Bhutan Trades Its Popular King For Politicians…
While India’s neigbouring region Tibet undergoes violent convulsions, another Buddhist neighbour (the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan — also sandwitched between India and China), ends more than a century of royal rule today with its first parliamentary elections. Interestingly, “no one, except the King who is giving up his power, seems happy about it.”
“Unlike so many other countries, where upheaval has been midwife to democracy, Bhutan has never been more peaceful or prosperous; it is only voting because the king said it should,” reports The Independent. King Jigme Keshar Namgyal Wangchuck, 28, is a popular monarch and even politicians contesting elections are sad that the country would witness the end of absolute monarchy.
“Bhutan has long been an eccentric holdout from modernity. A mountainous land where Buddhist kings reigned supreme, it only allowed the internet and television in 1999. It is perhaps most famous for gross national happiness, an all-encompassing political philosophy that seeks to balance material progress with spiritual well-being.
“The vote for the 47-seat National Assembly is the latest step in a slow engagement with the world, which Bhutan began in the early 1960s. Back then, Bhutan was a medieval society with no paved roads, no electricity and no hospitals. Goods were bartered rather than bought, and almost no foreigners were let in.
“The country of about 600,000 people now has a cash economy. It is even likely to join the World Trade Organisation soon and thousands of tourists are welcomed every year, albeit on heavily supervised and expensive tours.”
Here is a glipmse of the fascinating and picturesqe Bhutan…
And now about Bhutan’s famous concept of Gross National Happiness. “In a response to accusations in 1987 by a journalist from UK’s Financial Times that the pace of development in Bhutan was slow, the Bhutan King said that ‘Gross National Happiness is more important than Gross National Product’.”
(Bhutan King Jigme Wangchuk photo above courtesy AFP/GETTY)
