The environment and its management is a major part of Bhutan’s development plan, and one of the four pillars of Gross National Happiness.
The environment and its management is a major part of Bhutan’s development plan, and one of the four pillars of Gross National Happiness. Bhutanese law requires 60% of the country to remain forested for all time. Already, over a quarter of Bhutan’s land has been set aside in the form of protected areas
Gross National Happiness (GNH) as an alternative to GDP is the only example I know of a country's development path being decided by that country alone. Not by the World Bank, the Cold War, western intellectual notions of statehood, or the force of rebellion against a colonial past. And so far it seems to be working fine.
Geopolitics however has set the pace of development, if not its direction. As was often explained to me, India had made overtures to help develop Bhutan in the 1950s. The then king (father of the present one, Jigme Singye Wangchuk) did not take India 's help but tried to slowly get aid from a variety of sources. Since, at that time Bhutan had no connections with other countries apart from India , Sikkim and China , this was proving difficult. In 1959, China invaded Tibet and it appeared that the Chinese were planning similar moves against Bhutan . Bhutan quickly decided to take up India 's offer to build roads and defence. Due to lack of access to the sea, Bhutan needed its surrounding countries and since China was not an option, India provided all that was needed. India also sponsored Bhutan 's membership to the United Nations. Since then other countries as well as the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and United Nations organisations have been providing aid to Bhutan , but India was and still is its main source of funds and industrial and consumer goods and services -- from construction to doctors and teachers. So close is this economic relationship that the Bhutanese currency -- the ngultrum -- is pegged 1:1 with the Indian rupee.
Roads, originally built by India , are particularly important as, in a landlocked mountainous country, they serve as the main source of communication and economic activity. Extending their reach is of special significance in the current Ninth Five-Year Plan. In a country with just one airport and no railway, roads mean access to health, education and the ability to shift from subsistence to market agriculture, buffering rural populations against bad times. At present, approximately 3,700 km of hard-topped roads connect the main towns but leave most of the country dependent on paths and trails.
I decided to travel on one of these and took a trip on the main arterial east-west road to Trashigang, the easternmost state of Bhutan .
Besides wanting to experience the roads, which appeared to be the fundamental infrastructural factor affecting development in the country, there was another reason for this trip. I wanted to visit Sherabtse College . Nearly everyone in any position of authority or responsibility had studied at Sherabtse. They might have gone on afterwards to study in India or some place else, but this college was where they had received their first degree.
There is one bus service a day to Trashigang and it takes two days to reach, including an overnight stop. The first day I wanted to travel the bus was cancelled because there were no passengers. I bought a ticket for the next day and arrived bright and early in the morning for the first day's 12-hour trip. Other passengers included monks, college students, families and government officials. Their luggage, including a large sack of fertiliser, soon blocked the aisle and filled the roof rack. A monk carrying a LPG gas cylinder deposited it on the roof rack, which was a bit worrying.
I required a permit to leave Thimpu and travel to other places in Bhutan . The permit listed all the districts I had to cross to reach my final destination. During the 12-hour drive, through some of the wildest and most beautiful countryside, I would have to get out and show my official travel permit at border checkpoints in every province, while the police boarded and checked the ID cards of every local passenger. As we drove on and on through spectacular countryside, we would stop at tiny villages to deliver packages or let people off. The driver was also carrying bundles of bidis to give to the Indian road crews we passed; presumably they had ordered them earlier.
The night halt was in Bhumtang province in a town called Jahkar. This town, along with its neighbour Ura, was one of the loveliest places I had seen in Bhutan . I had to share a hostel room with a fellow traveller called Tsewang. He was a primary school headmaster in Jurmey and had gone to Thimpu for some work. When I asked him where the school was he mentioned a town on our route, and then casually added, “…and then it is three days walk from there”. By now I had heard that phrase from many people -- from friends telling me about their visits home, to sanitation workers checking water quality, to forestry officials…
I experienced firsthand what the terrain in Bhutan was like and why it was a major impediment to development. I had to agree with what I had often been told: that Bhutan now needed to deal with opportunity problems that arise from its difficult terrain and geography. I remembered a health worker telling me: “Though we have made great progress in healthcare, in many places women have to walk three days to reach medical support. Even if it is not an emergency, walking for three days takes its toll on a pregnant woman's health.”
The second day we started early and entered a national park an hour later. We would be in this protected area for the next four hours, driving through some of the densest forest I have seen, covering steep, almost vertical, mountainsides punctuated by streams falling into the valley below. The environment and its management is a major part of Bhutan 's development plan, and keeping it in its pristine state is a prime motivation behind government policies. In fact, while I was in the country the king and the people of Bhutan won the Champion of the Environment Prize instituted by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
Bhutan recognises that the country and its people depend on the environment. Nearly all economic activity revolves around it. Apart from subsistence agriculture, livestock, forestry, logging and fruit cash crops contributed 33% to the country's GDP in 2002 and still employ about 75% of the population. Most households depend on wood from nearby forests for heating and cooking, as is obvious from neatly stacked piles of firewood beside each rural house. One sector that has recently boosted the economy is construction, contributing around 17% to the total GDP. A large part of this comes from construction in hydropower development (9.7% of GDP), including the power plants Tala (due to go online in 2007), Kurichhu and Basochhu. Hence the need for healthy watersheds to keep the rivers flowing. Revenue from tourism is also dependent on the environment. The traditional Buddhist relationship with nature is often given as the reason why the environment here is so pristine. But more mundane and pragmatic reasons also ensure that it remains that way.
Currently, Bhutan 's ecosystem is virtually intact thanks to the fact that it has been relatively isolated. Rather than going ahead with development processes that might wreck it, 60% of the country has to remain forested for all time under Bhutanese law. At present, forest cover stands at 72%. Owing to its bio-geographical location, the country has rich biodiversity for such a small area. Already over a quarter of its land has been set aside in the form of protected areas, which encompass villages living in and off the forests. Local ownership of forestland is recognised in these protected areas, as traditional records do exist. Though timber-felling is banned, access to non-timber forest produce and grazing is allowed. Most areas have not yet developed as tourist attractions.
As we travel from west to east, the landscape and vegetation changes. The altitude decreases and so does affluence; the further east you go the poorer the people are (visible in the smaller farm plots). The terrain is still very steep though and people plough on unimaginable inclines. There are fewer feeder roads going off the main road, which means less access to markets.
We reached Trashigang late in the evening. With high hills on three sides and a small stream cutting a narrow valley on the fourth side, this small town looks as if it has been squeezed into a crevice. The main town centre is built in a circle around a large prayer wheel that someone or the other always seems to be turning. The town serves as a junction and staging post for villages deeper in the area. And for students from Sherabtse College .
The next day I went to the college. It took an hour of going up a hill, then down into a valley and finally up another hill. The college reminded me of a beautifully situated old hill station boarding school, which it actually once was. Now it is Bhutan 's only degree-awarding college. Though education is free in Bhutan, strict entrance requirements as students move from primary to secondary to Sherabtse College mean that the 300-odd students that graduate each year from this college are now the elite, whatever income group they come from. These are the people who will be responsible for increasing the country's GNH as well as GDP, and until a few years ago, they would all move straight into government jobs.
For most subjects the college has been following curricula devised by Delhi University , where many of the lecturers are from. Economics students told me how one of their regular courses was the economic history of India ; the English language students studied Tagore and the English romantics. The only locally developed degree course is for Dzonkha, the Bhutanese language. What was really interesting was the compulsory ‘orientation' course on understanding GNH and its cultural underpinnings that every student has to take before officially graduating. This consists of talks by civil servants and a two-week ‘driglam namzha' module -- a course on Bhutanese traditions and customs ranging from how to dress properly for social functions, civil etiquette and a historical understanding of customs and practices. Though this course is a small part of the overall three-year degree, it is vital because the certificate given at the end of it is necessary to get a job in the government or private sector. By the time students graduate, no matter how ‘westernised' they become, an understanding of Bhutanese culture and tradition forms the backbone of their education.
Slowly the Royal University of Bhutan will start to indigenise its curriculum. However, it will take time; right now they are too dependent on Indian universities, Indian textbooks and Indian lecturers. Dr Jagar Dorji, principal of the college, told me that he used to use a prescribed book written for Delhi students called Nature Rambles when he taught environmental education in junior schools. He remembered having to talk about gulmohar trees as common elements of the natural environment. His students had no idea what he was talking about, since the tree did not exist in Bhutan . This, I thought, was a good metaphor for the forces shaping the world, because the gulmohar is an alien species in India itself, imported years ago from South America .
InfoChange News & Features, May 2005