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By Root 686 0

citizens of Bhutan could now be connected to one another through radio, without actually going anywhere, was nothing short of magic. This eager audience immediately began to phone in to give thanks for the music, and to chatter on the air—simply because they could. To dedicate songs not just to their friends and family but to fellow callers whose voices they’d found pleasing. When nature intervened and the signal was temporarily disrupted, Kuzoo fans called and begged so plaintively in despair at the interruption that you’d wonder what they’d done before the station existed. “Please, my wife has stopped eating because she’s so sad without Kuzoo,” implored one man after a storm knocked the station off the air. “You must repair it.”

Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of the Kuzoo experience—the quality that endeared it to its audience above all others—was that listeners were allowed, even encouraged, to participate on-air. Besides making dedications, they could sing songs and talk to friendly radio jockeys. Or ask questions about Buddhism on a weekly show called Dharma Bites, hosted by two young self-styled “spiritual jihadis.” Disappointed that their fellow youth were becoming less engaged with the national religion and showing more of an interest in the trappings of the material world, they’d cooked up the idea for this program and showed up at the Kuzoo studio one day to ask for airtime. Like legions of evangelists around the world, they saw the power of the medium to educate and persuade.

The excitement wasn’t just because media in Bhutan hadn’t been interactive before. For generations, the tiny, landlocked Himalayan kingdom had practically no media at all, and very little in the way of modern communications. It had been literally sealed off from the rest of the world, and virtually sequestered, too. TV had long been outlawed, lest the insidious forces of the outside infiltrate and pollute the minds of the people—dilute their unique culture, intoxicate them with images of an outside world to which they’d yearn to belong.

Some of the bolder and more affluent citizens hooked contraband televisions up to video recorders, traded taped films they managed to smuggle into the country, or slipped cash to enterprising Indian businessmen who smuggled dismantled satellite dishes across the border and reassembled them, discreetly, around their customers’ homes. The number of people who could afford such a luxury was few. Even as the burgeoning World Wide Web had been taking root most everyplace else, it had not been allowed to make inroads into Bhutan. Not that every person in every corner of the nation could have availed themselves of the service even if cost weren’t an issue. A quarter of Bhutan’s villages still lacked electricity—and half the population had to walk at least four hours just to get to the nearest all-season road. When mobile phones were introduced in 2003, the number of houses with landlines totalled in the hundreds.

On the morning of June 2, 1999, King Jigme Singye Wangchuck issued the decree that would change Bhutan indelibly. At the silver jubilee celebration commemorating his twenty-five-year reign, he delivered a speech in which he bestowed several gifts on his constituency. Roads and bridges, he declared, would be built in the remotest corners of Bhutan, to give the people greater mobility. To accommodate a larger plane for the nation’s airline, a new airport terminal would be constructed—another enticement to would-be visitors. As part of Bhutan’s continuing environmental stewardship, the king announced that plastic bags would be banned—for the good of the planet and, ultimately, all people.

The bombshell of His Majesty’s address that day, the revelation that elicited cheers from the otherwise solemnly reverent assembled guests, was this: After years of self-imposed isolation, of gently dipping its toes into the outside world, of carefully restricting which foreigners entered the country and which Bhutanese left, the almighty superpowers known as television and Internet were to be permitted into the