Mega-economy Japan Should Learn From Happy Bhutan

[Nakharar]

Mega-economy Japan should learn from 'happy' Bhutan: conference

 

Wed Oct 5,11:18 AM ET

 

TOKYO (AFP) - Japan may be concerned about tepid growth in GDP but it could learn a few lessons from tiny Bhutan which ranks itself by GNH, or Gross National Happiness, a conference heard.

 

Bhutan, a Buddhist kingdom in the Himalayas, has a Gross Domestic Product of just 500 million dollars but in the 1970s adopted the unique GNH0, which purports to take account not of money but of individual happiness.

 

"There are lots of things that Japan can learn from Bhutan," Takayoshi Kusago, an associate professor of Osaka University and former World Bank economist, told a symposium on GNH held by the Japanese foreign ministry.

 

He said he was working on proposals of better indicators for Japan "that reflect other aspects of human happiness that are not reflected in the GDP."

 

He said that if using instead an indicator that looked at areas such as crime and overtime work, Japan -- the world's second largest economy in GDP terms -- has seen little progress since the 1980s. Japan also has the industrialized world's highest suicide rate.

 

Japanese economic planners routinely express concern about the rate of GDP growth, which has been stagnant or negative for much of the last decade.

 

Self-isolated Bhutan bases GNH on four areas: sustainable and equitable socioeconomic development, environmental conservation, preservation and promotion of culture, and good governance.

 

In its quest for its development model, Bhutan "found no model that resonated with Bhutan's values and desires," said Karma Galay, senior researcher of the Centre for Bhutan Studies in the kingdom's capital Thimphu.

 

"Instead it saw that the world was divided between poor and rich nations," which led Bhutan to take its own approach that is manifested in GNH, he said.

 

Shunichi Murata, an expert on Bhutan at Japan's Kansei Gakuin University, said that Bhutan had little ostensible poverty, a high level of education and strong environmental protection as it tried to boost its GNH.

 

"Every child in Bhutan seems to be a specialist on environmental issues, which is far ahead of Japanese education in this area," said Murata.