IN 2006, Oxford and Harvard educated Crown Prince Jigme Khesar became the fifth King of Bhutan. A constitution was proclaimed and parliament elected in 2008. His Majesty Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck continues to give impetus to the concept of Gross National Happiness (GNH). He said that, ‘Today, GNH has come to mean so many things to so many people, but to me it signifies simply Development with Values. I am confident that the noble goal of Gross National Happiness will be key to Bhutan’s success in maintaining our unity and harmony, indeed our character as a nation.’

The King is the fountain head of GNH carrying on the legacy of his father. He has said that in its simplest form GNH is a balance between tradition and modernity. It is about making human life more meaningful, fulfilling, and sustainable, through both individual and official actions. At one level, it addresses material needs; on another level it addresses the inner parts of us that create a sense of our well-being.

GNH is not simply about personal happiness. Happiness that doesn’t take into account the needs of others’ happiness is irresponsible and self-centred. Happiness blossoms through our relationships with people, animals and the environment. It is a state of being that can be realized partly from the happiness of others. Equality is central to GNH, just as the recognition of intangible factors is. Those intangible factors often cannot be substituted by income and goods.

At the core of the GNH concept and measurement is the view that a more holistic range of human needs should be appreciated for a happy and fulfilling life. We take a eudaemonist view of human beings. GNH stands for the preservation and renewal of a holistic range of capital or resources: ecological, economic, social, human resource, cultural, all of which should be valued and possibly measured. Such needs, or primary goods, are listed in the literature on political philosophy. But usually their range is not detailed, and it often tails off with rights and freedom as catch-all categories.

The conceptual structure of GNH lists some 72 factors or conditions as representing this wide spectrum of human needs for us to be happy in a deep and holistic sense. These include indispensably freedoms and rights as part of good governance. The list of 72 factors constituting and conducive to happiness are grouped under nine domains of GNH, namely psychological well-being, balanced time use, community vitality, cultural diversity and resilience, ecological diversity and resilience, good governance, living standards, health, and education.

 

Let us take each of these nine domains of GNH at a time to get a flavour of what GNH entails. Limitations of space does not allow a discussion of individual factors under each domain of GNH. The first domain is psychological well-being. In most approaches to well-being and happiness, mental and emotional states will not be assessed, unless there is an unlikely case of widespread clinical depression. However, from a GNH perspective, people ought to enjoy much higher levels of virtuous emotions, instead of hovering above depression level, and it is of interest to estimate the distribution, frequency and causes of non-virtuous and virtuous emotions as reported in first person accounts.

The Buddhist view also advocates resolving afflictive mental dispositions sufficiently so that we can find the good life by being ethically virtuous. In the GNH index, examples of positive virtuous emotions are calmness, generosity and compassion. Non-virtuous emotions are represented by anger, frustration and jealousy. Emotional conditions of the population are also assessed by prevalence and degrees of stress. When such introspective data on emotional states are divided into urban and rural residents, an early and tentative indication is that psychological well-being is lower for urban residents despite their higher economic and educational status. This explodes the commonsense perception in Bhutan that urban life is necessarily happier and better in all respects.

 

Had the emotional dimension of existence not been included in GNH, we would have easily tended to over-focus on the supply of material conditions as important for happiness, including deficient factors of urban life. Deficiencies of urban life were also revealed with respect to variables linked to community and cultural vitality.

These findings raise questions about the rapid trend of urbanization in Bhutan. The strong emphasis of the government on reaching electricity, roads and mobile telephony to all rural households in the country before 2020 should stem the urban growth. Mental training, such as calmness and insight meditation, is one of the complementary routes to psychological well-being. Consequently, meditative calmness is practised every day in schools throughout Bhutan. It is a part of the GNH value infused education curriculum being devised, which itself is an important part of the larger mandala of GNH.

Communities, where people have a deep sense of belonging, and trusting and emotionally supportive relationships are the foundations of a happy life. Family, community and relationships that form the very core and basis of society should be strengthened. Hence, community vitality is a domain of GNH. The quality of relationships and inner-development are emphasized by GNH as important factors for happiness. Enmity and conflict obviously fracture communities and hinder relationships.

GNH indicators estimate both the growth rate and causes of enmity. It is better to address enmities at their root rather than build ever more complex and costly structures like the judiciary and police force. People as social constructs develop in communities, and that process of developing human potential requires prior existence of healthy communities. Trusting, empathetic and supportive relationships feed on reciprocal commitments of labour, volunteering and giving. Going by the findings of a GNH survey, these attributes of a healthy community are thriving in rural Bhutan, though certain threats do appear on the horizon.

 

The vitality of any community also depends on retention of its intelligent members in the community against the pull of migration and on upholding of artisan knowledge and skills. The widespread import of manufactures and other artefacts has resulted in making artisan products uncompetitive and level of artisan and craft skills deteriorate. Still, some 30 per cent of women can weave textiles. A quarter of men are skilled masons and another quarter skilled carpenters. They sustain the affordable tradition of building houses in natural material and while maintaining good quality.

Preserving culture is intrinsically important for a sense of continued identity, and geopolitically for a strong Bhutanese society. Culture and tradition is also relevant for happiness as a glue for society and for the long-term survival of diversity. The narrative history of a community, and thus of its members, is broken if the various important strands of culture are not preserved and promoted in a dynamic way. For these and other reasons, culture is a domain of GNH.

Take language as an aspect for example. English as the medium of instruction and officialdom has acquired a suffocating grip on the national language, Dzongkha, and both English and Dzongkha together cast a homicidal shadow on the 18 dialects of Bhutan, some of which are spoken by only a thousand people.

 

Buddhist studies and practices, one of the cornerstones of culture, are flourishing with an increasing enrolment in monasteries and nunneries. Sacred mask dances and dramas of faith held every year in every village continue to be platforms for artistic expression of the lay people. Buddhist iconographic fine arts are going through an unprecedented revival. The advent of TV broadcasts has made Bhutanese folk music and instruments popular beyond its border in the Himalayas. There is a steady promotion of Buddhist values among the lay people. Yet the fundamental reconciliation between emerging consumerism and capitalism on the one hand, and ethics of moderation on the other, may remain a deep challenge lurking beneath the surface. Likewise, one wonders what competitive party politics as the centre of governance will do to the good leadership that Bhutan has enjoyed through its monarchs who denied themselves privileges.

Health and education are also domains of GNH. Both services are free in Bhutan, together claiming about 25% of the budget. These services are needed to realize human potential without depending on the chance of birth and wealth. They should be completely free from the perspective of GNH. 95% of children of school going age are enrolled, though the dropout rate by the 12th grade is considerable. Social mobility fuelled by educational qualification has so far been remarkable. But a stratum of entrepreneurial economic elite is emerging for the first time in our history.

 

Health as an aspect of GNH consists of healthy lifestyles in both mental and physical spheres instead of the need to consume an increasing level of medical care. While controlling infectious diseases, lifestyle diseases have to be prevented. A healthy society requires a different approach than an intensification of medical care in society that results from worsening social, environmental and economic structures. In the narrow sense, health is a product basically of physical activity, healthy food intake, and medical infrastructure. In a broader sense, health is a function of a social, economic and environmental relationship within which those three factors and other resources are accessible to an individual.

Measures of the health domain of GNH specify those three narrower factors in some detail, while the broader relationship is captured by other domains. Bhutan was the first country to outlaw smoking, even though it is not yet a problem in Bhutan. But drinking is for a substantial section of society. As regards physical activity, walking three kilometres per day is proposed as a standard in GNH. Rural people meet this requirements, but city people do not. Making walking feasible in cities obviously entails wider reforms including opening walking trials and shortening working hours.

Likewise, a healthy food intake entails, among others, persevering with local organic food production, although importing chemically produced food is cheaper. What Bhutan produces is predominantly organic, but facing declining food sufficiency, it imports industrially produced food.

Living standards is another domain of GNH. It is measured by income in both absolute and relative terms, home ownership, and adequacy of food. Asset level of the Bhutanese is much better distributed than income. Among assets, house and land ownership are very broad based, and are the basis of economic security. It is a unique welfare state where not only education, health and many other services are free, but where there is a process for landless people to appeal for free land grants, and a family rebuilding its rural household is legally entitled to 80 standing trees for timber.

The Bhutanese economy is growing fast, but this cannot be said with untainted pride knowing that GDP calculations betrays true wealth creation. Bhutanese people’s lifespan has increased today to 66, and per capita income rose last year to $2,154 (equivalent to $ 5,815 in PPP term). I mention these income figures for a sense of international comparison, but not as a robust indicator of happiness.

 

Ecological diversity and resilience is another dimension of GNH. Beyond rich forest foods and forest goods, Bhutanese are nourished aesthetically and therapeutically by the blessed beauty of the planet in the Himalayan mountains. Bhutan’s forest and wildlife laws are among the toughest to ensure their protection. Forests cover about 72% of the country, and it is growing more verdant, though not necessarily more biodiverse, around the villages. But the Bhutanese have poor waste disposal habits and even poorer understanding of chemical pollutants. Banks of streams and footpaths near relatively dense human settlement suffer from litter.

One may have everything – income, environment, culture, community, health and so forth – but none of this can be savoured without the capacity for a balance use of time in a 24 hour cycle. Free time and unpaid work need to be valued. How well we live can be judged by how well we can distribute our time within every 24 hour cycle over sleep, work, socialization, physical exercise, reflection, education, personal care and so forth. Loss of enough time for any of these essential activities is indeed diminution of the breath of life. Time use balance interpenetrates all crucial aspects of a happy life. As a measure of wholeness of life, balanced time use represents both process and outcome of the good life. Each person has to live well, 24 hours at a time.

 

The visionary leadership of Buddhist monarchy played an unrivalled role in Bhutan’s progress. The former King of Bhutan, His Majesty Jigme Singye Wangchuck, founded GNH, and his distinctive laws and policies were framed by the intentions behind GNH. In the 1970s, His Majesty didn’t use the expression Gross National Happiness. He just spoke about happiness. During his reign, a road map towards GNH in terms of laws and policies was developed, and Bhutan continues to enjoy them now. His Majesty firmly believed that as a society, Bhutan must have a distinctive, development philosophy if we are to make our people contented. The simplest message of His Majesty’s idea of GNH is that we should not end up by having everything – except happiness and the contentment of a meaningful life. He explored a more wholesome approach to guiding governance and development.

 

The cockpit of socio-economic development planning in Bhutan, next only to the Cabinet, is the Gross National Happiness Commission. The Gross National Happiness Commission was created by His Majesty King Jigme Khesar in 2007. While conceptualization and field surveys on GNH are carried out by the Centre of Bhutan Studies, implementation of GNH through ministries and other agencies are the responsibility of the Cabinet and Gross National Happiness Commission. This particular institutional arrangement underlines the fact that any different intent has to be expressed in terms of policies, and policies must be embedded in new institutions that carry them out.

Envisioning a new class of government institutions to reflect the thrust of GNH will become an important part of GNH institutional restructuring in course of time, if GNH is to gain deeper traction. I doubt if it can be done successfully with the present institutional structure which closely corresponds and echoes the sector composition of GDP in terms of ministries looking after agriculture, fisheries, forestry, electricity, mining, manufacturing, and banking among others. Their focus on only the material aspects of reality misses certain relational and intangible factors crucial to happiness. Thus it may not be a pure fantasy to contemplate a new organization such as the Ministry of Psychological Well-being and ‘Relationality’ in the distant future.

GNH is certainly a dominant discourse in Bhutan, with each voice trying to interpret GNH in a way that reflects their life aspirations – from conscience-concerned lamas, cut-throat businessmen, mike-loving politicians, to procedure-bound bureaucrats or investor-friendly ‘globalizers’. The present government was elected predominantly on a GNH manifesto. Although there is a broad consensus in our society for GNH, new policy directions sometimes provoke subtle disagreement, as liberalization, market mechanism, free trade and foreign direct investments are initiated.

Practising GNH is more raucous than professing its theory. The debates on GNH are a part of deliberative democracy. To discuss GNH is to discuss the future of Bhutan as well as what life is for. The debates are about the meaning of change in people’s life: whether proposed change would enhance happiness in a holistic, eudaemonist sense. We should pose this important question: What is the relationship between happiness and well-being on the one hand, and economic development on the other?

 

Internationally, less attention is paid to happiness at an official level. Traditional spheres of government consist of conventional public goods, such as security, economy, social justice, public infrastructure, health and education. Happiness is, explicitly, not one of them; it is subordinated to the private realm. Public policies and government expenditure priorities are important determinants of the conditions of happiness. So the state ought to consider it. Left to our individual strivings, the chances of succeeding are lower if policies do not explicitly take account of this universal pursuit of individuals.

To have a better system of planning and vetting project proposals, GNH-sensitive project screening tools, which differ from agency to agency, have been developed and recently introduced as an experiment. For example, GNH project screening tools for the health sector are different from the ones used by the hydropower sector. But it will take some years for this particular project appraisal tool to gain wider acceptance in Bhutan, in place of other ways of evaluating the desirability of programmes and projects. Such screening tools do make a difference to decision-making, as it did in the still pending entry of WTO due to revelation of otherwise unseen issues noticed when we used the GNH lens.

 

As a basis of public policy, measurement of GNH for policy guidance is important. Indicators embody values, determine policies and measure progress. Indicators actually drive society in certain directions. They even determine the policy agendas of governments. Policy makers tend to implement policies or programmes based on current international development indicators, without taking into consideration the values that lie behind such numbers. If the desired values are different from those underlying international development indicators, devising complimentary new indicators is natural.

Without some kind of measurement system, GNH cannot guide practical policies and programmes. The development of GNH metrics is necessary for complementing, or substituting where necessary, narrower indicators of progress. Conditions of life that favour well-being and happiness are tracked by surveys every couple of years. To inform people and the government about the changes taking place, a wide array of qualitative and quantitative indicators of GNH are estimated. GNH indicators serve, at the moment loosely, as tools to track and evaluate developmental progress. They can help evaluate programmes that are working and those which are not. Indicators can also enable Bhutanese to hold their government accountable.

 

The factors, or variables, identified as pertinent to happiness are aggregated to build a weighted index of GNH. The GNH index is decomposable at various sub-group levels like geography, gender, education, occupation, age and so on. It is also decomposable separately into qualitative index and quantitative index for qualitative and quantitative variables respectively. Some of these factors are culturally specific but an overwhelming number are not and they can be used in a trans-boundary way. Of the 72 factors, 12 are quantitative variables and 60 are qualitative variables. As survey instruments are improved, the balance of qualitative versus quantitative variables will change more in favour of quantitative factors. At this moment, a Bhutanese on average enjoys 43 factors sufficiently out of an ideal 72 factors.

The structure of GNH indicators looks more complicated than it actually is. The Centre for Bhutan Studies adapted an aggregation method for GNH that was actually developed by James Foster and Sabina Alkire for measuring multidimensional poverty. However, work on new indicators of well-being and happiness needs to be extended to full-cost accounting to better reflect cost and benefits. Happiness and well-being are derived from capital of various kinds: human resources, ecological, economic, cultural and social. Full-cost accounting should cover them. What we measure matters, and nations have been measuring their wealth far too narrowly, using reductionist frameworks. GNH and its indicators represent a humble but holistic exploration.

 

* Karma Ura is the author of several books and numerous articles, and a painter. He is the Editor of the Journal of Bhutan Studies, and an Associate Editor of International Journal of Asian Business and Information Management.