Bhutan, a tiny nation in the Himalayas with a population of about 700,000 , is the only country that measures its progress by the level of happiness among its citizens. The term gross national happiness (GNH) was coined by Bhutan's King Jigme Singye Wangchuck in 1972. In 2008, Jigmi Y Thinley, the prime minister, launched a GNH index to guide public policy.
Seated on his office sofa in a knee-length robe, the national dress for Bhutanese men, Thinley told me that conventional development paradigms were "unsustainable, purely materialistic and very narrow". He explained:
"In the end, the development must be about furthering human civilisation … to increase and improve the level of human wellbeing and happiness. We are talking of happiness not of a sensory kind. The human being has material as well as emotional, psychological and spiritual needs."
According to the official website of GNH, GDP-based indicators promote rapid material progress at the expense of "environmental preservation, cultures, and community cohesion", the key objectives of GNH. These seem to me extremely conservative values. They brought to mind the essence of David Cameron's speech in Munich against multiculturalism.
The website goes on to explain the GNH index with a splatter of religious terms throughout. Spiritual activities like meditation and prayers and "consideration of karmic effects" in one's life are among the indicators of happiness. It calls for training of mental faculties towards happiness. "From a contemplative perspective, extreme reliance on externally derived pleasure distracts the individual from inner sources of happiness, elevating the latter," the website quotes Dasho Karma Ura, the Bhutanese scholar who helped develop the index, as saying.
Bhutan's law reflects GNH values. At least 60% of the country's land must remain under forest cover at all times. Bhutan imposes the tariff of $200 a day for each foreign visitor to control the tourist inflow and thereby protect the environment and culture. Sale of tobacco products is banned. All Bhutanese are required to wear the national dress, and all buildings must conform to the national architecture to preserve the country's distinctive culture. Astonishingly, there is little resistance from the citizens.
I asked the prime minister if Cameron can emulate this in multicultural Britain. "Why not?" he asked. "Whether you are a Buddhist, Muslim, Jain, Christian or Jew, and if you are such, then surely you are an individual guided by a framework of human values. It is when a human being does not have a framework within which he can conduct his life that he is least able to pursue happiness."
Bhutan's opposition leader Tshering Togbay, whom I met separately, agreed. "I don't think Christianity and Anglo-Saxon values encourage and promote accumulation of wealth and attachment. I would argue that Christianity also teaches detachment. In fact, all religions call for it," he said.
But should promotion of values be a legitimate domain of a multicultural state? I rephrased my question to Thinley. "In certain liberal societies, the culture is such that there is an excessive concern about individual freedom and privacy which leads to a desire for less government," he replied, perhaps, alluding to western secularists.
Happiness is a personal thing, admitted the prime minister. "Whether I want to be happy or not, and what I consider appropriate and contributing factors to my happiness is for me to decide, not the government. But if indeed it is right for the government to assume that every individual has the right to pursue happiness and that it is the common desire then do you not think it is a responsibility of the state to create the conditions and enabling environment within which this objective can be pursued?" Thinley asked.
Togbay added: "I wouldn't want to live in a country where from childhood you are taught to live in fear and perpetual competition and to accumulate, accumulate and accumulate, and that everything is permanent."
Karma Ura says government's role in promoting happiness is legitimate as it is a "subjectively felt public good", which "cannot be left exclusively to private individual devices and strivings".
Bhutan's leaders find it fairly easy to gain popular support for their conservative policies due to the country's considerably unified culture, the exceptionally good reputation of its leaders, mainly the king and the prime minister, and an overwhelming sense of geopolitical vulnerability given its location between strategic competitors India and China, which compels the nation to preserve its religion and culture. Bhutan manages to attract praise from across the world for using religious values in politics.
But acquiring a multi-dimensional role, which is a prerequisite for happiness as public policy, will be a tall order for Cameron even if he bases himself only on Prof Martin Seligman's secular theory of happiness. He will first need to earn the trust and respect of the religious communities, especially minorities. While his stand against multiculturalism represents the desire of many British citizens, the way he is targeting one community, Muslims, will be counterproductive.