Dilip Simeon's blog

DAMAK, Nepal — BEFORE my family was expelled from Bhutan, in 1992, I lived with my parents and seven siblings in the south of the country. This region is the most fertile part of that tiny kingdom perched between Tibet and India, a tapestry of mountains, plains and alpine meadows. Our house sat in a small village, on terraced land flourishing with maize, millet and buckwheat, a cardamom garden, beehives and enough pasture for cows, oxen, sheep and buffaloes. That was the only home we had known. After tightening its citizenship laws in the mid-1980s, Bhutan conducted a special census in the south and then proceeded to cast out  nearly 100,000 people  — about one-sixth of its population, nearly all of them of Nepalese origin, including my family. It declared us illegal immigrants, even though many of us went back several generations in Bhutan. It hasn’t let any of us move back. The enormity of this exodus, one of the world’s largest by proportion, given the country’s sm...

Almost half the mines/quarries operate near settlements and plantations or the highway Of the total 81 mines and quarries in operation across the country today, the royal audit authority of Bhutan (RAA) found 22 mines were located close to human settlement and agricultural land, while 17 stone quarries were located too close or just adjacent to highways.  Mining and quarrying activities, which were carried out close to human settlements, agricultural land and highways, have direct or indirect impacts on agricultural productivity, health, safety and livelihood in the community. This was reflected in the performance audit report on mining operations in Bhutan, which was released in August this year and will be tabled in the winter session of the parliament.  In a few cases, the RAA report said, private land and houses were found inside the mining area, such as in Chunaikhola dolomite mine and Haurikhola limestone mine in Samtse, and Kilikhar stone quarry in Mongar.  Th...