Empirical evidence strongly suggests that modern economic development has not increased subjective wellbeing in high-income countries, despite manifold increases of incomes over just a couple of decades. In many domains, people even experience a deterioration of their quality of life as competitive forces grow along with incomes. Stress at the work place, longer work weeks and less sleep, inequality-induced discrimination and poverty are just a few examples. Rising depression and suicide rates, high incidence of obesity and large-scale environmental destruction are also typical side effects of the pursuit of economic growth by many of the high-income states. While Japan clearly belongs to these high-income countries and, incidentally, has one of the longest series of subjective wellbeing data in the world, Bhutan belongs to the group of low or medium-income countries.

Unlike most of them, however, Bhutan has taken ownership of its development strategy and has come up with a unique development philosophy under the title “Gross National Happiness” (GNH) formulated by His Majesty the fourth King of Bhutan in the late 1970s. This expresses the idea that development should serve the wellbeing of the people and that economic growth is only a means for, not the end of, development. Recently, GNH has received international attention from development practitioners, academics, the media and even policy makers who are looking for potent new concepts to reverse the destructive social developments in their own countries. The Bhutanese government is now working on the Bhutan Development Index which will be composed of GNH indicators to monitor and evaluate its development process

Courtesy: Centre for Bhutan Studies, Thimpu.