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In the village of Ura, nestled in a sweeping valley in central Bhutan, the locals are celebrating. Men wearing grotesque masks and brandishing huge wooden penises leap through traditional dances. And in the village dzong – its monastery, fortress and spiritual centre – locals in national dress eat, drink and gossip.
But overseeing the celebrations at Ura’s annual three-day festival, Tashi Wangyal, a member of the national council, the country’s upper chamber, explains that this year it has been difficult to find enough young men to perform the traditional dances. Those who have moved away have been urged to return for the festivities. “How do we prevent the fissures between modernity and tradition opening out?” he asks. “Bhutan has a distinct culture, language and tradition. We do not have military power, we don’t have economic power but we do have culture – and that is what keeps us distinct, and safe.”
As Bhutan – a nation best known for valuing GNH, gross national happiness, above GDP – accelerates its development, its government and people have engaged in a new fight to preserve its culture and keep its unique identity alive.
In a bid to fight globalisation with a form of Bhutanese “glocalisation”, the government has passed a heritage sites bill, which protects its cultural traditions as well as its monuments. It has its own broadcast channel, the Bhutan Broadcast Service, and insists on national dress in government meetings and in schools. The tourist board is pushing homestays – a Bhutanese version of bed and breakfast – in an attempt to bring money to rural areas, while giving value to a traditional way of life.
Poster child for development
A nation of only 740,000 people, Bhutan is already a poster child for development (pdf). On target to meet all eight millennium development goals, its poverty rate has halved in less than a decade, to 12% in 2012 from 23% in 2007. Healthcare and education are free, and since 1980 life expectancy has increased by 20 years and per capita income by 450%.
But economic growth has stumbled in recent years. The economy is expected to grow by 7.3% in 2014, but a heavy debt burden and a currency shortage forced the government to push through an $88m (£53m) stimulus package last year. Bhutan’s prime minister, Tshering Tobgay, admitted last year that too much focus on GNH rather than providing basic services could be “a distraction”, causing some to worry that a new push for growth could destabilise the country’s delicate cultural ecosystem still further.
Mass migration from villages to urban centres is a key concern. The UN human development report in 2009 revealed that rural-urban migration in Bhutan – which got its first television sets in 1999 and held its first democratic elections in 2008 – was one of the highest in south Asia. This year’s World Bank report (pdf) found that only 37% of rural households said they were happy, compared with half of households in cities. “Low living standards, lack of alternative job opportunities, especially for young people, and unhappiness is contributing to increased out-migration as well as families’ breakdown and loss of communities’ vitality,” said the report.
With greater development comes greater expectation, says Sangay Khandu, an MP in Bhutan’s national council. “You promise a road, the next thing people want is a car to drive on that road; you promote telecommunications, the next thing they want is a mobile phone. The reality is that people want comfort, they want the benefit of development,” he says.
Bhutan’s capital, Thimphu, is one of the fastest growing cities in south Asia, expanding at a rate of about 10% a year. Although attempts are being made to curb its growth (pdf) – strict building rules, tax breaks for businesses in other towns and rural areas, new roads and planned regional airports – its brights lights are still a draw for a population who, until recently, might have lived several days’ walk from the nearest road.
A new road is bringing change to Merak, a stop on one of Bhutan’s most celebrated treks in the remote far east, and a bone-jangling three-day drive from Thimphu. Here, narrow paths wind past the carved wooden houses, and many of the semi-nomadic local Brokpa (highlander) people wear the traditional dress of the region while tending their yaks. But the road means the village is only an hour’s trek from the junction. Electricity arrived in 2012.
Road to tourism
Yak herder Lam Richen, 45, explains that two of his three children now live in Thimphu – his daughter has just graduated, his son is a police officer. He hopes the road will bring more tourists, but he is wary too. “I am happy for people to come here, to show them my culture,” he says. “But the risk is that if more tourists come then people here might want a different culture to the one they already have.”
The Shejun Agency, an NGO that aims to preserve Bhutan’s culture, warns that remote and diverse microcultures within Bhutan may be disappearing (pdf) before their existence can even be recorded. The brutality of progress is laid bare on the trek from the village of Merak to Sakteng, which only opened to the public in 2010. For days, the only sounds on the rhododendron-laden route are the rustling of leaves and the occasional whip of a set of prayer flags. But the peace is shattered on the approach to Sakteng by the sound of heavy machinery, as diggers cut a new road into the mountainside, leaving fallen Himalayan cypress in their wake.
Bhutan is unique in its promise to keep at least 60% of its landmass as forest, but roads keep on coming (pdf): in 2004 the country had around 800km (497 miles) of roads, but by 2012 that had grown to 5,500km.
The balance of Bhutan’s economy is already shifting. In 2002 farming accounted for 26% of GDP, but by 2011 that was down to 16%. Industry – mainly due to four massive hydropower projects (pdf) – accounted for 44% of GDP in 2011, up from 28% in 2002. But there is a sense that this development is benefitting a few, and leaving many behind. As of last year only 2% of the population were employed in water, gas and electricity supply (pdf).
A huge new hydropower plant, partly financed by India, in Dagachhu is set to open within months, and 11 more are planned. The country is attempting to meet its declared aim of increasing hydropower capacity to 10,000MW by 2020, most of it for export to India, which is funding the expansions.
Plans for agriculture
Agriculture still features highly in Bhutan’s plans. Around two-thirds of the population still work in agriculture, the vast majority as subsistence farmers. The country – the world’s only nation aiming to be fully organic – plans to diversify production into hazelnuts, coffee and organic vegetables, and is launching the Green Bhutan Project giving rural people plots of land and greenhouses.
Tourism, another area of potential growth and revenue, is increasing by about 10-15% every year. Tourists can only visit Bhutan on an organised tour, which, alongside a daily visa fee to the government, can cost about $250 a day. “We need to make tourism sustainable, so it’s not just about numbers but about yield,” says Kinley Wangi, of Bhutan’s tourism council. “If you don’t plan well, tourists can ruin a country.”
Until now much of the money raised from tourism – which Wangi estimates accounts for only 6-9% of GDP – has stayed in the hands of tour companies. But the government is encouraging local people in remote areas to open up their homes for curious tourists, so that more money is spent locally. “Homestays” are being supported by the WWF in Bhutan as well as the government.
Bhutan will have to make a herculean effort if it is to preserve its unique identity, and, as the Ura festivities close, there are signs of hope.
As the sun dips below the mountains, all the men and women of the village dance around the courtyard of the dzong to the rhythmic sound of bells. A couple of tourists pull the hoods of their all-weather jackets tighter around their faces while a monk in ochre robes takes a photo on his smartphone.
Watching, 12-year-old Rigzin Pema Yodchan says she hopes that in the future her country will be more developed, with computers and phones. Asked if she will stay here in Ura, she nods. “Yes. Lots of people now leave,” she says. “But we should stay and preserve our culture.”
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