Bhutan's socio-economic development policy is guided by its unique philosophy of maximizing Gross National Happiness (GNH), which emphasizes on striking the balance between material wellbeing and non-enonomic wellbeing. Simply put, GNH philosophy embraces other dimensions such as culture, environment, spiritual needs, etc. in addition to economic development.
Bhutan's GNH philosophy, in principle, does not deviate much from developed worlds' development philosophy of social welfare policy, where welfare states place social rights above the economic development. According to Esping Anderson (1990), he classifies developed world into three worlds of welfare capitalism, namely, liberal capitlalists, conservatist capitalists, and social democrats. These three types place super importance to social welfare of the people. Some of the areas of social welfare include unemployment benefits, old-age care, handicap care, retirement benefits, childcare, etc. States are responsible in ensuring people of social security and other welfare benefits. In some countries, states directly fund social security and others let market to deliver welfare services.
Bhutanese people enjoy free education and free health services, which has contributed a great deal to the welfare of Bhutanese people. Bhutan has infact championed in these areas among the developing world. All five-year developments since 1961 were all geared towards addressing the difficulties and hardships of the people. The ongoing 10th five-year development plan (2008-2013) with budget outlay of about Nu.140 billion is solely devoted towards alleviating poverty.
However, there are areas where Bhutan can still work on social welfare programmes given its strong commitment to the philosophy of GNH. We can do more justice to our commitment to GNH only if we place social welfare above economic development, wherein economic development will be sub-set of social welfare. For example, western welfare capitalists would spend any amount of money even in millions to save a single fellow citizen in times of war or disaster, which demonstrates their commitment to the welfare of the people and placing less importance to economic cost-benefit analysis.
Asian ideology of resting the responsibility of social welfare and social security to the family, I should say, is harsh to the bread-earners. If social security system is working in Asia, then it is so only at the cost of bread-earners' welfare. It is even more taxing when having to look after the welfare of the family and at times the welfare of extended family. Further more, with migration of younger population to the urban areas and dilution of cultural and family values, it could pose serious problems to the welfare of the old and to the handicaps.
Therefore, Bhutan can work more on social welfare policy in keeping with the guiding philosophy of Gross National Happiness. It calls for a paradigm shift in policy from economic development to social welfare. Let market take care of economic development and the State should focus on people's welfare. For market force to take care of economic development, the State should continue creating conducive environment for private sector development.
