New Delhi, Jul 6 (IANS): How happy are Indians? What makes people happy? How do they define happiness? At a time when the world is suffering from the Covid-19 pandemic and India is turning into one of the worst-hit countries, everyone is looking for reasons to be happy, a reason to smile.

Amid the pandemic, CVoter continues to track the parameters of happiness among Indians and has conducted a survey to understand what makes people happy.

Not so surprisingly, 61.3 per cent of the respondents of the survey strongly agreed with the statement while another 14.8 per cent agreed to the statement to some extent. Only 6.8 per cent responded with "strongly disagree" to the question, "Do you think healthy life expectancy depends upon the satisfaction of life?" while 14 per cent of all the respondents were not sure about their answers.

Surprisingly more women agreed that a satisfaction would make them live longer. While 72.9 per cent men agreed that satisfaction would make them live longer, over 79 per cent women agreed with the statement.

Among the religious groups, Christians were most in disagreement with 25.2 per cent of all the respondents strongly disagreed with the statement that healthy life expectancy is dependent upon satisfaction of life. The percentage of respondents disagreeing with statement was 15.1 per cent among Sikhs.

The survey was conducted by CVoter in association with Delhi-based NGO Gender Mainstreaming Research Association (GMRA) as part of their on-going effort to develop a comprehensive Happiness Index for India.