World Bank to globally replicate Bhutan's happiness model

Thimphu, Nov 10 - Bhutan's unique concept of gross national happiness (GNH) to measure the country's wealth, an alternative to the world's economic scale, could now become a global buzzword with the World Bank trying to popularise the model.

'Bhutan has been translating this philosophy into action on the ground. It has been practicing what other countries need to do. We need to extend the concept of gross national happiness to gross international happiness,' Graeme Wheeler, managing director of the World Bank, was quoted as saying by Bhutan's national newspaper Kuensel Friday. Wheeler was in capital Thimphu on a five-day official visit.

The Land of the Thunder Dragon, Bhutan, is ranked near the bottom of the world's development scale. The nation, hence, came up with a unique way to measure the country's wealth in terms of the happiness of its citizens.

Instead of attaining a higher gross domestic product (GDP), the official goal here is GNH - a policy decreed by former King Jigme Singye Wangchuck to try and reflect the true quality of life in a more holistic manner.

The official said among the countries the World Bank partnered with, the Himalayan kingdom tops the list in terms of government performance in areas like preservation of cultural values, good governance, and conservation of the environment.

'When we partner with the Bhutanese government, it is a valuable one, where we at the World Bank learn a lot from Bhutan,' Wheeler said. 'We don't call it gross inter-national happiness but philosophically and practically it's the same.'

Wheeler said Bhutan could play a critical role in showing the world how to respond to climate change, which today posed massive challenges to the international community.

'Bhutan would play an important role in the global effort to address climate change in terms of the way it thought about the use of forestry and how the constitution protects land use for forestry,' the World Bank official said.

A staggering 68 percent of the nearly 700,000 people in Bhutan were said to be happy in life with the country's wealth measured by the happiness of its citizens, showed a recent study conducted by the Centre for Bhutan Studies (CBS) and funded by the Japan Foundation, a group that undertakes international cultural exchange programmes.

'A buoyant economy means rising incomes and employment opportunities. However, GDP figures cannot measure the well-being of the country's nationals as it only accounts for goods and services that pass through the formal markets,' said Tshering Dorji, a young overseas-educated businessman in Thimphu.

For investors, forecasts of higher GDP growth signify higher corporate earnings and lead investors to bid up share prices. But the former king had an altogether different vision for his citizens.

'The former king was more interested to know if the kids were going to school and maintaining a good health, whether the forest cover was well protected, or if expectant mothers were getting adequate healthcare facilities,' Gopilal Acharya, editor of the Bhutan Times - the nation's first independent weekly newspaper, told IANS.

(c) Indo-Asian News Service

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