The Bhutanese Leading the way.
After the announcement of the Gelephu Mindfulness City there has been a rash of questions demanding immediate answers over land acquisition, investors, infrastructure details and more.
There is either extreme optimism on one side or fearful predictions on the other side.
It is natural that a project of such magnitude attracts so many questions, however, people also have to be realistic.
In fact, it is good that there are no set answers in stone and a ready finalized plan on the table with a list of set projects, set dates and investors.
It is good that the project is making a modest start and gauging the international reaction to it.
It is also good that things are at an early stage which means the project can still be flexible to any changes.
The fact that there are no detailed answers is a good sign as it shows that the answers will be found after test or trial.
In all this panic, there are those who are seeking to profit of it and these are brokers and land speculators. They want people to panic and sell their lands cheap with internal agreements as official transaction is frozen.
Even if the transaction is unfrozen people should wait for some years before deciding to sell as the true value of the land will only be known then when infrastructure comes up.
There are those who are skeptical about the project but Gelephu has so much potential that even if it is given an international airport and a rail link, it will still boom.
The real essence of the Gelephu project is marrying the high brand value of Bhutan with the practical and useable plains of Gelephu within the context of a Special Administrative Zone with sovereign privileges to take advantage of the international market.
If Bhutan has to develop then it needs to change its import and consumption driven economy to a productive and export driven one. More farm roads is not the long-term solution to our problems.
We have to take our economy to the next level and to do that a project of this size and focus is the need of the hour.
We are outside our comfort zone and it is important to be so to risk and achieve big things. There is no plan B.
You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.
R. Buckminster Fuller