Bhutan’s Prime Minister: ‘We have to ask ourselves why we want economic growth. It has to be ultimately for the happiness and well-being of the people’

Tshering Tobgay is the prime minister of Bhutan, a small Himalayan country famous for its natural beauty and for having established an index to measure the happiness of its citizens. Tobgay, 59, passes through security at the United Nations headquarters in New York in a colourful outfit. He has come to participate in the UN General Assembly and has taken the opportunity to intervene in a debate on the need to use parameters beyond the purely economic, capable of measuring the well-being of the people and the future of the environment.

The use of the Gross National Happiness Index (GNH) does not mean that Bhutan is an idyll. Tobgay acknowledges that poverty still exists and that many young people emigrate. International human rights organisations are also calling for the country to reform its judicial system and guarantee freedom of expression. Tobgay argues that the index serves to detect shortcomings. According to the prime minister, the results of recent years indicate that “people in rural Bhutan are less happy than those in urban Bhutan. People who are less educated are less happy than people who are educated. Women are less happy than men.”

Question. In Bhutan, you operate the Gross National Happiness Index. Why do you think it is necessary to go beyond GDP?

Answer. Gross National Happiness is a development philosophy that puts happiness and well-being in the center of our development agenda. GDP is important. But there are other things that are equally important. The idea is, the question is, why GDP? We have to ask ourselves why we want economic growth. It has to be ultimately for the happiness and well-being of the people.

Q. How is it measured?

A. Gross National Happiness recognizes that GDP is important, economic growth is important, material progress is important. But economic growth, material progress, must be balanced with social progress, with cultural preservation, with environmental sustainability and with good governance. We have nine domains. There’s health, education, living standards. Then we have environment and governance. And then use of time, psychological well-being, community vitality, and cultural vitality.

Of course we have challenges, our economy is small, but it is largely environmentally sustainable, we have free healthcare, free education”

Q. Why is it important to measure time use?

A. To find out whether it’s balanced, if you’re sleeping enough, how you manage work-life balance, etc. These nine domains are divided into 33 indicators, and they are further divided into 150-odd questions. And then we run these questions through the population on a sample. And this is how we calculate the GNH index. The first GNH index was measured in 2010.

Q. And what have you learned in these years about the concerns of the population?

A. From the sample, we’ve learned that even though living standards are increasing, there’s a difference between the people in urban areas and rural areas in terms of living standards. The survey shows that people in rural Bhutan are less happy than those in urban Bhutan. People who are less educated are less happy than people who are educated. Women are less happy than men.

Q. Why?

A. Although women’s overall happiness is increasing and the gap is narrowing, overall women are less happy than men. The index shows that women are working longer hours than men. And one reason women are working longer is because housework and family work is considered work according to this measurement.

Q. Experts highlight the progress that Bhutan has made, but there is still a lot of poverty and deficiencies.

A. Of course we have challenges, our economy is small, but it is largely environmentally sustainable, we have free healthcare, free education. Literacy rates are very high. Youth literacy rate is almost 97%. In terms of environment, we are a biological hotspot and we are a carbon negative country. That’s why Bhutan is one of very few countries who have graduated from the UN’s least-developed country category.

Q. Many young people choose to emigrate.

We cannot have too many tourists in our country because it will go against sustainability policies. The very thing that tourists come to visit could be destroyed”

A. The problem is that jobs are not attractive enough for our young people and that means we have to bring in labour from outside, for example, for construction. All our young people have gone to college and all our young people can speak English. And so if need be, they are willing to go abroad and work, where they can earn more money. And our economy is not able to compete with that.

Q. Bhutan has recently introduced a sustainability tax for tourists. Is it working or have visits declined?

A. We cannot have too many tourists in our country because it will go against sustainability policies. The very thing that tourists come to visit could be destroyed, whether it is nature or culture. Our policy for tourism is high value, low volume. In addition, our infrastructure is limited. And because of all of that, we’ve set a target of 300,000 tourists per year. As of now, it’s still only 170,000 tourists per year, so we can increase the number of visitors that we take in. The proceeds from the sustainability development fee are earmarked for nature, health and education.

Q. Your country is Buddhist. How much religion is contained in the philosophy of the Gross National Happiness Index?

A. There’s no religion in GNH. I’m sure our values, our spirituality, has influenced GNH, but it is not religious.

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