Word: nepal
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...Nepal may be most famous for its majestic Himalayan peaks, but much of the country is a vast stretch of plains, the terai, which have long been underdeveloped and largely ignored by the two powers on either side. No longer. India has just launched a plan to spend $361 million over the next several years on roads and rail links in the terai, announcing the grants just before Nepali President Ram Baran Yadav made his Feb. 15 official visit to New Delhi. China, meanwhile, recently increased its annual aid to Nepal by 50% to about $22 million...
...money is certainly welcome in Nepal, which has the lowest per capita income in South Asia. But the jockeying for influence between China and India may be undermining Nepal's fragile democracy, as the country's 24 political parties trade charges of being pawns of one or the other. Even a tiny royalist party, supporters of Nepal's deposed King Gyanendra, have gotten into the act, staging a rally in Kathmandu on Feb. 22 that shut down the capital for a day. Meanwhile, the parties are debating complex constitutional issues, including a proposed federal system of 14 ethnicity-based states...
India, for its part, maintains that it has always had a "very deep and vast relationship" with Nepal based on its shared cultural ties. Both countries have a majority Hindu population, and they share millions of cross-border migrant workers. But the character of that relationship has changed. India used to engage Nepal only at the highest levels, in meetings between bureaucrats, ministers and - until Gyanendra stepped down in 2008 - representatives of the King. That has changed dramatically over the last few years, since Nepal's Maoists came to power in a 2006 peace agreement that ended the monarchy, halted...
...China, where tiger-hunting was legal until 1977, is not the only country with a poor record of conservation. Tigers are also found in Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burma, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Nepal, Russia, Thailand and Vietnam - but only just. A century ago, there were an estimated 100,000 tigers in the wild in Asia. Now their numbers are at an "all time low" of 3,200, estimates the WWF, which in January warned the animals could be extinct in the wild by 2022 - the next Year of the Tiger - unless new efforts are made to save them...
...with cheerful readiness, spending freely on personal products and services - an industry that McKinsey forecasts will grow 9% annually over the next 15 years. Habib claims his empire grew 1,000% last year. There are now 155 Jawed Habib salons and 42 training academies across Asia, from Malaysia to Nepal and beyond. Like Tata's celebrated Nano, the $2,500 "people's car" launched last year, Habib's services are aimed at those who, perhaps for the first time, are enjoying a modicum of disposable income. In 2009 he launched Hair Espresso outlets, offering cuts for a little more than...