In the current political scenario, it is interesting to compare Bhutan and Nepal.

As the maoist revolution is yearning bitter fruits much to the dismay of the hopeful population, many people from the Panchayet era are reminescing the Royal rule. While many are reminescing those days, the naysayers are abound trying to cut any remaining signs of monarchy, to push the country into a democratic platform where the majority determines the fate of the nation.

Few scholars all over the world have already researched that democracy is not feasible in an impoverished country where education is only available to a priviledged few. This research is proving to be true in the himalayan landscape, with every day spinning the future of the entire country into a downward spiral black hole.

At this point, it might make sense to take a look at Bhutan which has been ruled by a monarch just like Nepal about a decade ago. In Bhutan, instead of gross domestic product, they measure the gross domestic happiness and they probably score well on it.

"Few scholars all over the world have already researched that democracy is not feasible in an impoverished country.."

Few people will say anything; I'd still like to see a proof for this.

As for Bhutan and Nepal, sure if you measure by GDH (happiness) then Bhutan might beat every other nation, but from sovereignity stand point, Bhutan is a helpless nation. Did you know, Bhutan has to export electricity to India while her own citizens have to face power outages like us? We might have an implicit influence from India, Bhutan has an explicit one.

Democracy will come with problems, but is the only way to get there.

Yes they measure the gross domestic happiness. How did they achieve that? By kicking out 180,000 ethnic Nepalis and GOT AWAY WITH IT!

I don't understand these flawed arguments for Monarchy. These are akin to psychological paradox : Argument from ignorance. These arguments normally always start with "All the politicians are all bad, hence the king should be good" HAHA! If you want monarchy, please, by all means, support it. Like people have already reiterated hundreds of times, King is a free man now. If he wishes, he can get a ticket to one of the parties, or rather form his own party. If he's so sure of Nepalis backing him and he can cure Nepal, i don't see any hindrance of him being elected.

"Few scholars all over the world have already researched that democracy is not feasible in an impoverished country where education is only available to a priviledged few. This research is proving to be true in the himalayan landscape, with every day spinning the future of the entire country into a downward spiral black hole."

--I would like to read some of these articles, or do you mean reports of NGOs, INGOs or better yet, OP-EDs in our Newspapers.

When there is a hue and cry about  indians gaining citizenship illegally in Nepal, but we have big issues when Bhutan kicks out illegal Nepalis.

Lot of people mistake democracy for the right to vote. but democracy is not just that! Do you really think we have democracy right now?

Think again, because democracy needs the following 4 elements:

1. System for choosing and replacing govt in free and fair elections
2. Ability of citizens to participate in politics and civics life
3. Protection of human rights of all citizens
4. Rule of law that applies equally to all citizens.

It is not a democracy till all elements are set. The fear is that they may never be set which means it's going to be worse than any monarchy.



here are some articles regarding democracy
http://cddrl.stanford.edu/publications/is_democracy_good_for_the_poor/
http://phys.org/news80503958.html
http://www.livescience.com/18706-people-smart-democracy.html
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0465016154/metafilter-20/ref=nosim/

 It is so true so many people mistake democracy to right to vote. We got part of right to vote, but the leaders who stand in electrion are unable to represent sentiments of the mass. Apart from that security situation is far worse and rule of law is still joke. It was joke for royal family during monarchy now it is made joke by scumbag politicians.

The whole idea of accountability is non existence. The idea of "I can get away with this" is rampant and has made into minds of people. WIth exertion of force and touch of right people, I can get what i want is kind of mentality has breed among the youth now.

Bhutan monarch is under control of indian government. Nepal monarch was not. so they abolished it giving it a name democracy. After democracy, India is controlling Nepal which would have been impossible during monarchy. These politicians sold our land to India soon after democracy.

Little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

Bhutan King submited himself and the country to India. India has full control of its water resources and electricity generated from there. Even though india takes 80% of the energy produced and water from Bhutan the remaining 20% revenue is enough for small population of Bhutan to leave Nepal far behind in prosperity. Wang Chuk family is lot more smarter than Shah Bansa....they knew they could not survive without India blessing so submitted to them right away than cause an issue. Similar to what Rana in Nepal submitted to Britishers without much hassel. With that money Wang Chuk has become more popular than ever in his dukpa community. With India's blessing Wang Chuk is also able to throw that many Nepalese out of the country without any international coverage.

It is indeed dangerous to have little knowledge.

I'm not sure if Bhutan is a good comparision.

Lack of water, lack of electricity, lack of opportunity, lack of healthcare, lack of education, lack of legal process, lack of human rights, nepal bands, having to deal with 601 kings and their families versushaving  to deal with one king who is at least educated.

Just like radical muslims fanatics believe they will be martyrs and find their god and virgins if they blow themselves up, Nepalese fanatics of democracy believe that getting rid of monarchy is going to be the end of all troubles. They want nothing to do with it, even if it means destructions of all social, political and economical infrastructures.

If there were other viable options then I would be all for it. But unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any options.

Seriously thinking about it, wouldn't nepal be better off being under india's umbrella that india's economic growth would surely touch nepal too in some way rather than this chaos everyday. And off course in india leaders are held much more accountable than in nepal right now. What are we really gaining by staying free?? Most of the intectual brains have already deserted the country to get citizenships in other countries,,and most of those people left there know nothing better than dirty politics..Might as well be a part of the bigger economy. We might feel bad in the beginning,,but after 100 years who is really going to care that Nepal existed 100 years ago. Of course baise and chaubises must have felt when their nations were added to the mainland of nepal a few hundered years ago..but who feels bad about it now?

Kiddo,

Bhutan is shit 'cos the king and his cohorts introduced a sham of a democracy, and the rest of the world was too busy lapping up the transition, even though the transition was fake (which constitution in the world says you can throw out monarchy by a 2/3rd majority? You guessed it right - Bhutan!). In this regard, I would say Nepal is ahead by a million miles.

But what I disagree with you is, Bhutan does not have power outages. PERIOD. I don't know where you get that kind of information.
Now, don't get me wrong. I did not say all areas in that weird country have electricity. If i said that, I would be lying. Because wiring up the rural areas using expensive transmission lines was deemed uneconomical, they have local alternatives - small-scale hydropower stations, scattered all over. And they function as planned. In fact less than 7% of current power production levels is enough to cover Bhutan's entire electricity needs, but the cost of transmission lines would render its coffers dry, so it gave up the impractical idea of transporting electricity to its own masses.

Remember, nothing in Nepal functions as planned. That is where we differ. We fail to execute our plans to perfection. Bhutanese execute plans immaculately (example, look how neatly they kicked out its own citizens of nepali-ethnicity).

Small plants cater to cluster of homes. But not all areas have these systems. But that is not the same as having a power grid that has no flowing electricity (as in Nepal). 

There are lot of other good things that will never ever happen in Nepal, cos we are different people. And that is where lot of goodies end in that country.

No factories, no big-plants to hire people, no big education system, few universities.

It exports power to India, something Nepal can only dream about, even as our rivers plunder the plains and water goes to waste. You can argue that is shit again (why export when your masses have no electricity, but lot of rice from our Terai goes to India, why not send it to soodoor paschim where food scarcity makes headlines once a year, if not more?)

We are unique and nice in our own ways and we don't have to compare our advances with theirs. They are good in somethings, but we are excellent in others.

But on the electricity front, they are a zillion miles ahead of us.

And a few years back, the present king re-wrote the Indo-Bhutan treaty and scrubbed out all the British-era agreements that gave India an upperhand in interfaring with the Bhtuanese affairs. Our Girija babu and all others tried renewing our treaties with India and we all know what happened.

But with all that being said, we are who we are and we stand prouder, taller and accomplished. We are busy sowing the seeds of freedom and democracy, no matter how noisy and messy we look. Soon we will have a robust foundations of equality and democracy. Those in Bhtuan are welcome to dream!

ha ha, don't know about that, but I heard bhutanese women are overwhelmingly sexiest woman in the world, not by look but by their level of Oestrogen is so high that they would readily sex with anyone. Is that true??

 Just a rational thoughts.. Bhutan seems quite smart seeing Nepal's uprising and unstability, kicking out overly smart Nepalese ethnic people who are good at uprising and all those stuff, citing might be a big threat to their own peace and stability. Lucky them.

they didn't even look like bhutanese :D