As Bhutan enters the last stage of its fourth national elections, many observers – including many Bhutanese – are talking about the unhappiness in the “Happy Kingdom”.
It is true that there is no shortage of problems. Bhutan’s economy is in a mess, its long-standing employment crisis is fuelling a migration of young out of Bhutan, and it is facing its most challenging external security environment in decades. But what is harder to see, is how successfully Bhutan has transitioned from an almost absolute monarchy into a vibrant and maturing democracy in the short time since its first national elections in 2008.
The scale of the transition is hard to grasp easily, which is one of the reasons that it is often overlooked. It was the third king of Bhutan, the dynamic Jigme Dorji Wangchuck, who established Bhutan’s National Assembly in 1953 – barely a year into his reign from 1952 to 1972. During this time, he transformed the country; freeing serfs, ushering in land reforms, and establishing the infrastructure that would transform the country from a subsistence economy to now having one of the highest per capita GDPs in the region. Nonetheless, despite the fact that he gave the National Assembly the power to remove the king (a clause his son, the fourth king, would modify), the country was an almost total monarchy.
Salman Haidar, who served as our Ambassador to Bhutan from 1980 to 1983, said that the best understanding of the Bhutanese monarchy at that time was to view it as equivalent to the monarchies in Shakespearean plays.
“As in [the play] Henry IV, for the fourth king [Jigme Singye Wangchuck] the king and the country were one. Bhutan was what he was.”
The governance philosophy of Bhutan, and the pledge that most Bhutanese civil servants make, is to the Tsa Wa Sum, or loosely to the king, country, and people, as one unit. In fact, the 2013, 2014, 2015 state of the nation addresses by the second elected Bhutanese prime minister, Tshering Topgay, were titled The State of Tsa Wa Sum.
This deep association with the king and governance is what made the democratic transition so hard. Many Bhutanese felt the king was abandoning them, and they trusted him more than their own choice of people to govern them. Since education standards, health, life expectancy, wages, and well-being had all increased during the fourth king’s long reign (1972-2008) before his abdication in favour of his son, the current Druk Gyalpo, or king, Jigme Khesar Wangchuck, this was understandable.
In the mock elections, held in 2007, to teach the people how to vote, there were four ‘stand-in’ parties – Yellow for tradition, Green for sustainable ecology, Red for industrial development, and Blue for a fair and corruption-free society. Yellow, though, is also associated with the monarchy and monastic orders, and it was no surprise that 46 out of 47 constituencies voted for Yellow. Covering the first real elections in 2008, it was hard to differentiate between the pledges of the Druk Phuensum Tshogpa (which won the elections) and the People’s Democratic Party. A Bhutanese friend explained it in the following way, “The PDP is royalist and traditionalist, and DPT is more royalist and more traditionalist.”
While such things are easy to joke about, they were the principal hurdle for the democratic transition. Democracy is about the peaceful transition of power, based on the differing pathways that political parties offer. But, desperately afraid of criticising the royalist past, Bhutanese political parties did the opposite. Bhutan doubled down on what it had done in the past. Hydropower, which was the principal source of revenue for the country, was set to be expanded. High-end tourism, the second largest source of revenue and the highest employment sector, was expanded as well. The one piece of innovation – the minor outreach to China by the first elected prime minister, Jigme Yoser Thinley – received such a strong backlash from India, that it is often seen (wrongly) as the main reason for him to lose the 2013 elections.
This overcautious approach to the past has been costly for Bhutan. In 2008, Bhutan pledged to increase its hydropower capacity from 1,480 MW to 10,000 MW in 2020. It has managed to only increase it to 2,326 MW. The huge projects are over budget and long delayed, adding to huge economic strain on the country’s finances, since they are principally funded by loans from India.
The COVID-19 pandemic had a crippling impact on the tourism industry, and a ham-handed response by increasing the Sustainable Development Fee in 2022 across all sectors did little to help, leading to 50% reduction of the SDF by the end of 2023. The fixation on hydropower (with few jobs) and an unclear vision on tourism, has led to an exacerbation of a youth unemployment problem, which a worrying trend of Bhutanese migrating to places like Australia. And, on its border, with India – which is Bhutan’s principal security guarantor – unable or unwilling to manage the outcome of the Galwan imbroglio, Bhutan is increasingly under pressure to accommodate Chinese claims on an unresolved border.
Also read: India’s Real Problem Lies in its Bhutan Policy, Not the Border
All in all, it would seem to be that democracy has not brought much happiness to the Kingdom which coined the term Gross National Happiness (GNH). In fact, given that dissatisfaction is what leads people to vote out governments, the Bhutanese have well demonstrated their unhappiness. Bhutan has voted out every party that has won power – the DPT in 2013, the PDP in 2018, and the last governing party, and the Druk Nyamrup Tshogpa (DNT) which governed over the last five years has already been knocked out in the first round of the current elections.
GNH as a governing philosophy, though, has never been about this type of happiness.
Dalip Mehta, who served as ambassador to Bhutan from 1995 to 1998, was posted as junior diplomat in the country during the 1970s, when the fourth king’s term became well known. At that time, Mehta told me, the king was returning from an international conference, and was confronted by a pushy Indian journalist who asked him what it was like to rule a country with the lowest Gross National Product or GNP in the region. Irritated, the king had replied that it was more important that people were happier with the way they were going, that was the gross national term to be measured. Thus, GNH was born.
While the frequent change in governing parties reveals the dissatisfaction with the solutions so far offered, it also reveals a deepening of democracy. In the first elections, only two parties qualified for elections – to run for an election a party has to have candidate from all 20 of its dzonkhags, or districts, of the country. This election there were five. Unlike the relatively empty slogans of earlier elections, now the candidates have detailed pledges, providing real – and tough – challenges for voters to make up their minds.
A journalist friend of mine, also ran for elections this year, and although her party did not make it past the first round – the second round has a face-off between the two leading parties if no one party gets more than 50% of the vote share – the fact that young, idealistic people are willing to put in their life savings to make a difference through democratic means says a lot about the appeal of democratic politics in Bhutan.
It is hard, these days, to be enthused by democracy. The power of money, the vanity and narcissism on social media, and global wars, make it difficult to trust that discussion and compromise can lead to good solutions. Bhutan’s story of deepening democracy becomes that much more important in this context. Against all odds, this country that had limited experience of elections and deliberative lawmaking except at the highest echelons, has embraced and committed itself to bettering itself through democratic means. Despite its many problems, its people have embraced a pathway that they had only once accepted reluctantly. Grumbling, dissatisfied, they are trying to find a pathway to progress together, in a manner they are (somewhat) happy with.
There can be no greater paean of praise to democracy or GNH both, than this.
Omair Ahmad is an author and journalist.
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