Bhutan grapples with void left by Australia-bound public servants

4 comments

1. Pay them more.
   This goes for everything from government work to your local 7-11.
   You want to retain staff. Raise wages.

2. SS: In this revealing dispatch for *Nikkei Asia* (19 July 2025), Phuntsho Wangdi captures the mounting crisis in Bhutan as the kingdom reels from a mass exodus of civil servants and professionals, mostly to Australia. With over 20,000 Bhutanese, many highly educated, having left between 2022 and 2024, the country’s fragile public services are buckling.

   Schools are losing teachers by the dozens, hospitals are running dangerously understaffed, and the government is scrambling to plug the leaks with contract hires, shortened training periods, and foreign workers from India and Bangladesh. Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay has pitched rapid economic development and the Gelephu Mindfulness City project as solutions, but the immediate toll is hard to ignore: Bhutan is hemorrhaging talent faster than it can rebuild, and the situation is now severe enough that retired teachers and doctors are being coaxed back with better pay, while fresh grads are rushed into posts once held by seasoned professionals.

   Overlay this with the looming threat of U.S. visa restrictions, mentioned toward the end of Wangdi’s piece, and the mood among young Bhutanese is likely to sour further. If Washington tightens the screws, ostensibly over visa overstays, it will strike at the heart of what remains a lifeline for Bhutan’s educated youth: the dream of working or studying in the United States. And when that door slams shut, the anger isn’t going to be aimed at Washington. It’ll turn toward Thimphu and, inevitably, India.

   As I’ve [said before](https://www.reddit.com/r/GeopoliticsIndia/comments/1jd5aa1/comment/mi7r6ln/), a lot of Bhutanese youth already see India as the reason they’re stuck diplomatically and economically in second gear. They blame their own government for bending too easily to Delhi’s line and shutting off pathways to broader global engagement. This new visa cliff would just confirm what many already feel — that their futures are being negotiated away by people with one eye on South Block and the other stuck in the 20th century.

3. who wants to live in a thin-air, remote, land-locked colony

4. A tragic story for Bhutan, but brain drains are a systemic challenge with no easy solution. Just one way that the economic winners win more and the economic losers lose more.

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