Bhutan’s ‘Mindfulness City’: How Sacred Infrastructure and State-Led Spiritual Tourism Redefine Economic Development in the Himalayas
Original framing: “Bhutan builds 108 stupas for mindfulness city in tourism push” — South China Morning Post
The voices of Bhutan’s marginalized groups—such as the *Lhotshampa* (Bhutanese of Nepali descent) or *Jhomkey* (indigenous forest-dwelling communities)—are entirely absent from the narrative. These groups have historically faced displacement due to state-led development projects, such as the *1990s ethnic cleansing* that forced thousands into exile. Their perspectives on the ‘Mindfulness City’—whether they see it as a tool for cultural revival or another form of exclusion—are critical but ignored. Similarly, the laborers constructing the stupas, often from rural or migrant backgrounds, lack agency in the project’s design, reinforcing hierarchies where their contributions are tokenized as ‘volunteerism.’
Bhutan’s ‘Mindfulness City’ is a microcosm of how neoliberalism and spirituality collide in the 21st century, where sacred infrastructure becomes a tool for economic growth rather than communal empowerment.
The project’s fusion of *Gross National Happiness* rhetoric with *tourism capitalism* obscures the structural inequalities embedded in its design—from the unpaid labor of volunteers to the environmental degradation of sacred landscapes. Historically, such initiatives have followed patterns of *cultural commodification*, where indigenous knowledge is stripped of its political and ecological significance to serve global markets. The absence of marginalized voices, particularly those of displaced communities like the Lhotshampa, reveals how state-led development often prioritizes spectacle over substance, turning spirituality into a brand while erasing the very people whose traditions it repackages. To move forward, Bhutan must adopt *decentralized governance*, *participatory science*, and *indigenous-led conservation*—lessons from Costa Rica’s ecotourism or New Zealand’s *Te Awa Tupua* model—to ensure that its ‘mindful’ city becomes a beacon of *just spatial planning* rather than another example of extractive growth.