The Bhutan We Think We Know

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Updates: What's New Each Month, and What We Corrected

What’s new

Everything published on the site, month by month — newest first.

October 2026 · Project 108, yojay and the Buddhist masters

41 new pages

September 2026 · The Missing Generation: emigration and the diaspora

18 new pages

August 2026 · The Water Economy: hydropower

12 new pages

July 2026 · The currency, the peg and Bitcoin

18 new pages

May 2026 · Launch: the book and the paradox catalogue

138 new pages

The site opened with the book Right Then, Wrong Now and the paradox catalogue, alongside 51 questions answered, 25 charts, 21 infographics, 9 topic hubs and 32 glossary entries.

Corrections and clarifications

We correct in the open. When a figure changes after publication — because a primary source has since appeared, a number has been checked back against the original, or a framing needed sharpening — it is recorded here, with the source that settled it. Spotted something yourself? See Corrections.

October 2026

The proposed electricity tariff (Paradox #56). The opening line of Doubled for the Nation, Untouched for the Few said the 2026 tariff revision more than doubled household prices. It has not: the Bhutan Power Corporation’s application proposed raising the Low Voltage rate from Nu 2.66 to Nu 5.73 per unit, the application was sent back to the Electricity Regulatory Authority on affordability grounds, and the current rate remains in force. The paradox’s body already said so; its opening line and summary now say would, matching it. (Corrected 6 October 2026.)

What Project 108 is. The FAQ What is Project 108?, the glossary entry and the Crown Strategic Vision topic page described it as a Royal framework for commissioning 108 institutions, initiatives and infrastructure projects over two decades, and one infographic repeated that framing. That was wrong. Project 108 is the raising of 108 Jangchub Chortens, each about fifteen metres tall and 108 metres apart, along the Mau Chhu in Gelephu Mindfulness City, all in a single day on 1 November 2026 — as reported by Kuensel, BBS and Daily Bhutan since its announcement on 21 February 2026. The FAQ, the glossary entry and the topic page are rewritten and the infographic’s sentence corrected; the full account is in Project 108: The Plan and the Vision.

May 2026

The proposed electricity tariff. The Low Voltage rate proposed in the Bhutan Power Corporation’s 2025–2028 tariff application is an unsubsidised Nu 5.73 per unit — roughly +115% over the current Nu 2.66. The application has been referred back to the Electricity Regulatory Authority on affordability grounds; no final determination has been issued, and the current Nu 2.66 rate remains in force. Earlier wording on these pages put the proposed figure at Nu 5.63 (+112%); it was corrected against the application itself. (Paradoxes #56 and #64.)

Bhutanese living abroad. The total is given throughout as approximately 77,000 — close to one in ten citizens — reconciled across census migration data, Australian Bureau of Statistics figures, embassy-registration counts, and second-country visa data. The strictly registered count is lower, near 43,000. (Paradox #48.)

Audit irregularities. The FY 2024–25 figure is led by its concentration: roughly 78 percent of the total sits in a single mega-project, Punatsangchhu-II hydropower. Set that one item aside and the underlying trend is about five times its 2017 level, not twenty-five. Bhutan remains the least-corrupt country in South Asia. (Paradox #40.)

Two civil-service clarifications. The 2023 figure of 5,202 separations is the calendar-year count; the fiscal-year 2022–23 count is about 4,822 — the gap is the reporting window, not a contradiction. And the “21×” figure for civil-service aspiration is a relative odds ratio, not an absolute unemployment rate. (Paradoxes #20 and #46.)