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The Centre for Bhutan and GNH Studies (CBS), formerly the Centre for Bhutan Studies, is an autonomous government research institute based in Thimphu. It was established in 1999 to conduct interdisciplinary research on Bhutan's economy, polity, society, culture and history, and from the mid-2000s it became the principal institutional home of Gross National Happiness (GNH) as a measurable development concept rather than a political slogan.^[1]

CBS designs and administers the periodic GNH Surveys, maintains the GNH Index methodology, and houses the GNH Policy Screening Tool used to assess proposed government policies against the framework's nine domains. The Centre publishes books, working papers and the journal The Druk Journal, and hosts the International Conference on Gross National Happiness, which has met seven times since 2004.^[2]

Since 2008 the Centre has been led as President by Karma Ura, who joined the institute at its founding and served as Director from 1999 to 2008. CBS is the main Bhutanese counterpart for the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) on GNH-related research, and works with the New Institute in Hamburg, the United Nations Development Programme and a range of universities on cross-national wellbeing measurement.

History and mandate

The Centre was founded in 1999 as the Centre for Bhutan Studies, an autonomous government research body chartered to conduct policy-relevant social science research. It was renamed the Centre for Bhutan and GNH Studies in 2008 to reflect its consolidated role as the institutional home of GNH research and methodology.^[1] Its mandate covers four broad areas: empirical research on Bhutanese society and polity; methodology and measurement of GNH; engagement with international scholarly and policy communities; and publication of historical and cultural materials.

CBS is funded primarily through the government's annual budget allocation for autonomous research bodies, supplemented by project funding from international partners including the United Nations system, the New Institute, the John Templeton Foundation and various academic institutions.

The GNH Index

The GNH Index is the Centre's flagship product. It measures wellbeing across nine domains: psychological wellbeing, health, time use, education, cultural diversity and resilience, good governance, community vitality, ecological diversity and resilience, and living standards. Each domain is composed of multiple indicators (33 in total in the current methodology), and the index is computed using the Alkire–Foster method developed in collaboration with OPHI.^[3]

Three full GNH Surveys have been conducted: a pilot in 2008, the first full national survey in 2010, a second in 2015 and a third in 2022. Findings from the 2022 survey, published in 2023, reported that the GNH Index value rose from 0.743 in 2010 to 0.781 in 2022, that 48.1 per cent of the population aged 15 and above met the threshold for "happy" status (up from 40.9 per cent in 2010), and that the gap between rural and urban happiness scores narrowed over the period.^[4]

The GNH Policy Screening Tool, developed in 2008, is applied to proposed government policies and major projects to assess potential effects across the nine domains before approval. Its use has been mandatory in principle for cabinet-level policy submissions, although review by the Centre and analysts has noted uneven application in practice.

Publications and scholarship

CBS publishes a steady stream of books, working papers and conference proceedings. Notable outputs include the Bhutan 2020: A Vision for Peace, Prosperity and Happiness document (2009), the multi-volume proceedings of the GNH international conferences, and The Druk Journal, a biannual publication of long-form essays on Bhutanese policy and culture launched in 2015.^[2] The Centre has also coordinated the production of major historical works, including translations of Bhutanese-language religious and historical texts.

Karma Ura's own scholarly output through CBS includes The Hero with a Thousand Eyes (1995), Leadership of the Wise (2010) and Bhutan: The Unremembered Nation (2024, Oxford University Press), the last of which is the most substantial single-author treatment of Bhutanese political and intellectual history in English to date.^[5]

International engagement

CBS has been the principal Bhutanese counterpart for two decades of international engagement with GNH. The 2 April 2012 UN High-Level Meeting on "Wellbeing and Happiness: Defining a New Economic Paradigm", convened in New York under a Bhutanese resolution, was supported analytically by CBS and OPHI. The OECD's Better Life Initiative, the EU's Beyond GDP programme and the New Zealand Wellbeing Budget have all engaged with CBS in design and methodology discussions.^[6]

The Centre also coordinates academic visitor programmes hosting researchers from Oxford, Cambridge, the University of Tokyo and other institutions, and runs short courses on GNH methodology for visiting policymakers.

Criticisms

The Centre's work has attracted both praise and reservations. Three principal criticisms appear in the academic and policy literature:

Data access. Until the publication of the 2022 GNH Survey microdata in 2024, primary survey data were not publicly available, limiting external replication. The Centre has since improved access through its data portal but full microdata for older rounds remain partially restricted.
Replicability and methodology. Some economists have questioned the weights assigned to GNH domains, the cut-off thresholds for "happy" and "unhappy" categories, and the suitability of self-reported indicators in a cultural context where direct expression of dissatisfaction may be muted.^[7]
Donor and government relationships. As an autonomous body funded substantially by the state and by international partners with explicit interest in GNH as a model, CBS sits in a position where its research findings carry weight for the Bhutanese government's international branding. Independent observers have flagged the difficulty of separating empirical research from political utility in this context.

The Centre has responded to several of these points through its 2022 methodology revisions, expanded data publication, and the inclusion of more critical voices in its conference programmes.

Contact

Address: Centre for Bhutan and GNH Studies, Langjophakha, Thimphu
Website: bhutanstudies.org.bt

Centre for Bhutan and GNH Studies