Why Britain Needs to Get More Butane Than More Like Bhutan

Civitas, 24 June 2008

Much of the western world, including Britain, currently seems in process of economic melt-down. To take our minds off all the depressing economic news, and hence off how lamentably the present Government has prepared this last decade for the years of national belt-tightening that now lie ahead, we need reminding that, as well as love, among other things money can’t buy is happiness.
Step forward on cue to deliver the message none but the present Government’s happiness tzar, Lord Layard about whom there is a big feature in today’s Guardian, just about as friendly a newspaper to the present Government as it is possible for one to be.

For some years now, Lord Layard has claimed that, above a certain level of average national wealth that Britain and the USA have long exceeded, there is an inverse ratio between the national wealth of a country and the happiness of its population.
Lord Layard’s current mission, we are told in today’s Guardian report about him, is ‘to make Britain more like Bhutan’. This is a much poorer country than Britain in terms of per capita GNP but one whose populace scores higher than Britain’s in terms of their self-reported subjective well-being.
Lord Layard apparently visited Bhutan last year and thinks that we have much to learn from it. He is reported as saying:
‘Bhutan seems much happier than countries that have a materialist rather than moral ethos… What really struck me is that, as a matter of policy, there is very little extreme poverty. Bhutan realises that a redistribution of wealth that favours the poor most is better for producing happiness.’
Bhutan is a country whose government pursues the maximisation of gross national happiness in various ways that include: ‘the promotion of equitable and sustainable socioeconomic development; the preservation and promotion of cultural values; conservation of the natural environment; and the establishment of good governance.’
From Lord Layard’s rosy description of it, you would have thought by now that every left-leaning new age eco-warrior would be queuing up to emigrate there.
Maybe they soon will be if the economic condition here continues to deteriorate and the CBI’s forecast comes good that Britain ‘will run out of energy altogether’ by 2015, if there are continued delays here in building nuclear plants – and, come to think of it, even if there aren’t, although that might be to credit them with a little too much in the way of consistency.
In the meantime, however, few here appear eager to move there, and seemingly not without good reason. Indeed, one wonders just how rose-tinted were the sun-glasses Lord Layard wore on his visit to that country last year. According to a World Bank report about Bhutan in July 2006, a third of its population live in poverty.
Almost all of the Bhutanese poor live in remote rural areas. Another recent report about ‘Rural Poverty in Bhutan’ describes their situation so:
‘Because villages are isolated and the terrain extremely rugged, people lack access to social and health services and to education and markets. In many poor communities people have to walk a few hours a day to reach the nearest road head. Students in some villages have to walk two or three hours each way to reach the nearest primary school.
‘Poor people do not own or do not have access to productive asserts such as land. Because of high illiteracy rates and lack of training, rural people do not have productive skills and knowledge of technology they need to improve their living standards. They have few opportunities for off-farm employment and for otherwise generating income. Farmers have little or no access to credit and other financial services.
‘Among other factors that aggravate rural poverty are natural calamities such as floods and landslides, breakdown in society that disrupt family and social support systems, increasing costs of goods and services.’
No wonder average life expectancy in Bhutan today is some fourteen years less than is that in Britain – 65 years as against nearly 79.
‘Ah’, but you or Lord Layard might say: ‘There is much more to life than just its length or even its standard crudely measured by economic indices. There is also its quality.’ Well, that seems hardly any better.
According to a BBC News profile about Bhutan posted in April of this year: ‘National dress [there] is compulsory – the knee-length wrap-around “gho” for men and the ankle-length dress known as the “kira” for women.’
All, doubtless very picturesque for tourists like Lord Layard, who, according to the same BBC News profile of the country ‘must travel as part of a pre-arranged package or guided tour’ and doubtless are not informed about the compulsion involved in producing the ethnic look. Clearly, not all Bhutanese are happy with the cultural policies pursued by their government. According to the same BBC report:
‘By the 1990s, attempts to stress the majority Buddhist culture and the lack of any political representation had led to deep resentment among the ethnic Nepali community in the south. … Some 100,000 refugees live in UN-supervised camps in Nepal… out of [which] have sprung a number of insurgent groups… [that] the Bhutanese security forces believe … are behind a wave of bombings that has rocked the kingdom in the run-up to the 2008 parliamentary elections. The leaders of … Bhutan had promised to try and repatriate the refugees before the elections, However, progress on this front has been negligible, with only a small trickle of refugees…’
This is the country Lord Layard hopes to make Britain more like in the interests of the greater happiness of its population.
It seems not to have occurred to him that there could be major flaws in the methodology involved in measuring happiness by self-reports that vitiate international comparisons using this measure, something that Paul Omerod has convincingly argued.
Personally, I’d sooner settle for Britain getting more butane than more like Bhutan, but I fear we may not be allowed such luxury. Today’s report about his Lordship states ominously:
‘Layard is quietly effecting a revolution in this miserable, materialistic, overworked country… He has been able to influence first Blair’s administration and then Brown’s into making his happiness agenda government policy.… This new politics of well-being is one of the greatest experiments in British social policy for generations.’
Call me a coward or what, but frankly I don’t want to be part of this experiment, and suddenly the prospects of life elsewhere seem rosier, even in some places that are decidedly anything but Shangri-la.
Anyone know which way to the visa department of the Bhutanese embassy?