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By Manoj Nadkarni
Besides the usual household and demographic information, Bhutan's census machinery is asking every citizen whether she's happy. A country that is not afraid to ask this question is definitely going in the right direction
 Bhutan has three things going for it: tradition, a low population, and the advantage of being a late entrant into the world of globalisation and development. The third factor offers it the luxury of being able to learn from others' mistakes.
The benefits of a low population are obvious when you travel around Bhutan. Compared to similar terrain in Himachal Pradesh or Uttaranchal, the villages here are sparse with original forests filling in the gaps between them. People do not destroy the environment out of some perversity, but because they think it will benefit them. In a near-closed system with no access to markets, like Bhutan, the benefits always lie in conservation for later, future use. Low population and its low environmental impact may also be the reason why subsistence has never been a problem in the country. And poverty has meant nutritional stress, not starvation deaths. There are no homeless people either. Whenever I mentioned Bhutan's 'least developed country' status, most people laughed and said it was a good way to attract funding. No one thought it was a real description of the country.
For me, Bhutan's late entry into the development game and its earlier isolation also imply a lack of colonial baggage, hence the luxury of finding its own route. There was no huge, centralised management machinery designed to exploit faraway resources. More important perhaps, there was no imported moral pressure, no white man's burden to 'civilise' people and in the process turn them into the 'poor'. This also applies to democratic institutions, and as Dr Jagar Dorji, principal of Sherabtse College, told me: "Democracy in Bhutan can be allowed to evolve the way it needs to, compared to India and Pakistan where it had to be wrested from colonial powers."
A final facet to the late-entry factor is that the connection between environmental integrity, livelihoods and poverty is far better understood now. As a result, Bhutan can confidently see conservation as a factor in rural economic security, rather than as an impediment to industrialisation and development.
Bhutan is steeped in positive tradition that is being integrated into the development process. I use the word 'tradition' to separate it from religion, because though much credit is given to Buddhism as a factor in Gross National Happiness (GNH), from what I see around me it has more to do with traditional lifestyles, since people everywhere bend religious rules to their convenience. For example, Buddhists are not supposed to take life, yet the Bhutanese diet is meat-intensive (to put it mildly!). They get around the religious ban by ensuring that animals are slaughtered in India and then transported up to Thimpu and other towns where it is further butchered. Buddhist prohibitions against gambling and drinking are certainly not respected either.
Another reason why I think it is not Buddhism but tradition that makes the difference is because the notion of environmental preservation is not really Buddhist but is actually part of the earlier nature-worshipping animist religion, Bon. Many rituals and traditions have been adopted from Bon and are a part of daily life, both urban and rural, such as oracles and fortunetelling. Then again, 'traditions' like wearing ghos and kiras are Bhutanese, not Buddhist.
Traditions have helped build an enviable social cohesion that works. Bhutanese society is a traditional society that has only recently started coming out of its isolation. Even drinking and gambling serve social functions. Traditional arts, ceremonies and rules of social conduct are not museum pieces to be brought out on state occasions or for tourists but form part of everyday life. They are still practised as they were years ago, not just in the villages but even close to towns. I was surprised to see that the main beams of houses are fashioned and shaped by hand, using adzes and wood carving knives, even though chainsaws are available. The government trains and pays traditional artists to live in areas where they can contribute to local building and maintenance. All this adds up to what economists call 'social capital' but find hard to quantify. Certain moves by the government like making Dzongka (originally a language spoken by the northern Bhutanese) a national language or legally enforcing the wearing of traditional clothes contribute to a sense of community. The once-a-year religious festivals (teschus) held in all provinces also make people feel as if they belong to a single community. In fact, such traditions turn the entire country into a community. I remember trying to express my disquiet about everyone being forced to have ID cards, but no one I talked to saw anything wrong with it; it was just another symbol of belonging to the small country.
Another good example of tradition being utilised positively is the 'health and religion programme'. Since monks are such an integral and respected part of rural lives they have been used to help teach villagers about sanitation and hygiene under the programme.
Despite such favourable factors I do not think Bhutan's development process is going to be easy. The biggest fear people have about the constitution and democratisation of government is that the social capital will disintegrate and reorganise itself around economic interests, party politics or ethnic groupings. The breakdown of social cohesion is already apparent, though it is very slow and small-scale (in numerical terms). You see it manifested in problems such as unemployment, mostly among the educated young. The unemployment rate is 2.5%. Fifteen or even 10 years ago the educated were absorbed by the government; now they need to find other jobs. They see government jobs as their due and anything resembling a blue-collar job as being beneath them. And since government regulation means that there is not much private industry, the unemployed youth has really no other door to knock on. The issue has been in the news recently because 'trained' people are unwilling to take up jobs in rural areas; it would mean working under a locally elected district chief who would most probably be illiterate.
These educated unemployed young are causing social problems of the type that would be more in place in Mumbai or Delhi than in Thimpu -- a city of 55,000 people only. Thimpu has a few clubs and discos that are open till the early hours of the morning. Club-goers have been blamed for the recent increase in car thefts; the police say that youths high on alcohol and drugs steal cars to go on joyrides. One of the jobs of the young is to rebel against tradition, and they must be allowed to do so for they are the leaders of tomorrow. Is Bhutanese tradition strong and flexible enough to incorporate dissent?
Economic change is making its presence felt everywhere. The government is spinning off and 'corporation-ising', as in the case of the Kuensel newspaper; agencies like the Tourism Development Corporation and the Forest Development Corporation have been formed. The idea is to make them self-sustaining if not yet profit-making. The process of privatisation itself means loosening state control and allowing market forces to take over, which may also give rise to a philosophy of competition rather than the common good of GNH. This may also happen in the process of becoming part of the global marketplace. Since 1998, Bhutan has been negotiating its entry into the World Trade Organisation, and though not many people are sure what kind of changes -- positive or negative -- this will entail everyone seems to agree that it must be done.
There has been a lot of discussion in Bhutan about 'operationalising GNH' -- finding ways to measure and compare happiness. It has its origin in the belief that without such numbers the concept of GNH could become meaningless and fizzle out as other priorities take hold; without a real 'numerical understanding' of happiness there is no way to check if you are moving in the right direction. I do not agree. I think GNH should remain a vision, an ideology for the government. It gives simplicity to development goals, making them accessible to everyone. It must not be turned into a slogan.
The census process has just begun in Bhutan. Apart from the usual household and demographic information, the census asks every Bhutanese citizen: "Are you happy?" A country that is not afraid to ask this question is definitely going in the right direction.
InfoChange News & Features, May 2005
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