Culture, Gross National Happiness and Disasters: Strategies for preparedness and Management of Disasters in Bhutan

Abstract

Disasters are inevitable especially those caused by natural calamities. The severity of a disaster depends on the preparedness of people and their mindset to deal with such calamities positively instead of creating chaotic situations out of them. The externalities cause disasters that result in crisis situations and many times they are environmental as well. There are ways through which an environmental imbalance can be avoided. However, individuals need to be taught how to deal with calamities through their rich cultural values. Bhutan is a country of rich cultural heritage. This constitutes one of its greatest strengths. According to Gross National Happiness (GNH) literature, cultural heritage is considered one of the four pillars of GNH. Public Policy initiatives have to be designed in such a way that individuals are encouraged to engage themselves in decision making and implementation of the decisions with honest intentions so that such prescribed guidelines are followed strictly to avoid crisis situations. In order to mitigate the influence of the calamities, individuals have to be oriented towards such occurrences at other similar places so that there is proper preparedness in the minds of individuals. This paper is divided in four parts. The first part deals with the importance of culture and cultural values. The second part discusses the concept of GNH. The third concentrates on disasters and the aftermath, and the fourth part tries to link culture and GNH with disaster management and suggests measures to follow for preparedness for occurrences of disasters or/and to deal with its victims.