The Score Climbs, The Culture Falls

The 1970s produced one of the most quoted ideas to come out of the developing world. It was articulated by His Majesty the Fourth King, in conversation with foreign journalists, as a profound critique of how countries were being measured.

Gross National Product, His Majesty observed, captured how many goods a country produced. It did not capture whether the country’s people were happy.

The framework that grew from that observation — Gross National Happiness — has been studied, copied in part, and quoted at conferences for nearly fifty years. The OECD’s Better Life Index borrows from it. The UN’s World Happiness Report borrows from it. New Zealand’s wellbeing budget borrows from it. Bhutan exports the idea more reliably than it exports cardamom.

The idea has nine domains and thirty-three indicators. The domains include living standards, education, and health, which are also in GDP-style measurements. They also include cultural diversity, time use, ecological diversity, good governance, community vitality, and psychological wellbeing — the things GDP does not capture.

In 2022, the Centre for Bhutan Studies completed its most comprehensive national GNH survey since the previous round in 2015. The headline result was easy to celebrate. The national index rose from 0.756 in 2015 to 0.781 in 2022. By the framework Bhutan invented, Bhutanese were happier than they had been seven years before.

Underneath the headline, the same survey caught something else.

Cultural participation fell 14.3 percent. Driglam Namzha — the traditional code of conduct — fell 12.2 percent. Self-reported healthy days fell 11.5 percent. Use of native languages declined across every age cohort.

The lowest indicator in the entire framework was Knowledge. Civic literacy, awareness of constitutional rights, basic local history. It came in at 14.3 percent.

The highest was Safety. 96.2 percent.

Bhutanese feel almost universally safe, and almost universally do not know what their constitution protects.

The index rose because the economic indicators — living standards, education access, per-capita income — outweighed the cultural ones. GDP per capita climbed past USD 3,800. The economic domains carried more weight in the composite than the cultural ones, even though both are constitutionally equal at one-ninth each.

Which is to say: the index designed to be the antidote to GDP is now rising for the same reason GDP rises.

The framework caught the cultural decline that GDP would have missed. It did not prevent the decline.

To see what this looks like inside a single family, consider a household in Mongar.

The grandfather is seventy-three. He spent most of his working life as a yak herder in the high pastures above Trashigang, before moving down to Mongar a decade ago to be closer to his daughter and grandchildren. He speaks Tshangla as his first language, Dzongkha as his second, Tibetan well enough to read the older religious texts, and almost no English.

His grandson is sixteen. The grandson speaks English as his first language — the school language, the friend-group language, the Instagram language. He speaks Dzongkha competently, as the formal language he uses in school and in religious settings. He speaks Tshangla functionally, but not fluently. He cannot read Tibetan.

During the village festival in April 2026, the grandfather is in the courtyard watching the cham dance. The grandson is also in the courtyard. He is scrolling his phone.

The grandfather asks the grandson, in Tshangla, what the dance is about. The grandson answers in English, because he is more fluent in English. He says he doesn’t fully remember which one this is. The grandfather notices that the grandson is using English to answer a Tshangla question and notices that the grandson does not know the dance. He does not say anything.

The festival is shorter than it used to be. The dances are shorter. Half the village is not there — they are in Thimphu or Australia. The community feast feeds forty people instead of two hundred.

The grandfather, when surveyed by the GNH team in 2022, scored high on community vitality, cultural participation, and spirituality. He scored low on living standards, education, and health. His composite GNH index, in 2022, was 0.83 — above the national average.

The grandson, when the next GNH round surveys him in his late teens, will score high on living standards, education, and time-use balance. He will score low on cultural participation, knowledge, and native-language use. His composite index will probably be around 0.78 — also above the national average, also rising relative to 2015.

Both numbers are true. Both citizens are ‘happier’ by the framework’s measurement. The country’s index goes up. The country itself feels quieter, plainer, less ritualised, more transactional.