Word: bhutan
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Some of the strangest stamps over the past couple of decades have come from the tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, or, more accurately, from a Pittsburgh-based company that produces stamps for Bhutan. Bhutan was the first to release 3-D stamps (including a series of masks and one of the country's much-loved mushrooms), silk stamps, steel stamps, scented stamps (way back in 1973) and even a stamp that could be played on a tiny record player. Now come the world's first CD-ROM stamps, containing documentaries about the country and marking Bhutan's political shift from...
...Kingdom's Shame Your report on Bhutan's experiment with democracy paints an incomplete picture of the real political situation in Bhutan [April 7]. Democracy and the pursuit of "gross national happiness" sound ludicrous when nearly one-sixth of the population has been languishing as refugees in eastern Nepal for nearly two decades. The international community's indifference to the situation is a sign of how the ruling establishment has successfully diverted the world's attention. Adwait Silwal, Kathmandu...
Still, the Bhutanese remain uncomfortable with the changes under way and especially with one basic political act: mudslinging. Bhutan is a fiercely traditional place, polite and formal. Slow vehicles pull over to let faster cars go by. Etiquette dictates that you wear formal clothes in the presence of the national flag. The vast majority of the nation's 700,000 people subscribe to ex-King Jigme Singye's emphasis on something he calls gross national happiness, which measures not just wealth but how content, healthy and well educated people are, as well as the state of the environment and strength...
...parties that competed in the election have nearly identical platforms, but accusations (mild by Western standards) of influence-peddling and smear tactics have begun to enter the discourse, and people are worrying that Bhutan's close-knit society will suffer. Lyonpo Sonam Tobgye, Bhutan's Chief Justice and the main architect of the draft constitution, understands that there should be political debate but laments that differences are splitting villages and even families. "I don't think we should be enslaved to the nature of politics," he says...
...political change--the election was swept by the Druk Phuensum Tshogpa (DPT, or Virtuous Bhutan Party), which is seen as the more royalist of the two--comes as Bhutan grapples with its shifting place in the world. Squeezed between giants China and India, it has slowly opened up over the past few decades. There still may not be a single stoplight in the capital, Thimphu, but there are Internet cafés. Bhutan's royal leaders are prodding their tiny nation into the rushing stream of globalization. "The concerns of the nation are the same--everyone is aware of them," says...