Happiness – Bhutan’s Gift to the World ?

Gross National Happiness and tourism

Photo by Pema Gyamtsho on Unsplash

Bhutan claims to organise its affairs according to Gross National Happiness (GNH) as opposed to Gross National Product (GNP), the generally accepted measure of economic growth. GNH is commonly presented as a more holistic measure that takes in the conservation of natural resources and respect for local traditions considered to be neglected by GNP. GNH is specifically associated with Buddhist beliefs and traditions in Bhutan.

Bhutan is a tiny, landlocked country, population circa 780,000, around the size of Switzerland. It’s a poor but developing country that only allowed television and the internet in 1999, and has been busy bringing electricity to its remote villages. Slavery was abolished as recently as 1958. In 2008 the country shifted from an absolute to constitutional monarchy and fledgling democracy. Tourism has been permitted since 1974, but has been strictly controlled by a monarchy and monastic establishment fiercely protective of traditional ways.

Some reports suggest Bhutan is going cool on its GNH philosophy in search of growth and development. Certainly the capital  Thimphu and town of Paro have changed a great deal along ‘modern’ lines, evident through foreign investment, new buildings, car ownership and internet use.  Up until the pandemic GNP had been increasing by well over 5% per year most years, albeit from a very low base. The pandemic led to a large fall in GNP – not least due to the dearth of tourists -  so the government is looking to re-establish strong growth.

The ‘sustainability’ charge Bhutan levies on most countries’ tourists has recently been cut from $200 to $100  in order to raise tourism to pre-pandemic levels as the country seeks to re-establish and maintain its pre-pandemic upward economic trajectory. Indian tourists – by far the largest group – are admitted on a much more favourable basis. The government hopes the new levy will help to raise tourism’s contribution to the economy by 20%.

Yet at the same time the government have declared that once tourism reaches 300,000 they may well bump the charge back up to keep tourism within the limits deemed commensurate with the ‘happiness’ of the Bhutanese and ‘sustainability’ of their society. Cultural preservation remains a prominent theme throughout Bhutanese government policy.

Promoting happiness has been invoked as a counter to the excesses of modern society, including mass tourism, and a way of Bhutan retaining a culture resistant to ‘western’ thinking,  more in line with its Buddhist traditions. This is a view held by the Bhutanese national tourism agency, tour companies and also by some growth-critical western scholars. GNH apparently offers a different path, more sustainable, less destructive of local culture, focused on things that make people happy rather than rich.

It’s a model that also appeals to the post-material values of a well healed global middle class in search of an elusive happiness.

the myth of happiness

The idea that GNH is some sort of alternative philosophical path to greater happiness is something of a romantic myth. The myth is born of recent, pragmatic, political strategy by the Bhutanese government.  It is sustained by a thoroughly western narrative that views Bhutan, and the developing word in general, as places with pristine cultures that can teach the modern west a thing or two about sustainable living.

GNH seems to have emerged in recent decades from the desire of Bhutan’s monarchy and establishment to retain a degree of authority over the pace and extent of social change as the country modernizes. For development expert Lauchlan Munro it is very much an example of the  ‘invention of tradition’ thesis set out by historians Eric Hobsbawn and Terence Ranger in 1983.

According to Munro’s fascinating critical study of GNH:

A young king’s play on words, a vague notion of an alternative path to development based on more than crass economic growth, has been deliberately transformed into the official ideology of a ruling elite in a realpolitik response to rapid and disruptive social and economic change at home and disturbances in the frontier regions.

The adoption of GNH was, for Munro, part of ‘the  state's efforts at nation building in the context of rapid and disruptive social and economic change in a highly plural society.’ To justify this he notes that the first mention of GNH is any government publication was as recent as the 1996 National Budget. A conscious association of state with GNH followed. (Note that neither GNH nor ‘happiness’ feature in the respective accounts of tourism in Bhutan from pioneering tourism focused academics anthropologist  Valene Smith (1979) and political scientist Linda Richter (1989).

There is no reason why an invented tradition is necessarily a bad thing - doesn’t tradition have to start somewhere, after all? And some dispute Munro’s thesis, claiming more deep-seated Buddhist roots to GNH.   But the moral status of GNH  vis a vis GNP in some development debates – including those involving tourism – is dubious.

Munro explains that the ‘opening up’ of Bhutan from the 1980s brought changes that threatened the Buddhist monastic establishment. The cultural change that attends economic development – in dress, music  and lifestyle and belief – generated a reaction from the regime. This took the form of the promotion of Drukpa nationalism (Drukpa being the state religion, a version of Buddhism). What followed from this were: limits on foreign tourism; the replacement of foreign  (mostly Indian, non-Drukpa) heads of schools and colleges by people of other ethnicities; the banning of the Nepalese language (previously allowed in southern Bhutanese schools); and an emphasis on the  official national language of Dzongkha (in a country of more than 15 languages and dialects).

Driglam namzha, the national dress and behaviour code based on Drukpa and Buddhist norms, became more strictly enforced. Whilst this discouraged westernised youth culture in general (a culture associated with tourism), in practice it targeted the Nepali-speaking, mostly Hindu minority in southern Bhutan. Conflict with this group led to the expulsion of over 100,000 Nepali-speaking citizens - an sizable proportion of the population - in 1990–91.

modernity and tradition

In recent decades Bhutan’s politics has involved a tension between modernisers and traditionalists, alongside the construction of national identity. The regime adapted to the emerging reality of economic growth and modernity in the form of the internet and western styles, and the monarchy oversaw its own transformation to constitutional status and democracy.  But it has also  sought to retain its  cultural authority in the course of these rapid and destabilizing developments, through an appeal to tradition with ‘happiness’ at the centre.

Externally, too, Bhutan has sought to affirm its nationhood through forging relationships with the UN and carefully calibrating its international relationships with the bordering big powers of China and India. GNH is an element of nation building, an invented tradition to cohere traditional forms of authority in a changing environment.

liberal opinion opines

Yet the realpolitik character of GNH did not stop liberal opinion from gushing about the merits of Bhutan’s new development ideology. GNH was, for the UK Guardian in 2012 the ‘big idea from a tiny state that could change the world’.  The  Guardian asserts:

The world's industrial powers, like major companies, are locked into the current destructive economic system and are unwilling to make more than incremental changes to address the enormous ecological and social challenges of our age.

But coming to their rescue is the tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan ….

Nepalese exiles are unlikely to agree with the fawning coverage of GNH. This deferential attitude  speaks to a western disillusionment with its own modernity more than it does to the power of Bhutanese tradition to provide a lesson for all.

a symbiosis with western thinking

In fact whilst happiness, via GNH,  is often presented as a lesson from Bhutan for the overly materialistic developed world to learn,  the direction of travel of this concept may well be in the opposite direction.

Happiness emerged onto the intellectual scene around the same time as Bhutan was writing it into their policies, and cultural critiques of GNP and growth long preceded it.  One influential book was  Layard’s (2006) Happiness: Lessons from a New Science. This ground-breaking analysis considers how measuring development, or the quality of life, through wealth, has in some cases coincided with a decrease in people’s perceptions of their actual happiness. He called for a reorientation of policy towards the goal of increasing this elusive state.

President Sarkozy in France and Prime Minster David Cameron in the UK publicly tried to incorporate happiness into economic thinking and policy in the 2000s. According to Cameron, who established a ‘happiness unit’ in the UK government: ‘It’s time we admitted that there’s more to life than money and it’s time we focused not just on GDP but on GWB – general wellbeing’. This is striking, reflecting a degree of reorientation away from macroeconomic targets towards psychological and interpersonal dimensions of development, happiness being prominent amongst them.

Around the same time the United Nations and the World Economic Forum took a shine to gross national happiness. William Davies refers in his book The Happiness Industry: How the Government and Big Business Sold Us Well-Being (2016) to the occasion of a Buddhist monk lecturing the world’s leaders on mindfulness at the 2014 World Economic Forum in Davos. Goldie Hawn –meditating since 1972 apparently – provided celebrity back up for a post-material message that has been taken to heart by the global elites. The UN issued the first of its annual  World Happiness Report’s in 2012, and met to discuss  the document Well-being and Happiness: Defining a New Economic Paradigm in a high level meeting.

Following suit, think tanks, influential writers and non-governmental organisations focused on development have in recent decades advocated for an approach more rhetorically inclined towards psychological dimensions of human fulfilment, and less towards economic growth. A strong theme in the  ‘wellbeing’ and ‘happiness’ oriented advocacy is the sense in which these psychological dimensions are antithetical to economic development through growth – the message from the wealthy to the world is that materialism makes you unhappy.

The private sector has taken to happiness. UK Buddhist monk Gelong Thubten, who has written for the UNDP advocating happiness and castigating ‘greed’ in ‘the age of the self’ where  ‘it’s all about you’, has advised Google, LinkedIn, Deloitte, Deutsche Bank, Siemens, Accenture and Clifford Chance, Facebook, Morrisons,  McCain, Linklaters and many other global companies.

For tourists who want to assuage a little western guilt and seek selfhood sustainably, numerous niche companies – such as Holiday Tours, Audley Travel, BhutanHappiness -  can help you get to Bhutan. As their websites make clear, you’ll be contributing to your host’s Gross National Happiness, and your own happiness – a ‘win -win’ for the well-healed ethical traveller.

radical happiness

Given its adoption by the corporate and global political elites, and its role as a marketing slogan, it’s ironic that GNH carries radical associations in some quarters. For example, Rastegar et al regard Bhutan’s GNH inspired tourism policy as an example of ‘epistemic justice’, and a counter to the epistemic injustice of ‘western’ approaches.

The cultural relativism involved in viewing Bhutan and the west as fundamentally different on an epistemic level comes close to validating inequality and poverty through  a radical sounding defence of indigenous knowledge and tradition. Epistemic justice surely involves freeing people from cultural assumptions about how they think and what makes them fulfilled. That applies when the assumptions are constructed out of romantic notions of poor but happy Bhutanese people just as much as it may apply to ‘western’ approaches.

happy customers

Selling happiness can be, as the Bhutan Tourism Corporation Limited knows very well, good business. It’s central to their ‘high value – low volume’ strategy.  It chimes with a significant cultural trend amongst their wealthy customers, western and eastern. But if the business model of brand Bhutan changes in line with a changed context as the country modernizes, that’s not necessarily a bad thing at all.

Don’t get me wrong, happiness itself is a very good thing. Economic development is not the be all and end all. Values and traditions are a fundamental part of who we are as citizens of nations and inhabitants of a shared world. Tourists appreciate the chance to learn a little of others’ cultures and no doubt bring back a few lessons for their lives back home. Only a cynic would decry others taking the opportunity to witness the beauty and wonders of Bhutan.

But the moral authority of GNH over GNP, ‘happiness’ over wealth and exclusive ‘low impact’ holidays over modern mass tourism - whether couched in radical rhetoric or manifest in statements of corporate global values - is cliché based on modern myth.