Tshering Tobgay is a Bhutanese politician, environmentalist, and cultural advocate who was the Prime Minister of Bhutan from July 2013 to August 2018.
23 Facts About Tshering Tobgay
2.
Tshering Tobgay's father was one of the first soldiers of the Royal Bhutan Army, while his mother participated in the construction of the first road connecting Bhutan to India.
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Tshering Tobgay attended secondary schooling at the Dr Graham's Homes School in Kalimpong, India, in the eastern Himalayas.
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In 1990, Tshering Tobgay received a Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering from the University of Pittsburgh's Swanson School of Engineering after obtaining a scholarship from the United Nations.
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Tshering Tobgay married Tashi Doma in 1998, and has two children.
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Tshering Tobgay is an avid cyclist and enjoys fitness, gym and yoga.
7.
Tshering Tobgay was a civil servant before he engaged in politics.
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Tshering Tobgay started his career in 1991 with the Technical and Vocational Education Section of the Education Division in Bhutan.
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Tshering Tobgay served from 2003 to 2007 in the Ministry of Labour and Human Resources as the director of the Human Resources department.
10.
Tshering Tobgay resigned from the Ministry of Labour in February 2007 and entered politics to serve his duties for the reigning king, who established democracy in 2008.
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Tshering Tobgay was a co-founder member of the People's Democratic Party and was responsible for establishing the Party as Bhutan's first registered political party.
12.
At the 2008 election, the PDP only obtained two seats, with Tshering Tobgay winning one of the seats.
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In 2009, the PDP's leader Sangay Ngedup resigned from his position, and Tshering Tobgay took over as the party's leader.
14.
Rather than simply promoting Gross National Happiness, Tshering Tobgay believes that the principles of GNH has to be implemented, and some of the important problems that need to be addressed are youth unemployment, corruption, and national debt.
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Human rights is an ideology of Tshering Tobgay he has not spoken publicly about LGBT rights in Bhutan, where homosexual acts were formerly illegal, since an anti-gay law was imposed by British colonialists.
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In 2015, Tshering Tobgay delivered a speech at Vibrant Gujarat, inviting leading corporates from across the globe to participate in business with Bhutan.
17.
At a 2015 TED talk titled TEDxThimphu, Tshering Tobgay spoke about happiness and how common the theme of happiness was in other Ted Talks, including by Nancy Etcoff, and Silver Donald Cameron.
18.
At a 2016 TED talk in Vancouver, Tshering Tobgay spoke about Bhutan's pledge to remain carbon neutral forever.
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Tshering Tobgay shared his country's mission to put happiness before economic growth, and set a world standard for environmental preservation.
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Tshering Tobgay spoke at the UN general assembly in 2017, resonating Bhutan's environmental achievements, and the need of the world to unite to save the environment.
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On 9 January 2019, Tshering Tobgay spoke at the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative on the first ten years of democracy in Bhutan.
22.
In September 2019, Tshering Tobgay spoke at TED concerning the impacts of global warming on the world's "Third Pole" - the Hindu Kush Himalaya region.
23.
Tshering Tobgay speaks to a report stating two-thirds of the glaciers could be gone by the end of the century; having impacts on over 2 billion people living in the region and further downstream.