Bhutan is probably most known for its isolation and its Gross National Happiness index. A relatively young country and many aspects of it untouched by the rest of the world, Bhutan has the benefit of learning from the mistakes from the developed countries and taking on practices that are in the fore front. Having a small population who is immersed in collectivist beliefs and, under the leadership of the kings, have enjoyed peace for the past 100 years, the people have some level of trust in the government that seems rare to find elsewhere.
When the forth king introduced democracy to the country, it was not welcome, people preferred to be taken care of by the monarchy. Three years since the first election, Bhutanese seem to appreciate democracy, but some, such as our driver, still favoured monarchy. I thought to myself, these people are fortunate to have kings who have the foresight to protect them from any deterioration of the kingdom. My Chinese history study taught me that peaceful monarchy can only last so long.
The challenges of Bhutan is the delicacy of many issues that require the skill of one who walk the balance beam. Happiness is a noble goal but how it can be achieved under democracy when the country has little resources and increasing exposure to new needs that brings comfort to some but difficult to reach all is a question that the current government must aggressively seek answer to. So far, it appears to be on the right track, with free health care, 11 years of free education and other policies such as to provide clean energy to the villages, 80% of the population is reported being happy with their lives.
Being here, most things we saw are relatively rosy, safety is never an issue, a lost cellphone across regions will find its way back to the owner (which sort of happened to us =P). The atmosphere of a small village carries us everywhere from small town to the capital. At the same time, we observed contradictons in the culture that are perhaps innocuous or perhaps are underlying issues that represent subconscious mental conflicts. One of such is the ban of killing animals in the country because of the deep root of Buddhism, yet the country import all its meat already killed...
