This comes as no news to the Bhutanese. Although one of the poorest countries in the world, with a per capita income the World Bank estimates at $670, Bhutan is also, according to Business Week, the happiest country in Asia and the eighth happiest in the world. Some forty years ago, the grandfather of the current constitutional monarch, King Jigme Khesar Namgyel, began popularizing the concept of Gross National Happiness (GNH) to replace GNP as a gauge of national progress. Improbably, the concept has taken off.

Over the past decade, the 800,000-person kingdom has become a Mecca--or rather Shangri-la--for Western policymakers and development experts seeking enlightenment on the secrets of national happiness in an age of globalization. Amartya Sen and Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel laureates both, are converts. So too is Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and tireless campaigner for the Millennium Development Goals. On August 10-12 of last year, Sachs traveled to Thimpu to co-host with Prime Minister Jigme Thinley the Bhutan Conference on Happiness and Economic Development.

Two weeks later, Bhutan hit the big-time, when the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 65/309 (PDF) titled, "Happiness: Towards a Holistic Approach to Development." Endorsing the monarchy's basic point, the resolution conceded: "the gross domestic product indicator by nature was not designed to and does not adequately reflect the happiness and well-being in a country." More pointedly, it implied that public policies in many countries have encouraged "unsustainable patterns of production and consumption," at the expense of "a more inclusive, equitable and balanced approach to economic growth that promotes sustainable development, poverty eradication, happiness and well-being of peoples."

Monday's high-Level meeting on "Wellbeing and Happiness: Defining a New Economic Paradigm" raises the GNH concept to new heights. Prince Charles will address the event with a pre-recorded message, and both Sachs and Stiglitz will speak, alongside national and international dignitaries, including Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

The conversation will likely recapitulate themes from last year's conference, which called on governments to integrate a "happiness agenda" into public policy. Some proposed steps seem sensible, such as reducing extreme suffering and deprivation, focusing on education, empowering local communities, protecting ecological systems, and investing in mental health. But other proposals could prove more controversial, for instance building "awareness and avoidance of pure status goods," to say nothing of "controlling the media in a way that doesn't limit freedom but restrains the creation of artificial cravings." Such aspirations could lend themselves to caricature, as blatant assaults on the free market by misguided social engineers seeking to escape modernity.