I love Bhutan. Never been there, just love the idea.
I'm sure there are many, many things that make the country great, but I think the most outstanding is their policy of Gross National Happiness (GNH). Even though I play one on TV, I am no economist. But that doesn't stop me from thinking they have an awesome measurement of national progress.
To understand GNH we have to look at what it is an alternative to. Most countries currently measure their progress by calculating their Gross Domestic Product (GDP). GDP is essentially the value of the widgets a country sells in a year. But it's sometimes forgotten that GDP is not necessarily relevant to the well being of the people. It shows you if the country as a whole is or is not making money, but it doesn't mean you are making money, or that you can afford to keep yourself healthy, or that you have the right to vote. GDP means something up to a certain point, but beyond that it is harder to know how it is effecting your life. In Bhutan, they have decided to look at a variety of different factors to guide their policy decisions instead of just GDP.
Despite Bhutan being one of the poorer countries in the world, they have decided that making the most money possible will not be their main goal. The policy, which is known as Gross National Happiness, was introduced by their king decades ago. The king stepped aside a few years ago to allow a democratic government take control (nice guy, see?). The newly elected government also strongly supports GNH. The king and now the people have figured out that there is a lot more to well being than the money they can make. For example they may enjoy beautiful scenery and fresh air more than logging and factories. GNH measures a variety of hard and fuzzy factors that they believe have a bigger impact on quality of life than GDP. I would say they are right. They have composed an index of the factors they want to track in order to increase the happiness of Bhutanese. They measure:
- Time use
- Living Standards
- Good Governance
- Psychological Wellbeing
- Community Vitality
- Culture
- Health
- Education
- Ecology
- Good Governance
- Psychological Wellbeing
- Community Vitality
- Culture
- Health
- Education
- Ecology
The government implements policies and judges its effectiveness based on if it can increase happiness based on these criteria. It's pretty radical, which is why it is so awesome. If people get less than eight hours of sleep a day, GNH decreases. If their rivers are poluted, GNH decreases. If people agree with the importance of reciprocity, GNH increases. If people have enough food to eat everyday, GNH increases. And so on. Isn't this what we really need to be worrying about?
Life is not all smiles for Bhutanese and I do not want to disregard the difficulties of poverty, but I think they have a chance to get things right from the start. That makes me excited. Maybe there are some ideas from Bhutan that we could use here. At least in our personal lives when we think about what we need.
Here's a chart from Yale to send you off.
Life is not all smiles for Bhutanese and I do not want to disregard the difficulties of poverty, but I think they have a chance to get things right from the start. That makes me excited. Maybe there are some ideas from Bhutan that we could use here. At least in our personal lives when we think about what we need.
Here's a chart from Yale to send you off.
