I am writing this from
a beach-side restaurant in Koh Tao, a red snapper on its way, a Beer
Chang on the table. It's hot here. My BCF friends have all left me
for their various homes over the last few weeks – Salt Spring,
Toronto, Nebraska, a few to India, a couple up to Chiang Mai, a few
to Africa via New York. The group has scattered and they're all
taking a piece of Bhutan with them to their relevant places. Some of
them are going back there, me possibly included. So perhaps it's time
to figure out what this lingering sense of Bhutan looks like, how it
feels, what it means to us. But to be honest, it's still only half
formed.
What was the leaving
like? Difficult and emotional, but good. Why good? Because the last
few weeks brought home how much I enjoyed my time there, how close my
friendships became and how much I achieved there in such a short
time. As the departure date drew new and conversations became
dominated by the impending break, I found plenty of time to reflect
on the differences between my previous life and the one I found in
Pakshikha – Bhutan, a country seemingly in the full flush of its
teenage years of development, and the UK (and I guess, Europe) that
has seemingly gone beyond the peak on the cost-benefit development
curve and now counts more costs than it does benefits from its race
for growth at any cost. I can't shed this sense of the UK that was
growing before I left, that it is struggling through the cynical
years of an not-quite-old-yet man, intractable, stuck in
self-destructive ways, disappointed with the achievements its
ambitions wrought.
 |
| Sanjay Pradhan |
I saw a lecture
recently by Sanjay Pradhan, Vice President of the World Bank Institute in which he drew great hope from (among other things) the
fact that a seachange was occurring in the development/aid
communities. The post-war institutions – the UN, the World Bank,
the EMF – they were all laudably conceived in a spirit of hope that
a better world could be fashioned from the spiritual, financial and
ethical debris of one of the most humanity shattering of wars. The
aim was simple – to not let history repeat as it so often does.
They realised that wealth disparities play an important role in the
harmony of nations and they sought to address them. The whole
infrastructure of this change was predicated not only on the wealth
of the Northern Hemisphere, but also on its expertise and economic
history. When we see Europe fragmenting and read newspaper reports
about 'nutrition poverty' in Yorkshire, and when we hear the
politicians steadfastly clinging to their growth rhetoric as an
escape from the madness the same ethos created, it's hardly
surprising that eyebrows raise in alarm.
Sow what is the
seachange that Mr Pradhan referred to? It comes from a change
in perspective of the Southern Nations. They're no longer looking to
the West and North for salvation from poverty and corruption, but to
each other. They don't care how London made itself so massive and
tied itself up in dodgy derivatives. They're more interested in how
China miraculously lifted so many people out of poverty (despite the
terrible costs), how Costa Rica disbanded its army and channelled all
the cash into sustainable small business ventures, how Mexico lifted
it's citizens higher up the index of happiness with its version of
the new deal, how Bhutan defines the role of its government in
relation to the welfare of its people and environment.
I'm not 'down' on the
UK. I take heart from my friends in Bristol, almost all of whom are
involved in one way or another in building something better from the
ground up, not in response to Cameron's 'Big Society' speeches, but
with a hearty and cynical two fingers up to them. I'm thinking of the
Bristol Pound, the non-profit micro energy projects, the
redevelopment of derelict buildings as community spaces for
creativity and small businesses, the festivals run carbon neutral and
designed not just for hedonism but for education, the attempt to
found new schools that might just work for the children.
Inspirational people – citizens (one would hope) of a New Britain,
people who appreciate the redundancy of the archaic 'Great' prefix of
Britain and are prepared to do something about it. The government
seems too clunky and rusting at the seams to contribute in any
meaningful way. Perhaps Cameron realises this. I doubt it.
So to whom does Bhutan
look for inspiration? Many of the people look to China with distrust
and India with a hesitancy that is entirely understandable given the
harsh conditions that people live under there. One only needs to
cross the border for five minutes to see what a apparently complete
absence of welfare does for grass roots humanity and 'the social
contract'. Spend a few weeks there like one of my friends recently
did, and you have to adopt a shell hard enough to ignore destitution
well beyond anything we might term 'nutritional poverty'. Bhutan is
definitely doing something right compared with its nearest
neighbours.
I noticed the new
science curricula have been written with assistance from Oxford dons,
which is disappointing. I had a precious opportunity to provide
feedback to the Minister of Education with the other teachers and
shared my view that there exists here a chance to do something
radically different with the textbooks that are being written for
Class IX and X, to make them work for teachers and students alike.
Forget what we've done over there in the West – make a textbook
that works! With AfL and differentiation and '21st century
education' techniques embedded and integrated. Let them guide the
teachers instead of telling us what to do at workshops that inspire
us with an energy that trickles away in weeks. Many other things were
discussed and it was refreshing, regardless of what was said, to find
people in government listening to classroom teachers, albeit aliens
from another world.
A common grumble that
arose from conversations with my Bhutanese friends was that the
government was too intoxicated with the aura of GNH and the spreading
of it around the world and might perhaps do well to flex its muscles
more at home and make the ideal of GNH a tangible reality for every
one of its citizens. I think this is both fair and harsh. Bhutan
needs to keep speaking as loud as it can so that the GNH ideal stays
current and noticeable – the value of this small exemplar voice at
the big conference tables of the world is self-evident. However, if
the Bhutanese become cynical, it will become a house of cards and
crumble from within once the next generation of Bhutanese find their
democratic voices and make use of the internet to express them.
This is all very heady
and mental stuff. I haven't touched upon the emotion jolt of leaving
behind a place and people that have become very close to my heart. I
half expect to become one of those Bhutanical volunteer comets that
circle the country and periodically fly through its skies during my
lifetime. There are many of them, and with good reason. I'm hoping to
go back in March to see my friends and have some more conversations
about possible work there, but who knows what will happen? Koh Tao is
distracting my mind, various adventurers are on the horizon and my
priority for the next few months is with my writing. I guess I'll
have to wait a little longer for the more emotional reactions to
settle in. Grist for another posting, which will, I imagine be full
of pictures of farewells and friends.
Sanjay Pradhan's Lecture... http://www.ted.com/talks/sanjay_pradhan_how_open_data_is_changing_international_aid.html
