Happiness should be part of national devt, says Bhutanese educator

KUALA LUMPUR: Bhutan is often praised for measuring its worth by its citizens’ happiness alongside its economy, and an educator from the South Asian country believes that other nations too should consider the happiness of their citizens in going ahead with their development plans.

Thakur S. Powdyel, Bhutan’s education minister from 2008 to 2013, says in a nutshell that nations should not only focus on the Gross Development Product (GDP) figures but also the Gross National Happiness (GNH) index.

This is because for a nation to bloom significantly in every aspect, there is also a need to keep in check the development of intangible elements yet so important within the society, such as cultural and spiritual elements too, he said.

“Most of the nations nowadays are focusing too much on the GDP advancement but this framework does not represent the whole story of it since it is just reflecting on the development of physical and material cores of that nation’s economic realms only.

“In Bhutan, our Fourth King Jigme Singye Wongchuck had articulated and introduced an alternative framework a decade ago to measure the most holistic society development called GNH, in which it also measures all the other things that play an important part in society to attain the fullest happiness,” he told Bernama when met after his talk on GNH: An Alternative Development Paradigm: Some Reflection, on Tuesday.- Bernama