Happy Land
In the tiny Buddhist country of Bhutan, the government's policies actively promote the contentment of its citizens. But can this grand experiment withstand the growing pressures of the 21st century?
By Jeff Greenwald
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In April 1987, Jigme Singye Wangchuck—the young monarch of Bhutan, a tiny Himalayan nation sandwiched between the muscular shoulders of India and China—was being interviewed by the Financial Times. Asked about Bhutan's development, which was moving at a snail's pace compared with Nepal's and Thailand's, Wangchuck offered a reply that instantly entered the annals of Bhutanese legend. "Gross National Happiness," he declared, "is more important than Gross National Product."
King Wangchuck's remark galvanized his people, who were already seeking a way to reconcile their deeply held Tibetan Buddhist beliefs with the obsessive materialism of the postindustrial world. And it sparked a debate about an issue that Americans, despite the promises made by the Declaration of Independence, have never quite understood. What is happiness, and how does a government cultivate this elusive state in the hearts and minds of its citizens?
INTO THE LAND OF THE DRAGON
After World War II, when the United Nations began spearheading development around the globe, everything was seen through the lens of economic growth: roads and airports, dams and mining. Later, "I think the world came to realize that in this quest for economic development, many countries had lost their souls," says Kinley Dorji, editor-in-chief of Kuensel, the national newspaper of Bhutan. "Their culture was gone, their environment was gone, their religious heritage was gone. Bhutan's approach to development, Gross National Happiness, is a clarification of that process."
Bhutan is about a third the size of Nepal, which lies due west, just beyond a sliver of India. Buddhism arrived there in the seventh century, around the same time it reached Tibet. (Padmasambhava, the great Tantric mystic whose esoteric teachings mesmerized Nepal and Tibet, is also revered in Bhutan.) Some of the early settlers who traveled from Tibet to Bhutan called themselves Drukpa, or "dragon people," and the name Druk Yul (Land of the Dragon) is what ethnic Bhutanese still call their country.
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