Bhutan and GNH

A friend of mine has just come back from his trip to Bhutan. I had an opportunity to see his slide show.

He entered Bhutan via the eastern part of India. Some photos showed a dramatic change of the atmosphere just after passing through the immigration gate. The roads on the Bhutan side are kept up neatly and the red roves of each house look beautifuly in the landscape. It’s like from chaos to harmony.

As you know, Bhutan is famous for GNH, Gross National Happiness. GNH is criteria that Jigme Singye Wangchuck, the 4^th king of Bhutan, advocated as a counter concept against GNP, the materialistic world’s measurement. I think that the 4^th king is a wonderful leader and a good branding planner as well.

I don’t know whether Bhutan people are the happiest in the world or not. Actually, a survey done by University of Leicester in 2006 told that the number 1 nation in the world was Denmark, (Bhutan was No.8.) though the result of the research doesn’t matter at all.

The important thing is that the leader showed the direction where the nation should go into both domestically and internationally with a few words. In addition, the words ended up uplifting people’s mind and giving them confidence and motivation to build the happiest country as the slogan said.

Do you remember a terrible slogan that a prime minister of one country said; “society of the least unhappiness”? I felt depressed whenever I heard it. A slogan should have some power to drive people and it should be made up of some positive words.

I think that Japan also needs some good words that light up the way we are going. We can’t work happily with “Ganbaro Nippon” or “We’ll get through this together” anymore.

photos: Tourism Council of Bhutan

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