The Bhutanese Leading the way.
Passang Tshering, the Executive Director of Bhutan Toilet Org in a vlog about unpaid dues at Palas, a canteen turned shop outside Sherubtse College, found unpaid dues of Nu 500,000 to Nu 1 million going as far back as the 1970’s and in decades after that.
This included later Ministers, Dashos, senior officials, big business people and others. Even when Palas daughter reminded some of the debtors about the unpaid food dues they would promise to pay and still not pay.
The above example is a good example of the Bhutanese mindset towards meeting financial obligations.
We are happy to receive but very reticent to pay back what we owe or pay our share be it to shop keepers or to the government.
There has been a lot of hue and cry around the revised Property Taxes which had not changed since 1992. This is 32 years.
Keep in mind that the value of Nu 100 in 2012 is worth Nu 56.7 in November 2023 according to the National Statistical Bureau (NSB) which is the value of money almost halving in around 11 years.
In these 32 years Bhutan has seen unprecedented prosperity, rise in living standards and a lot of wealth creation.
In 2008 land in Mothithang could be had for Nu 300,000 a decimal and now it is around Nu 2.5 mn a decimal which is an 800% increase in value in 15 years.
Let us be honest with ourselves. We are shocked by the property taxes firstly because we paid virtually nothing for the last 32 years and secondly, we have a Kidu mindset to not pay for anything and get everything for free.
This Kidu mindset is prevalent even among the rich and well off.
We want to see great changes in Bhutan but no nation can change unless the mindset of its citizens changes.
As an official mentioned, there is a great deal of hypocrisy among us. On one hand, we say the PAVA rate is way below the market rate for compensation when the government takes over private land, and in the next breath we complain saying the PAVA rate is too high when a 0.1% property tax is imposed on the same PAVA rate.
We want an improvement in service delivery but we do not want to pay for it. We are worried about the national debt but we do not want to do our part, and we complain about an increasing gap between the rich and poor and yet complain when a progressive and fair tax comes in.
It is time we face reality and change our mindset otherwise the other option is to go the Sri Lanka way.
Each citizen contributes to the revenues of the State a portion of his property in order that his tenure of the rest may be secure._Montesquieu