Episode 129: South Asia Outlook 2022 - Bhutan

South Asia Chat

Bhutan, a Himalayan kingdom of nearly 800,000 people, has proved its resiliency amidst COVID-19’s ravages. Along with doubling its trade output with India over the last half decade, Bhutan oversaw what UNICEF hailed as 'arguably the fastest vaccination campaign to be executed during the pandemic'. At the same time, it has increased connectivity with India and boosted its levels of hydropower production. In this episode, John Vater spoke to Dil Rahut, Senior Research Fellow/Economist at the Asian Development Bank Institute, about the pandemic and climate change's effects on Bhutan’s most critical economic sectors. They discussed, among other things, Bhutan’s prospects for regional cross-border power cooperation, the push for sustainability as well as the evolving social profile of its globalising youth.