Postcard from Bhutan: Gross National Happiness

When you’re a small, landlocked mountain kingdom, wedged between the giants of China and India, with more than 70 percent of your population living in rural areas, 50 percent illiterate, and much of your budget coming from overseas aid and grants, you play to your strengths.

Bhutan’s is its mystique. It’s not just the breathtaking views of snow-capped Himalayan peaks, the pride in and continuing deep connection to Bhutan’s traditional culture – strongly influenced by Tibetan Buddhism. It’s not even just the fact that Bhutan is one of the hardest countries in the world to get to – both literally, in that the approach for airplanes is a steep descent through a narrow mountain valley – and because, in an effort to limit the potentially damaging effect of mass tourism on the culture and environment of a country of just 700,000 people, visitors have to pay a tariff of $200 a day (which includes hotel costs, meals, transportation and guide – and which will go up to $250 next year).

Bhutan’s mystique also comes from being the land that has given the world the concept of “Gross National Happiness” – the idea that a country should judge its success not just by what its economy is worth, but by how the style of development contributes to the population’s well-being, while preserving the environment and cultural values.

Credit for this idea – which has now become an international movement – goes to Bhutan’s fourth king, Jigme Singye Wangchuck. He ascended the throne at age 17, in 1972, and – to the dismay of his subjects, announced in 2005, at age 50, that he intended to abdicate in 2008 in favor of his son and, at the same time, would transform Bhutan into a democracy. Many people protested that they wanted the king to stay, but he insisted that Bhutan, in entering the modern age, needed a modern system of government, one in which the people have more of a say.

Bhutanese are starting to get the hang of it – though, many needed a good nudge to get started. The King said a democracy needs an opposition party – so a civil servant left his job to form an opposition party. The King said there should be at least two non-government newspapers, so two were formed. (Now there are nine, and they’re increasingly feisty.)

In the midst of its democratic transition, Bhutan is modernizing. Television and the Internet were only introduced a dozen years ago. Villages that used to be three hours’ walk from the nearest road are now getting not only roads, but electricity and mobile phones. Ever more young Bhutanese are getting educated. That’s great in the long term, harder for those young Bhutanese in the short-term, as the economy isn’t keeping up with offering them enough appropriate jobs. Tens of thousands of Indian migrant workers are brought in instead, to do the work connected with the capital Thimpu’s construction boom, and with expanding the hydropower sector – already Bhutan’s top earner — tenfold over the next decade.

The cocktail of modernization, rising expectations and the frustration of not always having those expectations met leading to previously unseen problems – drug abuse, prostitution, teenage pregnancy among the young along with a rising divorce rate in the older generations. Stroll through the streets of Thimpu at night, and you’ll see traditional tunics and long skirts replaced by jeans, leather jackets and attitudes. The throbbing beat of dance music spills out onto the streets.

In all this, Bhutan is experiencing the growing pains that many a traditional culture has, as it has edged into modern life. The difference here is that both the King and the elected government, and even many if not most of the young guys in leather jackets and the girls they’re flirting with – really believe that they’re all in this together, that traditional Bhutanese culture is worth preserving, that Gross National Happiness matters, and that if Bhutan is to retain what is precious to it, and what draws to it both visitors and international admiration, it has to work that much harder to get the balance right.