Sarpang

Sarpang is becoming Bhutan's Singapore—or at least attempting to. On December 17, 2023, King Jigme Khesar announced the Gelephu Mindfulness City (GeSAR), a 2,500 square kilometer special administrative region with its own laws covering territory three times Singapore's size. The town of Gelephu, population 9,858, sits directly on the border with Assam, one of three major crossing points between Bhutan and India. Every Thursday, residents cross into Dadgiri-Hatisar market in India's Bodoland Territorial Region—informal commerce that formal infrastructure now seeks to capture at scale. The 1972 Trade, Commerce and Transit Agreement established duty-free border trade that made Gelephu viable; the 2023 announcement attempts to transform viability into significance. A proposed 58-kilometer rail link to Kokrajhar in Assam would create Bhutan's first railway connection, potentially repositioning the kingdom as a transit corridor between South and Southeast Asia. Former Prime Minister Lotay Tshering was appointed Governor of GeSAR, signaling the seriousness of investment. The district's ethnic diversity—Sarpang hosts multiple communities uncommon elsewhere in Bhutan—may ease the cosmopolitan transformation required for a special economic zone. By 2026, Gelephu represents Bhutan's largest economic gamble: either the infrastructure and investment materialize to create a genuine regional hub, or the Mindfulness City remains another ambitious plan defeated by the Himalayan barriers that have always defined Bhutanese isolation.