The government is planning to quadruple tourism numbers to around 100,000 a year in the next few years and increase its hydroelectric power capacity from 1,500 megawatts to 10,000 megawatts by 2020.
Hydroelectric power, sold to India at subsidized rates, is the backbone of the economy. High-end tourism runs second.
Still, plans like boosting tourism or setting up an IT park in Thimphu are raising eyebrows.
“I don’t see call centers as being compatible with GNH,” opposition leader Tshering Tobgay said. “If there is 9 percent growth in isolation there is disconnect. If income disparity grows there is disconnect.”
But the government must create jobs. Officials estimate that the global economic crunch may have pushed its growth under 7 percent last year — under the annual average of the last decade. Unemployment is at 4 percent, a historical high.
“It is ironic that in a country where we talk about gross national happiness with every breath, we still have places where there is no electricity, no accessible healthcare, no motorable road and no telephone connectivity,” said a 25-year-old student in Thimphu.
Those are the ideas that worry Bhutan’s leaders. The government believes it is up to Bhutan’s first democratic government to show voters that GNH can live side by side with economic prosperity.
“The big issue is democracy. If democracy fails, nothing, not even GNH, will save us,” Tobgay said.
RSS