Bhutan: Hon­our­ing Lim­its, Embrac­ing Change

Only three days sep­a­rate the two con­ver­sa­tions. The first takes place at the Col­lege of Nat­ur­al Resources in Lobe­sa with lec­tur­er Ser­ki Wang­mo. The sec­ond takes place in Thim­phu with Khi­na Maya, Pema Kumari, Lesh Kumari and Son­am Ugyen, who study Envi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment at Roy­al Thim­phu Col­lege, and with their lec­tur­er Tshe­wang Dor­ji. Look­ing back, it feels as if we worked on the same ques­tion twice: once from the per­spec­tive of those who teach, and once from the per­spec­tive of those about to set out into work­ing life. What must be pro­tect­ed so that some­thing good can last, and where must we move so that it does not become rigid?

How much can a coun­try car­ry?

Ser­ki Wang­mo has taught at the Col­lege of Nat­ur­al Resources in Lobe­sa since 2015, in the Depart­ment of Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment. Her sub­jects include eco­tourism and com­mu­ni­ty-based resource man­age­ment. As we talked with her about tourism and devel­op­ment, a term came up that has stayed with us ever since: car­ry­ing capac­i­ty. Bhutan is small, its ecosys­tem frag­ile, and the coun­try has a lim­it to what it can bear. So it is about look­ing beyond the finan­cial dimen­sion and pro­tect­ing nature and the val­ue sys­tem as well. Peo­ple do not want to dilute GNH, hap­pi­ness and well-being.

That car­ry­ing capac­i­ty is about more than nature became clear when she talked about her degree pro­gramme. Exter­nal exam­in­ers had rec­om­mend­ed a stronger focus on the envi­ron­ment. The depart­ment push­es back, because sus­tain­able devel­op­ment also includes the econ­o­my and soci­ety, and delib­er­ate­ly seeks a bal­ance, even though it lacks lec­tur­ers in eco­nom­ics. An adver­tised post was left vacant rather than filled with peo­ple the com­mit­tee did not con­sid­er suit­able. That, too, is a way of tak­ing your own car­ry­ing capac­i­ty seri­ous­ly: you would rather live with a gap than dilute what makes you who you are.

A friend­ly space for learn­ing

What moved us most was how nat­u­ral­ly Ser­ki Wang­mo spoke about the atmos­phere in her class­es. Teach­ing has to be friend­ly, she said. Oth­er­wise the qui­eter stu­dents would not answer or take part. That is why her stu­dents may send her ques­tions on What­sApp. She sets up forums on the learn­ing plat­form and reg­u­lar­ly asks for feed­back on what she could do bet­ter. Stu­dents are at the cen­tre: they explore top­ics them­selves, present, dis­cuss and help each oth­er, and the lec­tur­ers learn from them too. Assess­ment is still indi­vid­ual, part­ly through peer feed­back, and any­one who fails a mod­ule gets a sec­ond chance.

In organ­i­sa­tions we call this psy­cho­log­i­cal safe­ty. Ser­ki Wang­mo puts it more sim­ply: peo­ple take part when they don’t have to be afraid. We told her how sur­prised we were that even a cou­ple out­side their house spon­ta­neous­ly talk about Gross Nation­al Hap­pi­ness. Her answer: GNH was not imposed, it grew nat­u­ral­ly. The idea came from the King, but it is lived, taught and anchored in deci­sions by many.

The elders first

Three days lat­er we sit down in Thim­phu with the four stu­dents and their lec­tur­er Tshe­wang Dor­ji. All four are in their final year. Before we start, there is tea, rolls filled with veg­eta­bles and a chilli sauce that is def­i­nite­ly too hot for us. The eldest are served first. It is a form of respect, the four explain, one they also live at home with their fam­i­lies.

We ask what hap­pi­ness means to them. Their answers: good days with fam­i­ly and friends, being able to do what you love, feel­ing alive. One stu­dent says hap­pi­ness means ful­fill­ing her respon­si­bil­i­ty towards her par­ents, giv­ing back and being grate­ful. “We are born with GNH,” says anoth­er. At the end of our con­ver­sa­tion comes a sen­tence whose hon­esty impressed us: “We under­stand maybe 50% of GNH.”

Fam­i­ly also has a say in big deci­sions. Sib­lings or a father helped choose what to study, only one of the four chose alone, and all of them still live with their par­ents. Even so, we had the impres­sion that for this gen­er­a­tion, respect­ing one’s elders does not nec­es­sar­i­ly mean spend­ing a whole life under the same roof as one’s par­ents.

Secu­ri­ty first, and hope for Gele­phu

After grad­u­at­ing, all four look towards Gele­phu, where the Gele­phu Mind­ful­ness City is tak­ing shape. They hope for oppor­tu­ni­ties for young peo­ple, good salaries and low­er youth unem­ploy­ment. But their first choice remains a gov­ern­ment job, because it is secure. Only if that doesn’t work out, “we need to think for our­selves”. One stu­dent wish­es that the gap between the jobs avail­able and people’s expec­ta­tions of work would nar­row.

Life abroad is present in almost every fam­i­ly. One student’s sis­ter lives in Perth. The dis­tance has brought them clos­er, he tells us, and made him realise he was not grate­ful enough when his sis­ter was still at home. Oth­ers expe­ri­ence the oppo­site: rel­a­tives liv­ing abroad have changed their out­look. A broth­er who comes home from Cana­da for the hol­i­days would rather eat out, West­ern-style, than with his par­ents. Dis­tance can con­nect or estrange, and you often don’t know in advance which it will be.

Pre­serv­ing val­ues means mov­ing

The clear­est sen­tence of the day comes from Tshe­wang Dor­ji. He grew up in a farm­ing fam­i­ly in the coun­try­side, lat­er worked in the civ­il ser­vice and now teach­es envi­ron­men­tal sci­ence. GNH, he says, is the liv­ing real­i­ty of Bhutan and the basis of all its laws. And yet it is under pres­sure from glob­al­i­sa­tion, tech­nol­o­gy, emi­gra­tion and cli­mate change. Tourism and hydropow­er, on which the coun­try depends, are both at risk, and the glac­i­ers are melt­ing. His con­clu­sion is nei­ther iso­la­tion nor res­ig­na­tion, but both at once: becom­ing more vig­i­lant and open­ing up. “Bhutan is chang­ing, you can­not stop it.” The ques­tion, he says, is how to stay rel­e­vant.

What we take with us

Read side by side, the two con­ver­sa­tions give a pic­ture that holds for organ­i­sa­tions too. Any­one who wants to pre­serve their val­ues has to know and pro­tect their own car­ry­ing capac­i­ty. At the same time they have to move, because val­ues that are mere­ly con­served even­tu­al­ly reach no one. In between lies some­thing quite unspec­tac­u­lar that we expe­ri­enced with Ser­ki Wang­mo: a friend­ly space where even the qui­et ones speak up. In a space like that, young peo­ple can say what they hope for, secu­ri­ty, Gele­phu, a life of their own, with­out los­ing respect for those who came before them.

What do we pro­tect in our organ­i­sa­tions so that it holds, and where would we need to move so that it stays alive?