when I meant work on GNH, it depends on what you mean by GNH. For me, GNH is development in its basic sense, trying to provide basic needs to people. If you don’t agree with me on this, then I think its simply because you have something else in mind.

Taking GNH global before it has been defined in Bhutan, setting up conferences by inviting outside academia, before our people can even asking our own people what it means to them; renaming the Planning Commission to GNH (which to me sounds more airy) are some of the things that have blown the whole GNH thing out of proportion. But that is just my view. You have a right to disagree with me on that.

Please allow me to disagree with you on this. I think you are missing the point here. Our people are already “working on GNH” and a huge part of our financial and human resources are spent “working on GNH” The point is–that is a huge waste of our meagre resources! We “need not work on GNH” per se at all. Instead, we must focus working on other aspects of development and then GNH will be “worked out automatically”. Parts of Brazil looks like they have realized GNH because they have worked to achieve it rather than waste their time, money and people fretting about GNH all the time.

“You do not have to be a Buddhist to become a Buddha”. With GNH, our people are working so hard to prove their Buddhism-ness and forgetting the Buddhahood in the end. That is the point.

A hallmark of true leadership is “humility”, not fanfare!

Regards,
Invisible

Therefore lets agree (politics aside) that we all agree that GNH needs work on in Bhutan.

When parliament session started, 5 ministers were away in the name of official meetings. The attendence of all MPs are necessary since they were elected to represnt people in parliament. I cant understand why they postpone other meetings when HM can do that. HM suspended his visit to eastern Bhutan to be in the opening session. 4th Session is important as there are many agenda to be discuss since country was going through roughest hour after 21 september earth quake and there is need to rebuild the country.

Now these absentees are bringing GNH from Brazil and regrets that Bhutan is lagging behind in implementation of GNH. As one pointed out, we are not lagging behind but we have started the GNH journey since 36 years ago when K4 started the GNH process in 1972. I feel sorry that he has not reliazed this.

1. 23% of the Bhutanese population is under poverty line.

2. Vast numbers of people, especially children are malnourished.

3. Corruption is rampant… Nepotism is not far behind.

4. Unemployment is at the highest. Even university graduates cannot find jobs.

5. Inflation is also very high. The cost of everything has gone up.

6. The country is still run on the foreign aid.

7. Politicians are busy painting a colorful picture of Bhutan.

8. The common people of Bhutan (the rural 70%) have no idea of GNH. For them life is pretty much back breaking farm-work from morning to night.

9. The health facilities are lousy. People (who can afford) started going to Bangkok even for simple procedure as delivery.

10. Infrastructure such as roads and buildings has been consistently reported as not up to world standard.

11. Our country is classified as an LCD (Least Developed Country).

So what hell are we doing?

We are falling back even as we are discussing. Rest of the world (outside SAARC) has moved far ahead. Basic necessities like clean water and electricity still are out of rich for significantly portion of the population. And here we are busy discussing on what GNH is and what it is not. I think what Bhutan needs is economy, economy and economy. Then we can use that money to help our rural poor, give jobs to the unemployed, build hospitals, develop our culture, and perhaps also spread GNH. We must first and foremost have the ability to run our country with our own money (instead of sucking up to some donor nations every time we need to do something). We need leaders who can think outside the box to come up with creative solutions to our problems.

You name me one country in this world which did not consider all the four aspects of the GNH pillars in their development and planning efforts and I will accept this philosophy as a new and noble one, original to Bhutan. The fact is GNH was there since long time back and all the civilised nations had been implementing it for centuries. The only difference is that they didn’t call it GNH as we do. They called it by other collective names: quality education, good healthcare, clean environment, nature and wildlife conservation, preservation of culture and traditions, strong economy, freedom of speech and thought, corruption free administration, human rights and so on. Then why are we making a big fuss about it? Why don’t we, as OL said, talk less and work more and make our country a country with no corruption, no poverty, no malnourishment, no unemployment, no crime, no drug abuse, no child labor? Why don’t we work more to build good schools, good hospitals, good roads, good houses, good playgrounds, good rural roads, good bridges etc etc?

Honestly, I am worried where this GNH will lead our country at the end.