Clik here to view.
Will Of Karma
I have said this again and again and again – that in life nothing happens by accident. If anything – things happen because of Karma. If Karma wills it, it can engineer a calamity in one corner of the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Tiru’s Morphology
We must be among the only human race who choose to call our paper currency: Ngultrum/Ngueltang or, in plain English, Silver Coin. For a while I attempted to find out how such a bizarre thing could have...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The World’s Most Inhospitable International Airport
I have tended to make fun about our claim that we are unique. Truth be told, as I grow older and wiser, I am beginning to think that I may have been wrong all my life – I think we are indeed a unique...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Welcoming the Winds of Change
As of this post, I have a total of 75 posts related to our hydroelectric power projects. And I am not embarrassed or ashamed that 99.99% of those posts are negative posts - posts that unabashedly...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Goongtong, Satong, Yuetong
I cannot remember how I ended up being a Member of the UNDP’s SENetwork but already by 2006 - that is roughly 18 years back - I was called upon by the organization to write an article on how the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A Funeral for Bhutanese Tourism
The following appeared in Bhutan's national newspaper, the KUENSEL, on their weekend issue of June 29, 2024. I am posting it here once again - for my international readers.Exactly half a century back,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Burdensome Beasts
Social, cultural and religious traditions and practices are NOT God given – they are essentially necessitated or influenced by compulsions imposed by nature, climate, geography, and a number of other...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Lost and Confused
Mr. Michael Rutland OBE, NOM (Gold), has lived in Bhutan for the past 53 years. He has been a witness to most of Bhutan’s many stages of development and change – our idyllic seventies, the idealistic...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Subsidizing The Wings Of The Dragon
The following is the state of affairs at the Druk Air’s ticketing counter in Thimphu yesterday: at the peak business hour of 11:08AM, of the ten service counters, only two of them are occupied. I can...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Hollow Intergenerational Promises
Successive governments over the years have admitted that the private sector is the engine of growth and development. Sadly, the intergenerational promise of support for the private sector has remained...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Lessons From An Uncommon Monk
Sometimes I wonder if I am doing any good at all - most of what I write tend to be critical - giving the impression that there is nothing quite right about Bhutan and the Bhutanese people. This is...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Scandal In The Holiest Of Places
I heard it from a friend nearly a week back …. I was told that it was being kept under wraps for the sheer shamefulness of it - but I was surprised to read about it on the front page of the Kuensel’s...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Who Will Care For The Birds?
By late evening of last Saturday (10.08.2024), the risk of the flooding river that runs through Dechencholing had passed and I was back to my place of domicile, from the hill top to which I had...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Some of Bhutan's Beautiful Foods
One day I am going to photograph the raw foods of Bhutan - not as an act of conservation - but for their physical appeal and enthralling variety. Hopefully I will live long enough to be able to cover...
View ArticleClik here to view.
On Again, Off Again
This is becoming a habit with the PDP government.During March of 2012, the DPT government had imposed a ban on import of vehicles - for obvious reasons.Two years later, the PDP government lifted the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
PHP-I Dam Construction: Human Beings May Never Best Nature
After being in the works for nearly 16 years and having gone through close to 3 dozen Technical Committee Meetings to determine the tenability of the project, and with a humungous cost overrun...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Druk Yuel: A Country Still Worth Fighting For
In my capacity as the Head of Export Section of the Export Division, Ministry of Trade, Industries and Forests, I had to be posted in Kolkata, India. As a landlocked country without access to our own...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Misconceptions, Dogmas and Flogging The Dead Horse
Thank God! it seems like the mainstream media in the country is finally waking up to the despair that Bhutan’s tourism industry is currently going through. That said, I suspect that they are still not...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Of Trees and Water
In recent times, the media – in particular the government mouth pieces: Kuensel and BBS– have tended to go gung-ho over the twin endeavors launched by the Bhutan Ecological Society (BES) and the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
In Fulfilment Of A Citizen’s Duty
Hi ………..,As much as I feel uncomfortable to touch on this subject, I believe that there is no point in pussy-footing around the issue – so I will get on with it promptly.It is with regard to the...
View Article