“Why do you come to my shop so often?” Pema abruptly asked me. I was taken aback. This middle-aged lady, owner of a sprawling emporium serving the tourist trade on busy NorzimLam main street in Thimphu, the capital of Bhutan, was normally so reserved and careful.
On reflection, her outburst was not so bizarre. Her customers typically pass by once, maybe twice. I was unusual, having been around for three weeks.
Traveling to Bhutan is expensive. Besides paying for accommodation, food, a guide, and a driver, visitors must pay a 100-dollar tax for development programs, health, and education. Tourists tend to cram their stays into a few busy days – a day or two in the capital before heading for the numerous flamboyant monasteries nested in narrow valleys or for an unforgettable trekking in the highest mountains of the Himalayas. Bhutan is about the size of Switzerland, and its landscape is similar to the Alps, but the valleys are narrower, and the mountains are hugely higher.
Pema is the owner of one of the many old-fashioned peeling paint shops that stick to one another on Norzim Lam Street. Some businesses are so tiny that there is only room for the owner to squeeze in, sit, and sell snacks and beverages through a small, nicely carved wooden window!
But Pema’s shop is large. It has a nice little counter at the entrance where monks stop by to chat with her brother, who gives a hand. They sip tea loudly and look up from time to time from their smartphones (everyone in this reclusive and isolated country of 777,486 inhabitants has one, and it works even at 3000 meters of altitude!) to take an inquisitive look at the different tourists coming, Indians, French, Canadians, Americans, Germans and increasingly Chinese.
More interesting items are to be found in the back of the store. Beautiful woven fabrics with traditional Bhutanese colors and designs hang orderly in lines. These beautiful and rich fabrics are used to make the traditional costume of Kira for women and Gho for men, costumes that are, by royal decree, mandatory to wear at work, school, and for official ceremonies. Culture preservation goes, indeed, that far.
Pema wears a Kira, with a red and yellow striped dress and sparkling blue top, but still wonders how I have been able to visit her shops so often. I explain: “I have been working for a Civil Society Organisation—the equivalent of an NGO—called The Bhutanese Centre for Media and Democracy (BCMD), created in 2008, the year democracy came to Bhutan, to promote civic engagement, public discourse, and media literacy.
Bhutan is the youngest democracy in the world. Paradoxically, it was imposed and, yes, truly “enforced” by the monarchy, more specifically by the Fourth King, Jigme Singye Wangchuck (1972-2006) because, as he explained the first time he raised the issue in 2004, the future of a country should not rest on the shoulders of a single person. Too risky!
In other words, the revolution in this country came from the top, not from the bottom. Something never heard of!
Even more surprisingly, the Bhutanese didn’t want democracy. They were comfortable with absolute monarchy and its legacy. They didn’t want to change. They did not see the need, and they still don’t. Former prime minister Dasho Tshering Togbay, speaking at Oxford University, said: “We did not ask. We did not want to. We were very happy with how we were.”
Since the creation of the monarchy in 1907, Bhutanese have been blessed with something very special compared to other equivalent poor countries of the world: benevolent kings who had more the well-being of their population at heart than their own interest.
“All of us in Bhutan love our kings,” Dasho Tshering Togbay asserted at Oxford. And why shouldn’t they?
Have we ever heard of a monarch abdicating in 2006 at the age of 51 in favor of his son because it was time to make room for a younger generation? Have we ever seen a monarch voluntarily reducing the scope of its absolute power to strengthen the National Assembly, even empowering it to remove the King if necessary by a two-thirds majority? Is there a single monarch in the world who has decided that all his descendants should retire at the age of 65, like any ordinary citizen? It is the monarchy that provides the country with free education and healthcare, including paying the expenses of anyone who needs to be treated in India. The King has no wealth and no personal property. Everyone can talk to him, especially when he travels in the countryside, which he does often. The same fourth king created what has become a trademark of the country, the Gross National Happiness Index (GNH), a measure that the King believed was more accurate than the better-known GDP. No laws and economic decisions can be taken if they do not rest on the four pillars of the GNH: good governance, sustainable socio-economic development, preservation and promotion of culture, and environmental conservation. Bhutan refused at the last minute to join the World Trade Organisation because the GNH Commission declared that the adhesion would not be compatible with the four pillars.
“No wonder the Bhutanese love their monarchy!” says Gerald Daly, former United Nations Resident Coordinator in Bhutan. Daly has 25 years of experience in development, working in Sudan, Malawi, Afghanistan, North Korea, and Timor Leste. “Bhutanese have a relationship with their monarchy, which is totally foreign to us Westerners who have seen many of our institutions fail.”
“Are Bhutanese happy people?” will be the systematic question asked to someone coming back from Bhutan.
“GNH has nothing to do with this delicious ephemeral feeling that one can have today but not tomorrow and that we call happiness. It is a concept of development with values where growth is not just measured in numbers”, explains Françoise Pommaret, anthropologist and director of research at the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Paris and Associated Professor at the Royal University of Bhutan. “GNH is a star, a guiding star, like the French motto ‘Liberté, égalité, fraternité. Does every French person benefit from those? No. But is it an ideal to reach for? Yes!”
As Dasho Tshering Togbay says, “We are not the happiest country in the world, but we take happiness seriously, and we are trying hard.”
Pema keeps folding the delicate toegos, which is the top of the Kira, but I can see she is not concentrating on what she is doing. I had come back once more to exchange the toegos I had bought. I cannot make up my mind on which color to choose among all those flamboyant, silky tops.
Pema keeps showing me toegos that I discard, but I can see her mind is somewhere else. She is pensive. “Democracy….democracy…. Hum ….What do you think of our politics?” she asks as if it were the most normal question to ask. But I know it is not.
I am told that Bhutanese do not ask questions and that foreigners should refrain from probing too much, especially on politics, which is considered a sensitive topic.
I feel ill at ease commenting on Bhutan politics to Pema, as there are no major differences between the parties’ ideologies except for huge and different promises. It is those promises that worry Pema.
“We are happy enough as we are with the way we live. I don’t want big development. I don’t want to be like China. I don’t want big cities, skyscrapers, or big airplanes. We don’t need it. “We are OK now. We have done well these last years. We needed to make progress, and we have made huge ones. But it is enough.”
Françoise Pommaret has lived in Bhutan since 1981. When asked, “Why Bhutan?” she candidly answers, “I don’t know. Probably because it is unique, it has become my passion.” And, indeed, she is passionate. She speaks Dzongkha, the official language of the country, although English is the language of education and work. She even has a Bhutanese name—Tashi Om—and was granted citizenship by a special decree from the King.
She always was the Kira. “There was nothing else, no other kind of clothes, when I arrived in Bhutan. I had no choice. I took the habit. I love it. It is so comfortable.”
“When I arrived in the 1980s, I felt like I was in the Middle-Age. There was no telephone, no flights, no planes, and very little electricity. The capital, Thimphu, had only 10,000 inhabitants and 40 cars. Mail was delivered by foot. Bhutan was a village.
The only way to reach the country was by road through the border town of Phuntsholing in India. The road – a path, I should say – was pretty bad and took hours to cross. “The first road-worthy name appeared at the end of the eighties, as well as the first international telecom connections in 1988, and the first plane, with 16 seats, in 1986, from Calcutta. The trip was frightening. The plane could not fly high in the sky, so we were going through the clouds and incredible turbulence.
There was only radish and radish and….more radish to eat! Maybe a little bit of spinach and few potatoes. People were suffering from stunted growth.
The country has never known the telephone landline. It jumped directly to the smartphone, which has been a blessing for this country, where going from one narrow valley to another is a pure nightmare because of the lack of roads and huge mountains. Nowadays, a sick person in a remote and cut-off village can call the clinic of the canton, and a nurse will rush immediately on his or her scooter.
Access to the internet is so critical for the government that all the materials needed to establish the network were sent by helicopter to 200 people in a small village located at 5000 meters on top of a mountain with no road access.
“The country has gone from handwriting to digital communication. I think I have used a typing machine for only a couple of years.
Social media has been incredibly beneficial for families and communities. People are cut off because of the difficult geography, so they make groups and talk to each other. They now keep informed of the activities of each other in inaccessible villages. Social media has created links. People share videos on social media, and that alone contributes to enhancing the value of their own village. Now, they are connected; they can share a whole range of services.”
Yet, despite all these changes, Bhutan preserves its appearance.
It is the only country in Asia that has no skyscrapers. All houses and commercial buildings are constructed according to the architectural tradition of the country, with no more than six floors. There are no huge shopping centers, GAP, H&M, Chanel, or Louis Vuitton. No McDonalds. No Starbucks. No publicity billboards. It is forbidden to smoke in public. There are no traffic lights, only a policeman who controls the traffic from a booth in the middle of the capital. The first road was built in 1962. TV and the Internet were introduced in 1999. It was the last country in the world to do so.
Françoise Pommaret explains: “There was no school in this country 50 years ago. Today, school enrolment at the primary level is 96.7%. Pregnant women used to give birth at home, with the help of their mother or their husband. There were no midwives in the remote villages. Today, 80% of women deliver in the hospital. They come into town a week before the delivery and will stay with families or friends until the baby arrives. It is forbidden to use milk formula to feed an infant. There is none on sale. It is available only at the hospital if needed. The infant mortality rate has plummeted. In 30 years, it went from 140 per 1000 to 14, literacy from 40% to 72%, life expectancy from 45 to 70 years, and salaries have gone from $135 to $3,500 per capita per year. A child cannot get into school if he does not have all his vaccines. All forms of contraception are accepted and free. The pill has no great success in the countryside, but the IUD and the three-month shot are a lot. Extensive public information on available contraception is available. Abortion is forbidden because, according to Buddhism, a baby is already one year old at his birth.”
It is hardly surprising that Bhutan is the story of development success that the United Nations loves to cite.
The country is one of the fastest-growing economies in Asia. It has been upgraded from a less developed to a middle-developed country because of its average annual growth of 7% before COVID-19.
Given this success, I am flabbergasted by Pema’s astonishing remark: “We must put a stop to all this!”
Why? After all, the country still faces serious economic challenges. Unemployment is low overall, only 2%, but very high among the young, 10.2%, and youngsters under 24 years represent 45% of the population. They are educated and restless because they cannot find jobs anymore as civil servants, the preferred field of activity with good salaries, great advantages, and stability. The public sector is saturated, and the private one is underdeveloped. The economy depends mainly on electricity production (70% of it exported to India), tourism, and agriculture. Suicide among young people is a worrying phenomenon. Alcohol is the biggest killer in the country. It is the main cause of car accidents. Domestic violence against women and children is a major concern. And climate change is a real threat, even though Bhutan is the only carbon dioxide-negative country in the world. It absorbs more CO2 than it produces, thanks to its vast forests. By law, forests must cover 60% of the country. It covers right now 70% right now. A new one must be planted for every tree cut.
“Water will be the issue of the next decades,” maintains Françoise Pommaret. “Bhutan is squeezed between the world’s two most populous and polluted
countries, China and India. They both have serious water problems and will have more in the future. Rivers in Bhutan that descend to India are going drier. So are the rivers in Tibet; following the construction of dams by China, Bhutan feels the climate is changing. The weather is milder. October used to be very cold. It is not anymore. Rains are erratic. We still wonder where spring has gone to!”
It takes me a while to understand what Pema really means when she says that the rapid development of her country must stop. She is aware of all the problems, but she worries: “Where will the money come from to fulfill all those promises the government made? From India?” she ironically asks, getting more assertive. “This would not be good.”
Bhutan relies a lot on its Indian ally while remaining very suspicious of China since the Middle Kingdom annexed Tibet in 1959.
Relations with India date back to the British Empire. Britain wanted to control the direct route from Calcutta to Tibet, but it never managed to subdue, even after a few wars, the Bhutanese, who had the jungle in the South and the mountains in the North to protect them. Instead, they signed a Friendship agreement in 1865, renewed in 1910, by which Bhutan kept its independence while the British kept control of foreign affairs. The agreement was extended with India in 1949 after independence, which again was renewed in 2007 when Bhutan regained control of its foreign policy.
Because of its geographical position, Bhutan will always be dependent on India. Whatever the country exports to Bangladesh or Nepal, for instance, has to go through India’s territory.
Pema is no fool. She knows and understands. But what does not reassure her is the possibility that this dependency could increase over the years and become even dangerous. Pema has a very pictorial way of explaining why.
“You know, when a child does not stop saying: “Mummy…mummy… give me this, give me that”. There is a point when the Mummy has enough and slaps the child. This is what I am afraid could happen with India. We must stop asking for help. We can store enough apples and potatoes during summer to sell during winter. We don’t need to import from India.”
Even when it comes to democracy, Pema shows the same hesitation about the full-scale development of the country. She shrugs her shoulders when I raise the issue. She is not persuaded by what she sees going on elsewhere in the world. She is well aware that democracy is going through a difficult period—a moral and confidence crisis—in the West.
Françoise observes: “Bhutanese are connected to the world via the internet and social media, which they are incredibly fond of. They are informed about what’s going on around the world. So, they wonder if democracy is such a great thing. They look around at their neighbors first. They see what’s happening in Nepal and India. It’s not really inspiring.”
Christiane Berthiaume is a former journalist with Canadian media and a former public information officer for both the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the World Food Programme (WFP). She is the author of Le Pays du Bonheur Possible, a book inspired in part by her time in Bhutan. For the Love of a King is excerpted from that work and published in Envoy with permission.
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