Radio Shangri-La_ What I Learned in Bhutan, the Happiest Kingdom on Earth - Lisa Napoli [106]
What I’m wondering at this moment (besides how I’m going to scurry to the toilet in this cold for the inevitable middle-of-the-night pee) is what to make of this McKinsey recommendation. My predisposition was to mistrust the suits. But maybe something positive would emerge from this odd marriage. For one thing, what purpose was that long-standing $200-a-day charge for all outsiders serving, really? The government took $65 off the top; the leftover $135 had given a generation of Bhutanese the illusion that they could become rich as tour operators, even if they had no interest in that kind of work. Even without the tariff, because of Bhutan’s size and location, it would be difficult for it to become as jammed with visitors as Nepal or India. Wouldn’t it? Besides, the Bhutanese were doing a fine job of polluting and littering the landscape themselves. An animated commercial on TV implored youngsters to stop tossing trash on the streets, and a recent report showed ten new cars a day entering Bhutan’s roads. Just the other day I spotted a woman drinking from the first disposable cup I’d ever seen here.
The government argued that expanded tourism would lead to more jobs, which were necessary to employ the growing population. Sixty percent of the residents were under the age of twenty-nine. They were better educated than the generations before them and had been watching TV for a decade, acquiring sophisticated wants and desires that could no longer be fulfilled on the farms and in the villages. Every day I heard another tale of another nanny crammed into a New York City apartment and supporting four Bhutanese back home. These incomes funded the purchase of apartments, cars, and siblings’ educations back on the other side of the world, and fueled the aspirations of an alarming number of young people in Bhutan, too. Buddha, schmudda: In the front window of the public library hang children’s drawings of Santa Claus. “I wish we had Christmas in Bhutan,” reads a caption, “so we could get presents.” Bhutan is facing a dilemma that belies the premise of Buddhism and of Gross National Happiness: It’s human nature to want an easier way of life. And more stuff.
Maybe the MBAs from McKinsey could impose some order on the chaos of Bhutan. Case study: The circumstances under which I’d come here this time would make even the most junior of strategic consultants’ heads spin. The woman who invited me to make this trip, a high-level official at the Tourism Council—arguably the most powerful agency in Bhutan given that it brings in tens of millions of dollars to the country each year, which is second only to the revenue from hydropower exports to India—has gone missing. A friend of hers had told her I was looking for another volunteer gig, and she had written to say she urgently needed my help, for six months if possible. To my surprise, I found myself balking at that kind of commitment but agreeing to a two-week trip so that we might at least get acquainted. I confirmed the dates of my stay with her, and her assistant arranged the visa and local travel. When I arrived after my long journey—familiar, but no easier now that I’ve done it five times—my hostess was mysteriously absent. And no one who works for her quite knew what to do with me.
Almost a week after I arrived in the country, the mystery was solved. A friend in the States wrote to tell me of a report he heard on public radio that mentioned that the queen of Bhutan (the reporter didn’t get into