Bhutan, The Land of Happiness

Bhutan is separated from the nearby state of Nepal to the west by the Indian state of Sikkim, and from Bangladesh to the south by West Bengal. The Bhutanese call their country Druk Yul (Dzongkha: འབྲུག་ཡུལ་ 'brug yul) which means "Land of the Thunder Dragon". The remote Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan is the only country in the world which puts happiness at the heart of government policy.

Bhutan used to be one of the most isolated nations in the world. Bhutan was the last nation in the world to introduce television in 1999. No more than 700,000 people live in the kingdom, squeezed between the world’s two most populous nations, India and China, and its task now is to control and manage the inevitable changes to its way of life. Recently they banned a number of channels including international wrestling and MTV, which they felt did little to promote happiness.

 Developments including direct international flights, the Internet, mobile phone networks, and cable television have increasingly modernized the urban areas of the country. Bhutan has balanced modernization with its ancient culture and traditions under the guiding philosophy of Gross National Happiness (GNH).

The concept of gross national happiness (GNH) is an attempt to define quality of life in more holistic and psychological terms than gross national product. Rampant destruction of the environment has been avoided. The government takes great measures to preserve the nation's traditional culture, identity and the environment. In 2006, Business Week magazine rated Bhutan the happiest country in Asia and the eighth-happiest in the world, citing a global survey conducted by the University of Leicester in 2006 called the "World Map of Happiness".

source:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhutan

http://news.bbc.co.uk/

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/07/world/asia/07bhutan.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1