteers and their training.In February this year, 80 experts from across the world, apart from state government officials, delegates from IIT Kharagpur brainstormed in Bhopal to ascertain what makes people of MP. The objective of that workshop was to figure out the criteria, sample size of survey, its methodology, indicators, number of questions to be asked and whether it will be subjective or in yes or no format.The experts from IIT Kharagpur were supposed to finalise the details of survey and send it to the happiness department. “IIT Kharagpur has finalised it and will send it to the MP government this month after which the work of carrying out the survey to make the happiness index would proceed,” said director of Rajya Anand Sansthan Praveen Gangrade However, once the format is fixed, the survey volunteers would be appointed and their training will be conducted on how to carry out the survey in entire MP, before starting the survey. In September last year, the government did a small survey and quizzed about 2,000 people on what makes them happy. The purpose of it was to find out what makes people of MP happy so that the same questions could be asked in the final survey for calculating the happiness index.Officials are unsure when the final survey would be conducted and happiness index will be developed.The state government officials said the format and questions to be asked for happiness index has been almost finalised. District-wise teams would be constituted that would start data collection. The work is expected to start within three months.

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