Two other insights are worth considering. One concerns the attitude to time in Nepalese culture. Time is seen as a river, with no sense of past, present and future. It is circular rather than progressive. There is thus no idea of time as a 'commodity', no idea of 'wasting' time, little idea of being able to plan or control future time, little interest in past time or history. Bista's account reminds one of many discussions of the contrasts between protestant and catholic, 'modern' and 'medieval', 'agricultural' and 'Industrial' attitudes to time and work discipline. Certainly the relaxed lack of punctuality, the 'timelessness', which tourists often find so attractive, is less appealing when it is found within an attempt to introduce modern bureaucratic methods. The absence of a strong sense of the future, and the fatalism and lack of any sense of control, combine to make forward planning, saving, investment, weak. 'They squander whatever food, grain, or money they get at once without any consideration for the future. Being highly consumatory, no savings take place and there can be no investment. The society must remain dependent on foreign investment in the future....' Another important side-effect of Bahunism is on the relations between individual and group. Bista argues that under the pressure of western models, 'traditional group orientation' is being replaced by 'individualism'. But it Is not that individualism which De Tocqueville perceived in America., namely 'a mature and calm feeling, which disposed each member of the community to sever himself from his family and his friends...', but rather the earlier form, which De Tocqueville calls 'egotism', namely, 'passionate and exaggerated love of self, which leads a man to connect everything with his own person, and to prefer himself to everything in the world'. 'Nepali individualism operates largely at the more primitive egotistic stage'.