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Modernization and Self Sufficiency


Individual's quest for happiness, inner and outer freedom is the most precious endeavor.  It follows then that society's ideal of governance and polity should promote this endeavor of the individuals. The royal government of Bhutan and his majesty the king continues to guide towards the fulfillment of cultural and political changes that drive our country to the future. Bhutan begin its developmental activities since 1961 and by the end of 1990's, king devolved full powers to its people.  Since then Bhutan entered an new era of governance and in 2008 we successfully entered democratic constitutional monarch. It has been two terms with different government yet same Bhutanese that rules our government. A modernization is taking huge thug on to the lives of people in our country. Quest for urban development and expansion of towns ( thromdeys and yenglag thromdeys ) taking quick run along the path of development. It was decided in the parliament and we are all set to develop our towns across the country.
From the lay mans' analysis, I see a huge need of study and consultation while taking such a decision of township development and expansion. We talk about self sufficiency by 2020 and 80% of the people are agrarian. With only 3% of the total land under arable category and many lands lay fallow due to other unfavorable factors, we are cutting short our own life in the name of development. We have seen huge land being converted into mushroom of concrete buildings in Bajothang and Khuruthang. Similar situations prevail in other parts of the country but we are least concerned about losing arable land for such development. Since our traditional socio-economic system is based on communal self-reliance and we are growing with the philosophy of GNH, we need to refer our developments to the 4 pillars, 9 domains and 33 indicators of gross national happiness.
Land pooling and expansion of towns in the agricultural land is against GNH philosophy. Firstly it hampers the psychological well being of the people. Secondly we are destroying our environment for the sake of development and thirdly it destroys peoples' livelihood. We have seen enough of wetlands falling under land pooling and converting it into dry land for construction, but one undeniable fact is, agricultural land is equally important as development. We are few heads that too are fed by our neighbouring county and policies such as self sufficiency is collecting dust on the shelves while we keep on destroying the pot from which we eat.
Dear all

Please find a way out of such destruction. It involves risk to our nations sovereignty if we become total dependent from dependent after we lose all our agricultural land to the developmental works.  

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