Index of Happiness? Bhutan's New Leader Prefers More Concrete Goals Kuni Takahashi for The New York Times "The bottom line is that we have to work harder," said Tshering Tobgay, Bhutan's newly elected prime minister. We need to grow our own food, build our own homes. THIMPHU, Bhutan - "I think I can take President Obama one on one in basketball," Bhutan's newly elected prime minister said recently in an interview. I've got some special moves. The prime minister, Tshering Tobgay, is four inches shorter than Mr. Obama, so beating the American president in hoops might be a stretch. But after his surprise election this summer, almost no one in South Asia doubts that he has special moves. And he is renowned for his grit. Four years ago while competing in the first Tour of the Dragon, billed as the most difficult one-day mountain bike race in the world, he fell and broke his jaw after riding 42 miles. In searing pain, he got up and rode the rest of the race - 124 more miles. Mr. Tobgay, 48, was one of just two opposition members chosen by voters in Bhutan's first parliamentary elections, in 2008, and few gave him better than even odds at toppling the governing Bhutan Peace and Prosperity Party in the country's second set of national elections in July. Several factors went his way, including a currency crisis last year and threats from India just before the vote to withdraw vital financial support. But many analysts credit Mr. Tobgay with running an unusually disciplined campaign that included a long manifesto of specific promises. His People's Democratic Party won 32 of 47 seats, a resounding victory. The son of a soldier, Mr. Tobgay was sent to boarding school near Darjeeling, India, when he was 5. After graduating from high school, he won a government scholarship to attend the University of Pittsburgh, where he earned a degree in mechanical engineering. In 1991, he became a civil servant in Bhutan's education department, but left government service in 2007 to dive into politics. He is married and has two children. Now, he is overseeing a country of 725,000 people in the midst of one of the most thorough transformations in the world. Bhutan's feudal system continued until 1953, and its first road was built in 1962. "In the last few years, we have transformed beyond recognition - politically, economically and socially," Mr. Tobgay said. HE has largely abandoned the country's signature gross national happiness measure, its alternative to gross national product. Introduced in 1972 by King Jigme Singye Wangchuck, gross national happiness was seen as a way to balance the country's gradual embrace of modernity with an effort to preserve its traditions. Mr. Tobgay's predecessor, Jigme Thinley, had traveled the world promoting the happiness measure, making him a popular figure among Western academics and literati but less so among his constituents. Mr. Tobgay's catalog of modest promises during the election campaign included a motorized rototiller for every village and a utility vehicle for each district. Happiness was not on his list. "Rather than talking about happiness, we want to work on reducing the obstacles to happiness," he said. Those obstacles remain substantial, including a growing national debt and high unemployment. Bhutan's infrastructure, still woefully inadequate, has been built almost entirely by Indian companies and laborers. At first, Bhutan relied on Indians because few Bhutanese possessed the necessary skills. Now, a more educated and urbanized younger generation is refusing construction work as beneath it. "The bottom line is that we have to work harder," Mr. Tobgay said. He lamented that so many of Bhutan's youths are voluntarily unemployed, saying, "If we can restructure the construction sector to make it more attractive, that should provide a lot of jobs." The country's major industries are hydroelectric power, which it exports to India, and tourism. While most of the population is still involved in subsistence farming, a growing number of people are abandoning their traditional single-family mud-and-wood homes in isolated villages and moving to the country's towns and cities. "Who wants to do subsistence farming and get up at 4 in the morning and carry water if you don't have to?" asked Paljor Dorji, a member of the royal family and a longtime close adviser to the former king. Once you educate the people, nobody is going to live the same miserable life their parents did. Between 2005 and 2012, more than 1,300 apartment buildings were built in Bhutan's capital, Thimphu, and they now house nearly two-thirds of the city's 116,000 residents.