Why do most of the contestants and winners of Miss Nepal beauty pageant belong to BCN (Bahun Chhetri Newar) trio of ethnicities?
My tentative answer is that they are the most privileged groups in the country, and the pageant is of the BCN, by the BCN, for the BCN!
My attempt at inspiring students at Dhaulagiri Boarding School in Jomsom, a village in my home District of Mustang, to pursue their dreams, to break out of the limitations and constraints imposed on them by Nepalese culture and society.
One of the crucial ways our aviation industry in Nepal is failing us and why.
Retirement celebrations were a big deal in the our village of Tangbe in Mustang District. But before 1990, even with a sizeable number of the people living in Pokhara, I don't think many held their celebrations in the city because of the shame they felt in being ethnic Tibetan. Things have changed a lot since then. Here's a glimpse into a celebration that I attended last month.
Relationships matter a great deal in Nepal, which, in and of itself, is not necessarily a bad thing. But when a relationship, like friendship, trumps doing the right thing to fend off attack on a freedom guaranteed by the constitution, and therefore on one of the very foundations on which democracy rests, something has gone horrible wrong somewhere.
With permission from the author, I am reproducing interesting parts from the book Unleashing Nepal by Sujeev Shakya. This is the first one and it's about how and who started the very peculiar and regressive chakari (ass-kissing) system in the country.