India and China - Implosion: India's Tryst with Reality - page 301

especially of communications, has weakened in the past 25 years or so. In the mid-1980s,
when I first went there, 31 air flights and even telex messages were routed via Calcutta. Now
Bhutan has air links to other nearby countries, as well as internet and satellite television,
but the economy is still heavily dependent on exports to India, dominated by sales of hy-
droelectric power.
China wants to settle 4,500 sq km of land on disputed sections of its 470-km border, and
is using that to persuade Bhutan to let it open formal diplomatic links and an embassy in the
capital of Thimpu. Only a few countries, ranging from Bangladesh to Finland and Switzer-
land, have embassies and consulates in Thimpu and, till recently, Bhutan firmly resisted
China's approaches with India's encouragement. China's main aim is to extend its territory
in the Chumbi Valley, a strategically important 'v' shaped area of Tibet between the Indian
state of Sikkim to the west and Bhutan to the east. 32 This would be extremely sensitive for
India because the 3,000 m (9,500 ft) high valley juts down towards a strip of Indian ter-
ritory called the Siliguri Corridor, which is the only land route - known as the 'chicken's
neck' - from the broad mass of India to its northeastern states. 33
So sensitive is India about China's links that the word went round that I was possibly a
British spy when I was in Thimpu for a literature festival in early 2011. 34 I thought it was
natural for a foreign correspondent making a rare visit to Bhutan to ask about China's dip-
lomatic activities and its access and incursions on the northern and western borders. India's
diplomats, however, seemed to think differently. The spy rumour was circulating by about
the second or third day of my visit - I heard it (unofficially) when I went to a dinner in the
garden of India's resident army general.
Bhutan's royal family and officials did not seem to have the same worry. I am credited
there as the first foreign correspondent to be told (for the FT in 1987) by the then King
Jigme Singye Wangchuck about his plans for Gross National Happiness or GNH. 'We are
convinced we must aim for contentment and happiness,' he said when I interviewed him
in 1987 at his Dechencholing Palace in Thimphu. He put this above more usual targets of
economic growth and GNP, and listed the parameters: 'Whether we take five years or ten
to raise the per capita income and increase prosperity is not going to guarantee that happi-
ness, which includes political stability, social harmony, and the Bhutanese culture and way
of life,' he said. 35
He had been working on the idea since the mid-1970s and this was the first time that he
had opened up on the theme to a foreign reporter. 'Independence through an independent
culture' was one of the aims, he said. 'We are fortunate in developing late at a time when
other countries, which went through our present stage of development 30 or 40 years ago,
are becoming aware of what they have done wrong. Many have developed a modern soci-
ety but none has kept its strong traditions and culture which we want to do'. For example,
he added, 'corruption began when development started in 1961, maybe not seriously com-