Bhutan

BHUTAN IS A VERY small Himalayan kingdom between India and China (Tibet). By contract, Bhutan's foreign policy is conducted by India; nevertheless Bhutan has been an independent state since the beginning of the 20th century. It is ruled by a hereditary Buddhist monarchy. Prior to that time Bhutan was, like Tibet, a Buddhist theocracy.

Most parts of the country are mountainous; only the Indian border is a small strip of low land, where the climate and natural vegetation are subtropical and mostly used as farmland. The middle region is alpine with pine forests and is partly arable. The whole northern region includes some Himalayan peaks and is extremely cold and barren. This topography explains why Bhutan is only very thinly populated at about two million, but the enumeration is difficult because the government usually estimates the Bhutanese population at much less. The reason is to be found in the increasingly ethnicized politics of the monarch and his dominant ethnic group, the Ngalong, who speak Dzongkha, a Ti-betan-derived language that the king declared the only official Bhutanese language, not accepting that Bhutan is in reality a multiethnic and multicultural country. Especially the Nepali-speaking ethnic groups in the southern region are deprived of their civil rights and flee to Nepal where thousands live in refugee camps.

This short description of a rather unknown country points out some of the reasons why Bhutan still remains very poor, though the king began in the late 1950s to modernize the secluded country. This means that with a per capita income of $375 per year, Bhutan no longer belongs to the LDC (Least Developed Countries). It must be mentioned that it is difficult to calculate the per capita income because the king/government [Page 80]does not accept the Nepali-speaking large minority as real Bhutanese, so in some publications the per capita income is given at $594 per year.

Since the beginning of modernization, economic development has been controlled by five-year plans setting different priorities, with the two first ones focused on education. This was extremely necessary because until about 1960 no modern education existed; there were only religious schools belonging to monasteries. Only very few children had private, especially foreign, teachers. Today a free public educational system exists; one college exists, but no university. The adult literary rate rose from an estimated 10 percent in 1970 to 47.5 percent in 1994. Still, today there is a lack of well-trained indigenous teachers, so many foreign teachers, especially Indians work in Bhutan.

The medical system and access to free primary healthcare also improved, so life expectancy has risen from 37 years in 1960 to 66 years in 1994. The infant mortality rate was one of the highest in the world in 1960 (203 infant deaths of 1000 live births). An indigenous, Tibetan-based medical system coexists with the modern healthcare system; the government supports this coexistence.

There are prevailing gender differences; for instance women are more often illiterate than men, but—proba-bly influenced by a Tibetan-based social system—gen-der differences are not so severe as in other parts of south Asia. The law treats Bhutanese men and women equally. Everyday culture does not seem to discriminate against women as much as, for instance, in India. Bhutanese parents do not prefer boys, so there is no female foeticide. There are Bhutanese women who are economically independent, but women do not occupy high government posts.

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