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Outlook: Bhutan's Happiness Guru

Saamdu Chetri - Bhutan's Happiness Guru

21/07/2015

Bhutan's Happiness Guru

BBC World Service - Outlook, Bhutan's Happiness Guru

Saamdu Chetri has been tasked by Bhutan's government with making people happy

Saamdu Chetri has been tasked by Bhutan's government with making people happy - but is he happy himself?

In the 1970s the King of Bhutan announced that the happiness of the population was a better measure of national success than the economic indicator, Gross Domestic Product, or GDP. Saamdu Chetri has been charged with overseeing Bhutan's happiness and this month he will open the country's first happiness centre in the foothills of the Himalayas. 

In a house in Kirkuk, Northern Iraq, Ghanim Gorgis and his family live side by side with Widad Fadhil and hers. Both fled the advance of the so-called Islamic State in separate parts of the country. What is unusual about their house share is that Ghanim is Christian, and Widad - Sunni Muslim.

When Christine Ha began to lose her sight in her 20s due to a neurological condition, one of the things that distressed her most was the thought that she might never cook again. However, she learned to adapt and eventually entered and won the TV amateur cooking competition Masterchef in the US.  

German director Oliver Hirschbiegel latest film is called Thirteen Minutes. It is based on the true story of Georg Elser who in November 1939 built a huge bomb and timed it to go off in a Munich beer hall while Hitler was giving his anniversary speech. Unfortunately Hitler changed his timetable that day and left the building 13 minutes before the explosion. Oliver Hirschbiegel, who also directed Downfall, explains why Elser's story remains relatively unknown compared to other assassination attempts against Hitler.

(Photo: Saamdu Chetri with kind permission from S.Chetri)

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