Bhutan is a small, poor Buddhist kingdom in the Himalayas, between India and Chi
ID: 348040 • Letter: B
Question
Bhutan is a small, poor Buddhist kingdom in the Himalayas, between India and China. In 1972 its then king, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, proposed the concept of Dzongkha, or Gross National Happiness.
His argument was based on the perceived difficulties with the universally used concept of Gross Domestic Product, a measure of the annual output of a country. This included output which did not add to well-being, such as defence, police and pollution clean-up), while it did not include other measures which did add to well-being such as volunteer work and unpaid domestic work. It also did not take account of income distribution. Thus, GDP was not a good indicator of standard of living, even if the latter was defined as purely economic.
In addition, some forms of economic development are uneconomic if measured on a cost-benefit basis, particularly as in many cases the benefits are private, accruing to individuals or corporations, while the costs are public, borne by the community as a whole.
The concept of Gross National Happiness signalled commitment to building an economy based on Bhutan’s culture and its Buddhist spiritual values. It held that material and spiritual
development occur side by side, and reinforce each other. Four principles underpinned the concept:
promotion of sustainable development
preservation and promotion of cultural values
conservation of the natural environment
establishment of good governance.
These were then operationalised into eight measures:
physical, mental and spiritual health
time balance
social and community vitality
cultural vitality
education
living standards
good governance
ecological vitality.
In 2007 Bhutan ranked eighth out of 178 countries in subjective well-being, and was the only country in the top 20 to have a very low GDP (Nelson 2011).
What are the difficulties in calculating Gross National Happiness? Is Gross National Happiness a concept that is only relevant to a country such as Bhutan, which is small, isolated, little involved in world trade, and with a high degree of reverence for its king and his ideas?
Explanation / Answer
The concept of Gross National Happiness is a very recent concept emerged only in 1972, it was coined in an interview of the then king of Bhutan Jigme Singye Wangchuck.
The difficulty arises by the name itself, what is the measure to calculate happiness? The definition of happiness is not clear, we all know what happiness is but if asked to define everybody will have their own view points on it. Even if we design a questionnaire to measure happiness we will have to define the term happiness to ask the question and it would become difficult to communicate the meaning of happiness to a large population.
Happiness is an emotion which has different meaning for different people; forcing it in terms of numerical values itself is a tough task.
Measuring happiness on the scale of 1 to 5 where 1 is least happy and 5 is most happy can be difficult, at the moment of happiness can you decide and measure this emotion that how happy you are?
In the beginning of the answer I have stated that GNH is a very new in the domain of world economics and there is not much record that it has been implemented anywhere in the world very successfully except Bhutan. In cities like Sao Paolo, Brazil and Seattle, Washington the standard version of GNH was used at small level but not much proof of its success can be traced.
In my view the concept of GNH is only limited to Bhutan which is isolated and have very less interactions with world business.
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