Status Updates From Radio Shangri-la: What I Le...

efficiencies and value. After a months-long inquisition at each ministry, McKinsey had handed down a wide ranging series of observations and recommendations about how to better "brand" Bhutan. Chief among them was a push to monetize the GNH thing, for GNH was seen as Bhutan's most alluring (and therefore its most marketable) asset. To achieve this, The McKinsey team proposed nixing the $200-a-day tourist tariff

What the prime minister didn't mention was that the latest powerful force to ruffle Bhutanese prayer flags had come at his invitation, in the guise of the international consulting firm McKinsey & Company. This merry bank of bright-eyed young MBAs, dispatched from McKinsey's offices in next-door India, had been hired for $9.1 million. Their mission was to evaluate the nation's inner workings and mine them for greater

The dawn of the year of the Male Earth Mouse also meant the dawn of democracy in Bhutan—and with that, the formal diminishment of the all-powerful monarchy that had reigned for a century. Bhutan’s king would continue to lead, but no longer would he possess absolute power. A year into his tenure, Bhutan was still adjusting to this new, young monarch, and the absence of his beloved father on the throne.