The Bhutanese Leading the way.
There is no doubt that one of the biggest economic and social challenges facing Bhutan is gainfully employing thousands of its educated and semi-educated youth coming off colleges, schools, technical institutes and etc.
Bhutan’s unemployment problem is not only an economic and social challenge but in fact its causes are both economic and social.
Bhutan’s relatively small economy and under developed private sector have ensured that only the government and government corporations are financially attractive enough. Except for a few exceptions the private sector generally struggles to match the pay and benefits of government jobs.
The inability of the Bhutanese economy to produce jobs is also related to other issues like balance of payment, rupee shortage etc.
On the social side the hierarchical and status conscious nature of Bhutanese society gives an air of prestige and privilege to government jobs that are not assigned to other professional categories.
Still under the social aspect, right from homes, Bhutanese youth are mollycoddled by their parents and not taught to be self reliant or think creatively. While youngsters in the West barely of their teens work and make pocket money for themselves our youth depend on their parents of everything.
Our system of education needs to be improved. The focus in the West is on creating well educated and rounded youth who are flexible and self reliant enough to adapt to the real world. Our education system produces youngsters who are barely good at their theory and in many cases not good at dealing with or adjusting to the real world with real world skills.
At the same time, be it this government or the former one, the one liner that youth should be ready to do any jobs is inherently unfair. A graduate overnight cannot become a construction laborer. The government should create the right environment so that jobs and entrepreneurs can be created.
“Your success in the job market has nothing to do with the job market itself – instead it has everything to do with you.”
Simon Gray