Gross National Happiness - A Kingdom's experiment with growth.

November 1, 2005

Dear Friends,

Not GDP but GNH. Gross National Happiness, that is the measure used by the King of Bhutan to gauze his people. Please read this very interesting article;

What money can’t buy

Looking for happiness? Consult Bhutan’s King, suggests Andrew C. Revkin

A Bhutanese landscape

What is happiness? In the US and in many other industrialised countries, it is often equated with money. Economists measure consumer confidence on the assumption that the resulting figure says something about progress and public welfare. The gross domestic product, or GDP, is routinely used as shorthand for the well-being of a nation.

But the small Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan has been trying out a different idea. In 1972, concerned about the problems afflicting other developing countries that focused only on economic growth, Bhutan’s newly crowned leader, King Jigme Singye Wangchuck, decided to make his nation’s priority not its GDP but its GNH, or gross national happiness.

Bhutan, the king said, needed to ensure that prosperity was shared across society and that it was balanced against preserving cultural traditions, protecting the environment and maintaining a responsive government. The king, now 49, has been instituting policies aimed at accomplishing these goals.

Now Bhutan’s example, while still a work in progress, is serving as a catalyst for far broader discussions of national well-being.

Around the world, a growing number of economists, social scientists, corporate leaders and bureaucrats are trying to develop measurements that take into account not just the flow of money but also access to health care, free time with family, conservation of natural resources and other noneconomic factors. The goal, according to many involved in this effort, is in part to return to a richer definition of the word ‘happiness’, more like what the signers of the Declaration of Independence in US had in mind when they included “the pursuit of happiness” as an inalienable right equal to liberty and life itself

“We have to think of human well-being in broader terms,” said Lyonpo Jigmi Thinley, Bhutan’s home minister and ex-prime minister. “Material well-being is only one component. That doesn’t ensure that you’re at peace with your environment and in harmony with each other.” It is a concept grounded in Buddhist doctrine, and even a decade ago it might have been dismissed by most economists and international policy experts as naive idealism.

“The goal of life should not be limited to production, consumption, more production and more consumption,” said Thakur S. Powdyel, a senior official in the Bhutanese Ministry of Education. “There is no necessary relationship between the level of possession and the level of well-being.” Saul, the Canadian political philosopher, said that Bhutan’s shift in language from “product” to “happiness” was a profound move in and of itself.

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1051031/asp/knowhow/story_5408504.asp

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