Small state, big example: Covid pandemic management in Bhutan

Abstract

In a world with drastic and exacerbating inequalities where health and well-being have been supplanted by wealth and hell being, the pandemic is a complex global occurrence that affected different subsets of populations with variable intensity within and across national borders. The pandemic and the responses to it must force us yet again to rethink the most fundamental aspects of security and power. As many critical scholars have often argued, human security is not assured by increased defence budgets, and the idea of big powers and strong states mean little if that size and strength cannot translate into the well-being of the population. In this article, I reflect upon the reasons why a country like Bhutan has been able to successfully manage the pandemic in a way that many larger and wealthier nations have not. I have been substantively involved in studying Bhutan for over a decade and a half, having worked on analysing its transition to democracy and democratic consolidation between 2008 and 2018, and currently leading my research project on conceptualising an understanding of biodemocracy using Bhutan as an exemplar, which examines the political, developmental, and ecological dimensions of policymaking in this country. Bhutan is a small Himalayan country with significant resource constraints (a low-income country) and yet it did not lose a single person to the pandemic in 2020. As of late March 2021, there has been one Covid-related death in Bhutan of a 34-year-old man with chronic liver disease and renal failure, who tested positive for COVID-19 and died at a hospital in the capital Thimphu (“Bhutan reports,” 2021). While pandemic profiteering affects wealthy advanced democracies like the UK where allegations emerged of cronyism in the awarding of contracts and the lockdown policies were often shambolic, in Bhutan, from the very outset, the head of state, the government, the bureaucracy, and the citizenry came together to swiftly and substantively mitigate the public health crisis (see Ongmo and Parikh 2020). The first Covid patient in Bhutan in March 2020 was an American tourist, whose presentation was atypical, yet the dedicated procedures and swift decisionmaking meant that he was identified and treated. In addition, those attending to him were isolated and monitored, and provided with counselling for trauma afterwards (for details, see LeVine et al. 2020). Contact tracing in Bhutan has been rigorous and efficient. At a very early stage, on March 22nd, Bhutan instituted travel restrictions to prevent foreign import, and managed to avoid community transmission until very late in 2020. Travel facilities were arranged for those Bhutanese who were abroad and wished to return to the country. Anyone coming into the country was required to undergo tests and extended mandatory quarantine (21 instead of the usual 14 days) at designated hotels; this was paid for by the government. Until September 2020 (after which public cost sharing was introduced), the government had spent about Nu 248.27 million on hotels that served as quarantine facilities for 14,667 people (“Sharing Cost,” 2020). Bhutan’s pandemic challenge was not miniscule; it borders two of the most populous countries in the world, India and China, affected severely by the pandemic. It has a significant volume of trade with its transit state India and apart