Levi reminded me that there's an article in the March 2008 issue of National Geographic about Bhutan. I read the first page this morning and it's pretty good. You may notice that the population is reported as being 663 thousand, 970 thousand, and 2.3 million depending on what article or reference you read. I have no idea which one is correct. Which brings up an interesting topic in the world planning, development, and governance: information management.
When working with a community, a good information gathering and management system is important in order to establish a baseline of existing levels of development and to be able to measure the success of programs aimed at raising specific indicators or solving specific problems. We take the availability of good information for granted in the west where there has been a long tradition of methodical data gathering and management on thousands of different subjects from population counts to soil surveys. In the developing world and especially in remote areas there may have never been any systematic gathering of human or environmental information. There is the added challenge that information is highly political in that gathering knowledge about immunizations or school attendance can reveal how well or poorly officials are executing their duties- and whether they've been honest in their reporting. Information is also highly valuable to people or businesses wanting to profit from a knowledge gap between workers and employers, landowners and tenants, and business competitors.
What this all boils down to is that information management can make or break development efforts and it takes scientific professionalism along with smooth diplomacy to succeed. (Luckily, I married into a family who specializes in this area!).
The former king of Bhutan recognized the importance of measuring and tracking indicators of development in order to improve the health, welfare, and happiness of his people. To see where Bhutan now stands in relation to other nations, check out the Human Development Index which ranks a number of indicators such as life expectancy, literacy rates, and immunization rates.
