Bhutan’s USP is all about mindfulness, a prerequisite for its much-touted but sometimes hazy rubric of Gross National Happiness. Call it the need for a sense of national pride married to socio-economic opportunity, environmental balance, and, ultimately, investment and contentment in the idea of Bhutan.
Bhutan’s 44-year-old king, Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuk, has taken it a step up with his marquee project, the Gelephu Mindfulness City by the country’s southern border abutting India’s eastern state of Assam. The location in mountainous Bhutan’s slim tropical plains near the Manas river is the equivalent of a day’s drive north from Bangladesh’s borders -- or, appreciably less than an hour’s flight from Dhaka to Gelephu airport. It was upgraded from a domestic airport to an international one in September 2023 as a prep for the Mindfulness City. The airport will be expanded and modernised.
The Mindfulness City is a massive 1,000sq-km-plus project that in one shot seeks to provide a regional hub for smart living, smart business, smart education, and a smart alternative to Bhutan’s educated creamy layer that steadily leaches away to preferred destinations like Australia. The exit of such homegrown talent in a tiny population of less than 800,000 in a country the size of Switzerland is a major concern.
Indeed, a visit to the capital, Thimphu, or Paro, the country’s other large city and, thus far, the main global gateway; or to any “thromde” -- loosely translated, a municipality -- will show ubiquitous advertisements for facilitating emigration and study abroad, alongside advertisements for consumer goods and IT services. An estimated 5% of the population emigrated in 2020. The figure has since seen a slight downward trend, a welcome development for Bhutan’s policy-makers.
GMC, to contract the mouthful of a name, is a calculated throw of the dice to reorder Bhutan’s opportunities and its future that is at present pegged to tourism, sale of hydroelectricity, largesse from friendly nations in the neighbourhood and elsewhere, agriculture, and government service. Bhutan plans to invite the world -- albeit selectively -- to participate in this reordered, enhanced future.
GMC also sees itself as a trading and communications hub linking Bhutan to Eastern South Asia: To begin, eastern and far-eastern India, Bangladesh, and, in the foreseeable absence of stability in Myanmar, use these destinations as trading points to Southeast Asia and beyond. A “dry port” already exists in Gelephu. Plans call for it to be ramped up with increased capacity and better infrastructure.
The king and his office have been hard-selling GMC to Bhutan and the world since he formally announced it to Bhutan’s citizens during the national day in December 2023. From available accounts he also pitched it to India during a high-optics state visit last November. On the table were several amped up highway projects to better link Bhutan to the neighbouring Indian states of Assam and West Bengal -- also the gateway states for Bhutan’s overland trade with Bangladesh -- and two railway projects to link the vast Indian railway network to southern Bhutan, including the vicinity of Gelephu.
It all appears to fit into Bhutan’s goods-and-services outreach in the region. For instance, earlier this month, Bhutan’s ambassador to Bangladesh visited Kurigram in northern Bangladesh, by the Brahmaputra, to scope out the possibility of investing in a Special Economic Zone. It followed a letter to Bangladesh Economic Zones Authority. Its chair accompanied the ambassador.
The location is seen as opportune as directly to the north, via West Bengal, lies Phuentsholing, a major gateway and trading town in southwest Bhutan. Kurigram could also offer a waterway route up the Brahmaputra into Assam, and then road and rail links to Gelephu.
As this column noted last November (Crouching tiger, unhidden dragons, and the Doklam jittery -- bug) Bhutan increasingly sees Bangladesh as a trading destination. The two countries have signed a sprawling preferential trade agreement that permits bilateral duty-free access to numerous goods. Bangladesh has offered its major ports to Bhutan as trading hubs. Here India provides overland transshipment facilities: Goods between Bhutan and Bangladesh travel through Indian territory. (Similarly, India has offered Indian ports and railways for Bangladesh's “third-country” exports to Nepal. This is all either fait accompli or work-in-progress.)
From my discussions with senior Bhutan government officials during a visit to that country last year, I gathered Bhutan, like Nepal, is also eyeing electricity exports to Bangladesh.
As the GMC rollout begins beyond the formal royal announcement, the pitch will spread across Southeast Asia, Japan, South Korea, Europe, and the Americas.
GMC has already created a buzz in global architecture and landscaping circles. The Scandinavian firm BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group), the UK-based Arup Group, and Singapore-based Cistri -- which has as its parent Australia’s Urbis Ltd -- are leading the design and development of the project that would one day headline the Gelephu Special Administration Region. BIG’s landscape and urban design team created the masterplan.
“To give the public possibilities, it proposes investments in infrastructure, education, and green technologies,” notes ArchDaily, a global tracker of the architecture and design business. “An international airport, railroads, a hydroelectric dam, public areas, and architectural features representing the nine domains of Gross National Happiness are all included in the master plan.”
The description then lapses into lyricism. GMC, it says, “uses a system of lively neighbourhoods designed to resemble paddy fields and arranged around rivers. Making use of Gelephu’s current agricultural infrastructure and landscapes, it envisions eleven distinct neighbourhoods with progressively changing densities, all based on Mandala design principles.”
As to the nine stated “domains” of Gross Nation Happiness, they are: Psychological wellbeing, health, education, living standards, “time-use,” ecological diversity and resilience, good governance, cultural diversity and resilience, and community vitality.
King Jigme Khesar visited Gelephu this past March. He spread out the blueprint and looked to GMC’s promised land along with Bhutan’s newly-elected prime minister. He walked for a considerable distance on a pathway along one of the area’s 35 rivers dressed in a utilitarian gho, Bhutan’s national garment for men, and hiking boots.
He addressed a large team of trainees of De-suung, or Guardian of Peace, an organization he raised in 2011. This agency runs Bhutan’s remarkable volunteer force, easily identified by their ubiquitous orange overalls. De-suung literally saved Bhutan during the Covid lockdown. It undertakes all manner of community service from rescue and relief to planting trees. Basically, volunteers drop whatever they are doing and step up for the greater good at the alert of a phone message or call. Last year, a De-suung volunteer stamped my passport as I exited Bhutan at Phuentsholing. Such volunteers will inevitably have a large role in birthing GMC in the coming decade.
Now for this dream to turn to reality.
Sudeep Chakravarti is Director, Center for South Asian Studies at University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh. He has authored several books on history, ethnography, conflict resolution, and Eastern South Asia.
