Word: shah
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...course, damn rich." The future development of Nepal is heavily dependent upon America's riches, at present to the tune of an annual $11 million from the U.S. Agency for International Development alone. Since 1951, the United States has provided Nepal with well over $2 billion, but Shah remains highly critical of the uses that money has been put toward--in particular, of what he considers idealistic attempts to transform native institutions into prototypes of American ones. "Why should we give up our traditions to come up to some criteria which you have set for us?" he complains...
Such is also the claim of Khadga Bir Bikram Shah, editor of a major daily newspaper in Nepal--and brother-in-law of the Nepalese King. A former fellow of Harvard's Center for International Affairs, Shah this year returned home to southeast Asia during the most turbulent period in Nepal's recent past: for the first time in its history, the government of this tiny nation has temporarily released its oppressive clamp on public expression, permitting street demonstrations, political rallies and an uncensored press. In a recent interview, Shah examined Nepalese politics and reflected on his own role...
...Shah considers himself, first and foremost, a realist. He argues that advanced Western nations grant liberties which would threaten the stability of an impoverished Third World country like Nepal. With an annual income of $110 per capita and a literacy rate of 18 per cent, Nepal is undergoing development at an unprecedented, albeit glacial rate. The mountainous terrain--Nepal, home of Mounts Everest and Annapurna, is flanked entirely by the Himalayas--provides for poor communications, medical services and transportation of the agricultural goods produced by 90 per cent of the workforce. Shah denies that the mere infusion...
...Nepal is a democracy at least in name. Using the official state terminology, Shah calls it a "partiless democracy"--partiless because every political figure serves the King, a democracy because every citizen indirectly elects a local, regional and state-wide panchayat (council) representative. But in the constitution and in practice, the sole voice of authority is the King, the most revered of all national traditions, even more than the Hinduism professed by 90 per cent of the population...
Nepal's hereditary monarchy dates back to 1559, the year of King Drabya Shah's unification of a people already almost two millenia old. In the unbroken line of kings that has followed, His Majesty Birendra Shah in 1972 assumed the throne vacated by the death of his father Mahendra Shah, and his grandfather Tribhuvan Shan before him. Like his brother-in-law, King Birendra also attended Harvard, spending 1967-8 as a Quincy House student "taking a crash course in affairs of state," according to Shah...