Bhutan, after prioritizing happiness, now faces an existential crisis

Bhutan, the tiny kingdom that introduced Gross National Happiness to the world, has a problem: young people are leaving the country in record numbers. 

The country boasts free health care, free education, a rising life expectancy and an economy that’s grown over the last 30 years — still, people are leaving. 

Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay believes it is ironically the success of Gross National Happiness that has made young Bhutanese so sought after abroad.

“It is an existential crisis,” he said. 

Holding the outside world at bay 

Bhutan, which is about the size of Maryland, was largely isolated from the rest of the world for centuries. The kingdom was so protective of its unique Buddhist culture that it only started allowing foreign tourists to visit in the 1970s and didn’t introduce television until 1999. 

Buddhism is the country’s national religion. Bhutanese, especially older men and women, spend hours spinning prayer wheels full of Buddhist scriptures. Prayer flags flutter on hillsides and in forests, turning nature itself into a shrine. 

Bhutan’s capital city of Thimpu still has no traffic lights. The nation’s roads are shared by cars and cows.

Dasho Kinley Dorji, who ran Bhutan’s first newspaper before serving as the government’s minister of information and communications, describes the population as nervous, surrounded as it is by India and China, and lacking military might or economic power. 

“Bhutan’s strength was going to be our identity, to be different from everyone around us,” he said. 

Bhutanese wear different clothes and construct buildings in a traditional architectural style. The culture remains strong today. 

“We came to realize that, you know, that what we had in the past, what is old, is actually very valuable,” Dorji said. 

Bhutan was, and is today, largely a subsistence agricultural society. Many families still live in multigenerational farmhouses. 

The country was unified by the man who became its first king in 1907. His sons and grandsons — who are referred to in Bhutan as the second, third, fourth and today, fifth, kings — have reigned since. 

Bhutan’s unique path to modernity 

It was Bhutan’s fourth king who, as a young, newly-crowned ruler in the 1970s, set Bhutan onto its path toward modernity. Jigme Singye Wangchuck, on his way home from a summit of nonaligned nations in Cuba, landed at an airport in India, where journalists asked him what Bhutan’s gross national product was. 

“And the king said, ‘Actually, in Bhutan, gross national happiness is much more important to us than gross national product,’” Dorji recounted. 

The phrase stuck and attracted international attention. Maximizing Gross National Happiness became a primary responsibility of Bhutan’s government, led today by Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay. 

“Gross National Happiness acknowledges that economic growth is important, but that growth must be sustainable. It must… be balanced by the preservation of our unique culture,” Tobgay said. “People matter. Our happiness, our well-being matters. Everything should serve that.”

Every five years, surveyors fan out across Bhutan measuring the nation’s happiness. The results are analyzed and factored into public policy. 

“Gross National Happiness does not directly equate to happiness in the moment. One happiness is fleeting, it is emotion, it is joy,” Tobgay said. 

The other — the kind Bhutan is focused on, Tobgay said — is contentment, being happy with life and oneself. 

It’s also about nature. By law, at least 60% of the country must remain under forest cover. And with most of its energy coming from hydroelectric power, Bhutan was the first and remains today one of the only countries in the world to be carbon negative. 

It earns foreign revenue selling excess hydropower to India and from tourism, but there are limits. The country is full of gorgeous mountains, but summiting mountain peaks isn’t allowed. 

“For a Bhutanese, it’s very easy to understand: You know, the mountains are sacred,” Dorji said. 

School is taught in English and it’s free, as is health care. 

And though the country has a king, Bhutan is also a democracy. 

Introducing Bhutan to democracy

A quarter century after introducing Gross National Happiness, the fourth king decided the best thing for his country would be to have an elected parliament and a prime minister. 

“[It’s] the only country where democracy was introduced in a time of peace and stability, where democracy was literally gifted, imposed on the people, not just gifted, because the people didn’t want it,” Tobgay said. 

As a reporter, Dorji covered the king’s travels throughout Bhutan as he held meetings called consultations to discuss the idea with his subjects. Dorji remembers people begging the king not to institute a democracy. 

“Because when they looked around the world, their horizon was India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan: Democracy,” Dorji said. “Which is really synonymous with violence, with corruption. So they said, ‘No, thank you. We don’t really need that. We are fine.’”

The king was not swayed by their arguments, arguing in response that a leader chosen by birth and not by merit might one day lead the country to disaster. Then, at just 51, he abdicated and passed the crown to his 26-year-old son, the fifth and current king. Bhutanese headed to the polls for the first time ever in 2008.

Today the fifth king is 44. He is adored in the country and works closely with the prime minister. 

So why are young Bhutanese leaving the country in record numbers?

Bhutan is currently facing what is known in the country as a crisis of outmigration. The COVID-19 pandemic hit Bhutan’s economy hard, shutting down tourism. Recovery has been slow. 

Many Bhutanese, with their excellent English, found higher-paying jobs in Australia, even doing menial labor. Word of opportunities spread fast on social media and now a devastating 9% of the country’s population, most of them young people, have left. 

“This is a very difficult situation for Bhutan,” Tobgay said. 

Luring people back with a City of Mindfulness 

Bhutan’s government has mobilized, with the king launching a bold, high-stakes plan to lure people back. Prime Minister Tobgay is trying to attract more business and tourists to Bhutan, highlighting landmarks like a centuries-old suspension bridge, part of an ancient 250-mile trail from one end of the country to the other that is now open to trekking tourists. 

But tourism can only do so much and Bhutan’s king knows it, so he has decided to create a new city in southern Bhutan with different rules from the rest of the country. It will be an attempt at a new model of robust economic development, while still holding true to Bhutanese values. 

The king is calling it the Gelephu Mindfulness City. 

He turned to Danish architect Bjarke Ingels to design it. The new city will have neighborhoods nestled between the area’s many rivers, connected by a series of unusual bridges. The bridges will also act as public buildings, with one home to a Buddhist center, another to health care facilities and yet another a university. There won’t be any skyscrapers, and everything will be built with local materials. 

Right now, the area — located in Bhutan’s lowlands — is largely undeveloped. Dr. Lotay Tshering, a former prime minister whom the king has tapped to lead the new city, said it will be built in phases over the next two decades, with no polluting industries allowed. 

The area is also home to a lot of wildlife, including elephants. The new city will have wildlife corridors to protect the animals. 

The king has said the success of the project will shape the future of Bhutan. 

“When we say we follow the principles of Gross National Happiness, we do not mean we are happy with less… We also want to be rich. We also want to be technologically high standard,” Dr. Tshering said. “We want Bhutanese to be heading multi-million dollar companies, multinational companies.”

A Bhutanese team is collaborating with experts around the world, seeking investors to help build the city, the cost of which is likely to run in the billions. The city will have its own legal framework modeled on Singapore’s and will run on clean hydroelectric power, with the hope of drawing technology companies, especially AI.

Deciding to stay

Ingels presented his plans to the king, and the king then presented them to the nation, last December. 

Namgay Zam, a journalist who used to anchor Bhutan’s nightly newscast, was in attendance. She’d been in the middle of planning a move to Australia with her family when she went to hear the king that day at a packed stadium.

“He did what no king had done before. He asked the people to help him directly. And he said, ‘Will you help me?’ And there was shocked silence,” Zam said. “Even for me, I froze. And I was like, ‘Did he just ask us to help him?’ And then he said, ‘Will you help me,’ a second time.”

For Zam, it was a yes. 

“I came home and I told my husband, ‘We can’t leave,’” Zam said. “And he said, ‘Why?’ And I said, ‘I’ve signed a social contract with his majesty, because I said yes.’”

Zam and her husband did not go to Australia, but the king and his family did. He visited the country last month to bring his vision for the new Gelephu Mindfulness City and the future of Bhutan to packed stadiums of more than 20,000 Bhutanese who live in Australia now, all in the hopes of one day luring them back home. 

“If we succeed, we can show that you can create a city that does not displace nature, that is anchored and rooted in the local heritage and culture, and that still allows for growth and prosperity to happen,” Ingels said. “That is a struggle a lot of places in the world are struggling with.”