ABSTRACT
Bhutan, the small, beautiful and peaceful mountainous nation, is an oasis in South Asia. This is the only South Asian nation in the contemporary period, which is not primarily identified with the problems of security and internal conflicts. Apart from religio-political dynamics, Bhutan’s attempts and emphases towards maintaining internal peace is reflected largely with her bold and non-conventional approach to measure the country’s well-being with a concept like Gross National Happiness (GNH). Therefore, unlike the rest of the world, Bhutan has gone a step further from conventional and non-inclusive measures of economy like Gross National Income (GNI), as propounded by the Western theorists to a more comprehensive and normative approach to assess the happiness of its citizens. Such a concept was coined by one of Bhutan’s most visionary leaders, His Majesty the Fourth King of Bhutan, Jigme Singye Wangchuck back in the 1970s with an idea to evolve a sustainable development having a holistic approach towards the notion of progress and to provide equal importance to non-economic aspects of well-being of a nation and its people. Thus, this concept incorporates four pillars like good governance, sustainable socio-economic development, cultural preservation, and environmental conservation. These four pillars are further classified into nine domain areas in order to create widespread understanding of the concept and also to reflect the holistic range of GNH values which include psychological well-being, health, education, time use, cultural diversity and resilience, good governance, community vitality, ecological diversity and resilience, and living standards. The domain areas represent each of the components of well-being of the Bhutanese people, and the term ‘well-being’ here refers to fulfilling conditions of a ‘good life’ as per the values and principles laid down by the concept of GNH, which is now a composite measurable index 206(Centre for Bhutan Studies 2012). This reflects the state’s priority in peace, where issues like security and conflicts that predominate the other parts of South Asia are not the major areas of challenges in this country. Thus, Bhutan has made its position unique in South Asian context, which is persistently fighting against the challenges of conflicts and volatilities, both within the nations and across the borders. Such a position in Bhutan and its socio-political stability has remained extremely important for India’s East and Northeast also, which shares 516 km long borders with Northeast India, and 183 km border with the state West Bengal.
