One of great privileges
before the Covid-19 outbreak was going to Bhutan to celebrate my mother’s 70th
birthday. I had first been to Bhutan when
I was 10 and loved it and fell in love with the place. At the age of 10, I valued serenity and Bhutan
provided me with just that. It also helped that this was in a time when the
only way to get into Bhutan was via Calcutta, which was anything but serene. After
that trip, Bhutan was only a magical memory until my mother decided she would
celebrate her 70th with a trip to Bhutan.
The 35-year gap
between my first and second trip was no less magical. I guess you could say
that I was struggling emotionally as I was on a high-profile international case
dealing with a criminal amount of money and spending an unhealthy amount of
time being part of an effort to protect people who, while “legally clean,” were
evil (considering the amount they were worth, the industry they were in and the
country where they made their money).
Getting out and
going to Bhutan was very necessary spiritual cleansing and in the week that I
had, I started questioning many of the “facts” of life that most of us,
particularly in a place like Singapore, have drilled into us as being natural.
The other thing
that I started questioning was our model of development. Singapore is always
held up as the poster boy on how one should develop a nation and in his later
life, Lee Kuan Yew famously got himself exceedingly lucrative gigs telling the developing
world how to develop. We are, as I’ve
often said, what a city should be – rich, clean and green. I guess the ultimate
compliment to Singapore’s “poster boy” status came during the Brexit referendum
when the pro-Brexit crowd kept talking about how London would be “Singapore on
the Thames.”
While I go
agree that Singapore has done many things right, I’ve come to question our
status as the poster boy of development and I do think that the Bhutanese have
a point when they measure success through “Gross National Happiness” (GNH)
instead of the standard Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
Bhutan’s model
got some flack from what I’d call the Managing Partners of “Singapore Develops
Nations LLC.” Our then Minister for National Development, Khaw Boon Wan
famously rubbished the Bhutanese model in Parliament in 2011 and argued that
based on what he saw the people were miserable because they were toiling in the
fields and worried about the price of their crops. Mr. Khaw’s speech was
reported in the following article:
https://www.asiaone.com/News/AsiaOne%2BNews/Singapore/Story/A1Story20111020-306096.html
A young Bhutanese
famously rebutted Mr. Khaw by telling him that the Bhutanese may not have had the
same amount of money as the Singaporeans but they had peace of mind, decent
family lives and didn’t get stressed out by student and health care loans because
they have families where people look after each other. The Bhutanese answer to
Mr. Khaw can be found at:
https://www.passudiary.com/2011/10/to-mr-khaw-boon-wan-what-did-you-expect.html
Let’s make one
thing clear, nobody is suggesting that Bhutan is a “perfect” society and the “nasty”
parts of any society can be found in Bhutan. However, the Bhutanese have
actually come up with ideas that many far more “successful” societies like
Singapore need to consider and perhaps adapt.
Take the
concept of GNH, which was the brainchild of Bhutan’s fourth king. This isn’t an airy-fairy concept that a group
of bureaucrats invented. What it is, is an attempt to measure development by giving
weightage to a host of environmental factors other than money. The Bhutanese
are as interested in having money as the rest of us but they also measure
success in other ways.
The biggest
factor that struck me was that under the GNH system, a great deal of emphasis
was placed on preserving the environment and the government of Bhutan is willing
to spend money to preserve the environment.
Sure, Singapore
has great nature reserves. However, we tend to focus on concern for the
environment as being part of our privilege of having made money. As such, our
region follows our lead and our giant neighbour which has a palm oil industry,
has a development model that involves in burning large forest on an annual
basis. It’s part of their development and efforts to build wealth and you can’t
argue against that. However, the entire region gets covered in smog. It’s a
case of you will have money but you can’t breathe. We persist in selling this
model without even considering why economic development and environmental preservation
have to be mutually exclusive.
In Bhutan, they
are not rich but nobody starves. They can breathe all year round. Interestingly
enough that is a sellable asset as Chinese and Indian tourist try to get in so
that they can escape poisonous air quality in places like Shanghai and Delhi.
The second area
where Bhutan can teach the world a thing or two is in developing its leadership
system. Bhutan is the only country that I can think of where an absolute monarch-imposed
democracy on his people instead of having it forced upon him. The story of how
the Bhutanese king forced people to take power for themselves can be found at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svf95f4kjDQ
Bhutanese
history offers some interesting lessons for aspiring leaders. Let’s start with
the fact that the current royal family is only 100-years old and they were not
actually the original founders of Bhutan as a nation.
That honour
goes to someone called Nawang Namgyal or Zhabdrung Rinpoche, Tibetan monk who
unified Bhutan into a nation sometime in 1637. By all accounts he was a
brilliant leader who built the nation and wisely separated the religious and secular
elements of government.
However, the
Zhabdrung was a little too reliant on the Buddhist philosophy and thought he’d succeed
himself through reincarnation and somehow always be there for his people. Didn’t
work. When he died, the local governors had to come up with the story that he
was on a long retreat and they did this for more than half a century.
Things
eventually fell apart until the Penlops (Governors) of Trongsa became the kings
of modern Bhutan. The House of Wangchuk has thus far proven to be effective at
keeping the nation together. Bhutan’s third king (current King’s grandfather)
famously instituted land reform and ensured that nobody, including himself, would
be allowed to own more than 25 acres of land. Social reforms continued under the
fourth king who imposed democracy and gave parliament the power to sack him and
his successors.
This is interesting
because the Bhutanese kings are acting like how you’d expect an elected
politician to function. They go to the ground, listen and act. They give up
power and enact limitations on themselves so that they don’t become a liability
to the people they are supposed to rule over.
He forced the
people to choose their rulers and insisted on giving them the right to sack him
and his successors.
Contrast that
the other world leaders, who have been democratically elected and yet choose to
find ways to consolidate power and disenfranchise certain segments of the
electorate. Instead of having a mandatory retirement age, they find ways to hang
on.
Interestingly
enough, Bhutan, a poor and insignificant nation trapped between two giants has
managed to get by with a mere 1,144 Covid-19 cases and a single death. This is
considering the fact that the one group of people who can waltz into Bhutan are
Indian citizens (currently the world’s highest risk). Bhutan’s leadership must
be doing something right……
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