Since Globalization Project began after the Second World War, the world started to change and embark into a new journey. Development began in many Third World countries with the assistance from donor countries. Many Third World countries were patronized by the US, providing numerous aids, which otherwise was their policy of containment.

Further, the Green Revolution spurred the changes in age old subsistence farming where huge mechanization resulted in redundancy of peasants. With capitalism regime floating relentlessly, it led to displacement of peasants and rural urban migration increased by manifold. When huge portion of population started living in urban areas, various unprecedented problems precipitated in those Third World countries. With lots of developmental activities, capitalist goons hired guest workers who are either debt bondage or under poverty lane, to work in the construction sites or factories for cheaper wages. With guest workers, injustice and racial discrimination resulted, where competition for space and resources was tremendous. This lead to diversity in ethnic group, with that conflict for resources and other matter commenced, where the host indigenous people experienced xenophobia. Such social malice that germinated after the Globalization Project can be testified with current awful scenarios of rise in slums, child trafficking, prostitution, guest workers, injustice, corruption, economic crisis, inflation etc.

Well, it is a long story to connect dots of Globalization Project with current social epidemic we face globally.

However, some of the problems we face today in our small Himalayan kingdom can be attributed to some of the concepts that emerged during and after the Globalization Project.

With market oriented economy, power tillers and machines started to come to villages, reducing the needs of more labor in farming which inevitably forced rural folks to migrate to an urban areas but for vain. Unproductive population who are old, women, and child could not fill the void space left by the youth in the village. It further resulted in uneven proportion of population distribution, with over population in urban centers like Thimphu and Phuentsholing. Due to mismatch between the skills they possessed and availability of jobs, they are mostly left unemployed resulting in increased crime rates and other social evils.

This can be linked to the current rupee crisis in Bhutan. With more mouths to feed, most of the  commodities are imported including vegetables, which otherwise can be easily and sustainably produced if little hard work is endured collectively by Bhutanese citizens.

Dependency is the concept that emerged during the Globalization Project era. When the First World countries provided financial support to the Third World countries, they inevitably became dependent countries. Bhutan has been dependent to many foreign countries, India being the most relied and depended country. Due to this, we are crippled and faced with many problems, which can be significantly visible if we brood deeper with concerns. Almost all the economic activities are concentrated with India, and they enjoy hegemony over Bhutan. Indian guest workers remit billions of rupees annually, which sicken our ambiguous economy. The clandestine problem is many of these Indian workers in border areas are illegally working without a working permit. If it were the trends, no sooner from now, with billions of population increasing in India and China, just few hundreds of kilometers from Bhutan, thousands of illegal immigrants would roam Bhutan if not checked now.

As always desired by our kings, as enshrined in the philosophy of GNH, I think it is the time to be pragmatic rather than fancy GNH, and gospel theories. The world have enough philosophers, thinkers, and theorists. Now, it is the time of pragmatism. If we want to achieve that utopia of GNH, we should travel through the roads that would lead to GNH, not just blindly trying to fly through the sky. The sky is limit for us, we must first struggle and chew the harsh realm of reality that we encounter on our way to GNH.

Therefore, my fellow compatriots, let us stop chanting mantras of GNH, let us work towards it with our minds and bodies together. For now, let us all plant our own vegetables, and forgo our desire to own big fancy cars which is the quintessential symptom of consumerism, and for now it would be wise to amalgamate our souls together and synergetically work towards self-sufficiency rather than hypocritically play a drama of Capitalism and consumerism.

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