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Article: PROFILE THE KING OF BHUTAN The prince who brought satellite TV to Shangri-La He dreamed of hauling his remote realm into the 21st century, so now it has crime and corruption and 46 channels, and a steeply declining Gross National Happiness, says William Langley
- Article from:
- The Sunday Telegraph London
- Article date:
- November 9, 2008
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 2008 The Sunday Telegraph London. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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For as long as anyone has been measuring these things, Bhutan has
comfortably topped the table in the world happiness league, but last
week King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuk, a 28-year-old basketball-
playing Oxford graduate, took the throne with his nation heading for
the relegation zone.
Good living isn't easy to define, but Bhutan's enlightened
royalty has tried harder than most, particularly with its innovative
programme of Gross National Happiness, under which assessors are
regularly dispatched into the snowy expanses of the secretive
kingdom to find out how the 700,000 Bhutanis are feeling.
Of late, the reports reaching the royal palace have not been
good, and even as Jigme accepted ...