On September 22, Bhutan’s Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay asked foreign investors at the United Nations General Assembly to back the Gelephu Mindfulness City, calling himself “a salesman” for a project planned across southern land where Nepali-speaking families were expelled in the early 1990s.
The development brings together ecological preservation, Buddhist values, technology, finance and international investment. It promises economic growth, environmental stewardship and human well-being. But the land carries unresolved property claims, and current residents still face questions about compensation, relocation, homes and livelihoods.
Investment on contested land
The Gelephu Mindfulness City is taking shape in an area where former residents say the state took their homes, farmland and other property before forcing them out. Hari Prashad Adhikari, a former National Assembly member from the affected area who now lives in Colorado, valued his family’s lost property, business assets and foregone income at 29.4 million Bhutanese ngultrum in 1990 prices. Using the IMF’s projected 2026 inflation rate, the article put that figure at roughly 204 million ngultrum, or about $2.1 million at current exchange rates.
Bhanu Adhikari, 76, said he spent two years in prison after authorities accused him of violence against the government following protests in the early 1990s. He said corrupt officials forged documents while he was away and took his family’s seven acres of fertile land and other property for 51,000 ngultrum, roughly $500.
“If foreign investors are involved in the GMC project, we will try to seek legal counsel to hold them accountable and pursue compensation for the land the Bhutanese government looted from us,” Bhanu Adhikari said. His mother-in-law, Beni Maya Rai, died in Adelaide in 2025 at age 91, still wishing to return to her ancestral land.
Investors are being asked to weigh industries, tax incentives and expected returns against the project’s historical and institutional context. The IMF has identified fiscal and financial risks: GMC’s independent tax regime could affect Bhutan’s national tax base, and the legal relationship between the city and the rest of the country still needs clarification on labor, goods and capital mobility.
Displacement and development
In February 1989, Bhutan removed Nepali from southern schools under its “one nation, one people” policy. Human Rights Watch reported that ethnic Nepalis saw “Bhutanization” measures as attacks on their cultural identity, helping fuel mass demonstrations. Bhutan’s government then began forcing Nepali-speaking people out of the country.
In 1997, the United Nations’ refugee agency reported about 92,000 Bhutanese refugees in seven camps in Nepal, with another 15,000 outside the camps. By 2015, more than 100,000 Bhutanese refugees had resettled in eight Western countries, the vast majority in the United States. Nepali still isn’t taught in southern Bhutan’s schools.
Chet Nath Timsina was 20 when authorities coerced him and his family into signing a “voluntary migration form” and evicted them. He resettled in New York in 2009 and watched half of Tobgay’s address. “I saw him just talk about GMC, which I feel is another way to disturb the living places of the Nepali-speaking population in Bhutan,” he said.
Tilak Rai, chairperson of the Bhutanese Refugee Representative Repatriation Committee, spoke from the Beldangi refugee camp in Jhapa, Nepal, where close to 7,000 refugees still await a durable solution. He said affected residents had been denied proper compensation and silenced by fear of retribution. “The BRRRC appeals to the international community to prevent Bhutan from turning seized ancestral land into a high-tech façade designed to erase our history,” Rai said.
Residents face relocation
Authorities are leveling land, signing corporate partnership agreements and beginning construction in the affected area. Gelephu International Airport in Samtenling, Sarpang, will affect 552 landowners across roughly 1,400 acres. Authorities have offered replacement land, tokenization or monetary compensation; residents have questioned land fragmentation, the loss of land across generations and whether they can remain in Sarpang.
During an earlier airport expansion, 11 landowners appealed their replacement-land allocations, saying they weren’t satisfied with the substitute plots. Authorities have invited proposals for a 256-unit housing project intended mainly for relocated families. The airport is moving toward its 2029 target, while residents still face unresolved questions about compensation and livelihoods.
Bhutan’s economy has long relied heavily on hydropower and tourism. The International Monetary Fund reported youth unemployment at 17.8 percent in the third quarter of 2025 and identified outward emigration as a continuing structural concern. The IMF has warned Bhutan needs to expand beyond hydropower and low-productivity sectors to create private-sector jobs and retain young workers. GMC is meant in part to attract investment and create opportunities that could encourage young Bhutanese to stay or return.
Tobgay called for “judicial independence” for GMC during his U.N. speech. The article also cited concerns raised by international human rights organizations and U.N. experts over political prisoners, arbitrary detention, unfair trials and torture, alongside concerns about criminal charges, fines and jail terms under strict defamation and national security laws. The project’s development proposals sit beside those unresolved claims and rights concerns.