BHUTAN- GROSS NATIONAL HAPPINESS FEATURE – DEVELOPMENT INDICATORS
April 1st, 2006
BY KENCHO WANGDI, in Thimphu, Bhutan
WHAT is happiness, really? In many developed nations such as in the US and Europe it is equated with money and prosperity.
Economists use GNP (Gross National Product) as representing the well-being of a nation, on the belief that material development, as measured by GNP growth, is correlated to human happiness.
But Bhutan, a Buddhist kingdom in the Himalayas, has been trying out a different concept. Espoused by the country's monarch, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, it has been using a new standard called GNH, or Gross National ...
Full access to this article can be arranged with permission from the client that first ordered it. Please contact us to request access. Entries are uploaded to our archive at least one year after being published by a client – free access is restricted to International News Services journalists for background research only. The article date indicates when copy was filed to a client, not when posted to this archive. Upon client requests, International News Services will remove such articles from the archive or not upload them in the first place. They are included to demonstrate the breadth of topics undertaken by the agency and also to help promote clients’ coverage.