The Best American Travel Writing 2015 (18 page)

MADELINE DREXLER

FROM
Tricycle

O
N FRIDAY EVENINGS
in Thimphu, the capital of Bhutan, men, women, and children throng the main street, flowing together in a slow dance. Swaggering teenage boys, arms slung over each other's shoulders, speak in surprisingly gentle voices. Stray dogs assertively cohabit the city. One often hears singing—on sidewalks, pouring out of windows, on construction sites. The melodies persist in the undulating countryside, where men engaged in matches of archery or darts break into congratulatory chants when the other side scores.

Article 9 of the Constitution of the Kingdom of Bhutan says, “The State shall strive to promote those circumstances that will enable the successful pursuit of Gross National Happiness.” In the fall of 2012, I traveled to this simple, complicated, lavishly lovely place to find out how GNH, as the policy is known, plays out in real life. My intention was to glean what makes for happiness in a fast-changing society where Buddhism is deeply rooted but where the temptations and collateral damage of affluence are rising. Bhutanese have practiced happiness, reflected upon it, debated it, dissected it, and legislated it—and they seemed to me, on the whole, happier than Americans. But if for no other reason than the nature of impermanence, that may soon change.

Sandwiched between the world's two most populous countries, India and China, Bhutan is half the size of Indiana, has a population of about 740,000, and has never been colonized. The land rises from 300 feet in the southern lowlands to more than 24,000 feet in the mountains—some sacred and unclimbed—bordering the Tibet Autonomous Region. Bhutan is the only country in the world where Vajrayana Buddhism—deity-dense, merit-based, karma-focused—is the official religion, the only country in the world where Dzongkha—the soft, sibilant tongue closely related to Tibetan—is the national language. The four most common household assets are a rice cooker, a curry cooker, a water boiler, and a religious altar.

Bhutan's constitution stipulates that 60 percent of the country must remain under forest cover forever; today, despite breakneck urbanization, that figure is 80 percent. The government bans plastic bags. Capital punishment was abolished in 2004. Bhutanese take off 16 public holidays and numerous local festival days. And the country is a global biodiversity hotspot.

Yet Bhutan is also rich in contradictions—paradoxes that undermine the promise of GNH. The country prohibits tobacco advertising, smoking in public places, and the sale or illegal possession of tobacco products, but there was a public outcry in 2011 when a 23-year-old monk received a 3-year jail sentence for smuggling in $2.50 worth of chewing tobacco. Leaders have vowed to grow 100 percent organic crops, but most agricultural products are imported from India. The government strives for economic development, but offers few incentives for small, self-owned businesses, which are culturally perceived as ungenerous toward the collective. Bhutan has strict seat belt and antilitter laws, but most citizens flout them. Homosexuality is illegal, but no one is arrested.

In Bhutan, every conversation about GNH became at some point definitional. Can a nation be happy if individuals are not? Can individuals be happy if others suffer? Will the country's traditional foundations of happiness erode, to be replaced by a surfeit of stuff?

In the capital, many told me, happiness is increasingly being defined as consumerism. “People in Thimphu are getting competitive. If he has a house, I want a house. If he has a car, I want a car,” said a young Ministry of Health worker. “The ones who are making money think GNH is good. The ones who aren't think GNH is bad.”

But in rural Bhutan, older villagers' definition of happiness is starkly different. On the way to Punakha Dzong, the resplendent seventeenth-century monastery/fortress, I spoke (through a translator) with 79-year-old Sangay Lham, a smiling, gray-haired woman dressed in a checkered
kira
and fine silver brooch, selling fruit by the side of the road. What, I asked, does GNH mean to her? “As long as we have fire when we need it, water when we need it, warm food on the table, tasty curry, what else do we need?” she said. “Happiness is to be good at heart.”

“We talk about the economy, but the core Buddhist understanding of GNH, the reality of GNH here, is the realization of compassion,” said Lama Ngodup Dorji, a man with a beatific face who is the seventeenth member of his family over 15 generations to head the Shingkhar Dechenling monastery. I met him in Thimphu at the offices of the affiliated Ati Foundation, which gives economic assistance to poor citizens and rural communities. The foundation is housed in a brand-new glass-clad building with polished marble floors and an Italian restaurant on the second floor. The weather had turned chilly, and Dorji was wearing a down vest over his red robes. Happiness, he said, warming his hands around a fresh cup of coffee, is a choice. “You have to brew it in yourself. Even from a lump of food, we choose each grain to suit our need. Likewise, in the philosophical manner, we choose to be who we are.”

If the word
materialism
is earnestly bandied about here, much as it was in America during the counterculture half a century ago, it's largely because until quite recently Bhutan was a medieval society.

In 1960, virtually the entire nation was rural. Thimphu, a collection of peasant hamlets situated in a valley on the banks of the Wang Chu River, became the official capital only in 1961. Average life expectancy was 33 years. The gross national product per person was $51. (By contrast, that same year in the United States, a comparable measure—gross domestic product per capita—was $2,935.) There was no centralized government administration. Agriculture was subsistence—people bred animals and cultivated only as much from the land as they needed. There were no roads and no motor vehicles—mules, yaks, and horses were the principal modes of transport. There was no electricity, no telecommunications network, and no postal system. Foreign visitors were not permitted. Bhutan had only four hospitals and two qualified doctors.

Then everything started to change. The first paved road was completed in 1962. Schools and hospitals were built. Citizens gained free health care and free education. Internet and a national TV station arrived in 1999. Today, life expectancy stands at 67.6 years. Eighty-six percent of people ages 15 to 24 are literate. Per capita income is just under $3,000. More than 100,000 tourists visited the country in 2012. Ninety-three percent of households own a cell phone. About a third of the population is urban, and the government predicts that figure could rise to 70 percent by 2020.

This rapid development has brought new problems and exacerbated old ones. In Thimphu, there are 700 bars and one public library. The long-hidden issue of domestic violence has exploded in public discourse. Urbanization has put a strain on housing and sanitation. The economy is stagnant, the private sector is on the verge of collapse, and inflation is soaring. Youth unemployment is up, and along with it formerly rare violations such as drug abuse and vandalism. The country struggles with a dire shortage of doctors and nurses. When a recent government survey asked respondents how their welfare could be most improved, their top answers registered the stubborn needs of a developing nation, GNH or not: roads, water, commerce, transportation, and communications.

In Bhutan, which is ranked 140 of 186 countries in the 2012 UN Human Development Index, the question is how the nation can become modern without losing its soul.

When first conceived, Gross National Happiness was the enlightened guiding principle of development at a time when Bhutan was starting to emerge from cultural isolation and material deprivation. Since 1907, Bhutan had been ruled by a lineage of progressive monarchs. The most visionary of these was the Fourth Dragon King, a somber-looking man named Jigme Singye Wangchuck, who took the throne at 16 after his father's death in 1972. Two years later, shortly after his coronation, the teenager coined the witty phrase Gross National Happiness. In 2006, as a logical extension of the policy, Wangchuck announced that he was voluntarily giving up the throne to make way for a parliamentary democracy in the form of a constitutional monarchy.

The Fourth King's conception of Gross National Happiness rested on four “pillars”: good governance, sustainable socioeconomic development, cultural preservation, and environmental conservation. The humanity of GNH is seen in the roomy definitions of what are known as the policy's nine “domains”: good governance; psychological well-being; balanced time use; community vitality; health; education; culture; living standards; and ecological diversity and resilience. “Living standards” refers not merely to per capita income but also to meaningful work. “Environment” includes not only the measured quality of water, air, and soil but also how people perceive the quality of their natural surroundings. “Community vitality” reflects not only crime but also volunteerism.

To learn how these ideas play out in policy, I visited Karma Tshiteem, who at the time was secretary of Bhutan's Gross National Happiness Commission. I had first met Tshiteem at an April 2012 United Nations conference on GNH. He sat at my lunch table and impressed me as a jokester and a sharp observer—the class cutup who was also the smartest student. Now, as we sat over tea in a modestly furnished anteroom to his office, he wore on his right hip an incongruous ceremonial sword, a reminder of his responsibility to the people.

I asked Tshiteem if a GNH society was really possible, and mentioned that though smoking is illegal in Bhutan's public places, I had seen kids lighting up. “That's OK,” he said. “There is no one ideal GNH human being. And we are not trying to define a GNH person. We posit GNH, but it doesn't mean we won't have these outliers and we will not have a problem with youth, because youth is a time of exploration and rebellion. GNH doesn't mean that everything has to be picture-perfect all the time.”

In Bhutan, major policy proposals go through a GNH screening tool that has real teeth. In 2008, for example, GNH Commission officials were enthusiastic about joining the World Trade Organization. A preliminary vote showed 19–5 in favor of joining, based solely on economic criteria. But when the proposal was fed through the GNH policy-screening tool, which assesses draft policies based on their impact on GNH's nine domains, the downsides far outweighed the benefits. Among other things, WTO membership would have compelled the green-centric and health-conscious country to open its economy to a phalanx of junk food franchises such as McDonald's and Domino's Pizza. A second vote was taken, and the proposal lost 19–5. Bhutan did not join the WTO.

“What this tells us is that the decisions we make are very much influenced by the frameworks we use,” said Tshiteem. “When you use the same framework that every other government uses, even Bhutanese arrive at the same conclusions. But when we brought in the GNH framework, which made them think deeply about all the other aspects that are important, suddenly they did not see this as such a great idea. One of the results from the screening tool was that WTO membership would raise the level of stress. That's something that would never be measured in the United States in anything having to do with economics.”

Every two years, Bhutan conducts a fine-grained survey that captures the texture of citizens' lives and their sense of rootedness in the traditional culture. Among the questions: Do you consider karma in the course of your daily life? Is lying justifiable? Do you feel like a stranger in your family? How much do you trust your neighbor? The survey asks respondents if they know the names of their great-grandparents; if men make better leaders than women (gender equality is preached but not achieved); if they planted trees in the past year; how they rate their total household income (in 2010, 71 percent said “just enough” and 20.3 percent said “more than enough”); if they think Bhutanese have become more concerned about material wealth (87.8 percent said yes); if they feel safe from ghosts (“rarely,” 20 percent said).

Respondents are considered “happy” if they achieve “sufficiency” in at least six of the nine domains, not outsized achievement in one domain at the expense of another. As Tshiteem reminded me, in Buddhism happiness is balance. “You can't make up for lack of personal time with community vitality—you cannot. Because each domain, in itself, is a necessary condition,” he explained.

In the 2010 survey, 40.8 percent of survey respondents in the land of Gross National Happiness tested happy.

The Centre for Bhutan Studies has devised a formula that purports to boil down national happiness into a single number:

GNH = 1 − (H
_n
× A
_n
)

where

H
_n
= percent of not-yet-happy people

= 1 − H
_h
or (100 − percent of happy people)

and

A
_n
= percentage of domains in which not-yet-happy people lack sufficiency

In 2010, the most recent survey, that calculation turned out to be 0.743—which means . . . well, I don't know. It did seem to contravene what one Bhutanese friend remarked: “Isn't it the simplest thing that makes you happy? Isn't it the most complex thing that doesn't make you happy?”

Around the world, happiness indexes are proliferating, but in Bhutan, the question of measuring happiness is divisive. Even the GNH Commission's Karma Tshiteem disagreed with the idea of boiling down population-wide happiness into a number. “There is this misconception that, with our clever index and indicators, we are trying to measure happiness.” Rather, he said, Bhutan's GNH parameters should be used like the gauges on a car's dashboard, alerting leaders to problems. Others say that Bhutan wasn't interested in measurement until the UN and World Bank caught wind of the idea, and the country faced international pressure to come up with hard numbers.