Ragnar Nurkse Department of Innovation and Governance is hosting an open lecture by the institute's spring term visiting professor, Dr. Lhawang Ugyel (UNSW Canberra).

Title of the lecture: "Bhutan’s policy of Gross National Happiness (GNH): Agenda-Setting and the Implementation of the GNH Policy Screening Tool"

Gross National Happiness (GNH), a concept introduced by Bhutan, has gained immense traction as an alternate development paradigm to GDP towards achieving wholesome global progress. The concept of GNH was first conceptualised in the 1970s by the Fourth King of Bhutan, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, when he stressed the need to consider “happiness” in addition to the pursuit of Gross National Product.

In the last 50 years in Bhutan, achieving GNH has served as its main developmental philosophy and the policy of happiness has been integrated into national plans and programs through the GNH policy screening tool. This seminar is a part of a study aims to analyse the effectiveness of the GNH policy screening tool in Bhutan by using the Economic Development Policy of Bhutan (2016) as a case study. As such, the seminar is divided into two parts. The first part examines the agenda-setting of the policy of GNH as a national and international agenda. The second part discusses some of the formulation and the implementation aspects of the GNH policy screening tool in Bhutan.