Sustainable Development and Happiness in Bhutan

Gross national happiness (GNH) is a measure of economic and moral progress that the king of the Himalayan country of Bhutan introduced in the 1970s as an alternative to gross domestic product. Rather than focusing strictly on quantitative economic measures, gross national happiness takes into account an evolving mix of quality-of-life factors. The development process in Bhutan has more meaningful purpose than economic growth alone. Our holistic goal is the pursuit of GNH, the principal guiding philosophy for the long term journey as a nation. Bhutan has made impressive development progress over the last five and half decades culminating into successful implementation of the MDGs and fulfillment of the thresholds in 2 areas of the LDC graduation criteria – Per-capita Income and Human Assets. Bhutan is well on track on all SDGs. Poverty rate has been brought down for both income and multidimensional poverty to 8.2 and 5.2 per cent respectively.