I think most people hesitate at the thought of a discussion around nation-building due to its broad nature of complexity and chaoticism. And the hesitation is at its worst when you run into those who are nationalists, patriotic and proud - but yet they do not necessarily contribute much to the progress. And I tend to think the Maoist infiltration was most likely guided by one or all of these attributes. I believe the attributes are not an important part of bringing economic freedom to one's country. After all, prosperity does not occur by shouting national anthem (or the use of force through political means) nor does it bring social justice and economic progress you speak of eutab4 - although personal happiness would be too difficult to assess. These three factors, however, are all intertwined and complementary - and in reality, a solution that may work in the short term is almost nil - we can only initiate discussions to partake on the possibility of change in the long term. Some thoughts:

Social justice - let's look around our international community. Is there a foreign government we admire - perhaps due to its domestic policy on the treatment of its citizens in every aspect of their lives. Should we consider it as a role model? I believe social justice is an uncanny term for how we want to implement our ideals (or that of our role model if it exists) in the country we live in. So the following political ideals (and thus the government) really define our way of life and in turn social justice: democracy / republic, socialism, authoritarian, monarchy, communism. The question then becomes do we adopt to one of these or mix and match - in relation to the readiness of nepali citizens. How do we determine which particular ideal gives us the most social justice that we seek?

Economic progress - this isn't really difficult to assess but painful to achieve. Increase in GDP per capita is one of the benchmarks used to gauge economic progress. A country where GDP grows faster than its population will have increased the overall earnings of its citizen. Nepal's per capital increase over the years isn't necessarily bad when comparing to other countries - the reason its figure is very low still is because it started out at astonishingly low rate ages go. So, from an economic point of view Nepal has not relatively changed much in 30 years in comparison to, say, South Korea. Let's do the math and bit of a (really) brief analysis:      

Nepal's per capita income in:
1977 = USD 9.89
2011 = USD 1200
Avg annual growth = 15.2%

South Korea's per capital income in:
1979 = USD 343
2011 = USD 31,200
Avg annual growth = 15.1%

So, the 15% growth is about even for both countries. We would think Nepal should have done better given it was small in size (usually growth accelerates quicker when small) - but South Korea has done equally as well although it was a lot bigger. What's the reason? Exports. South Korea's phenomenal growth is attributed to its ability to match exports with its imports - to put into perspective, South Korea's trading surplus/deficit was nearly zero both in 1979 and 2011 - whereas Nepal's export were 156% of what it imported in 1977 and that dwindled down to just 18% in 2011 - that is a huge trading deficit.

So the lack of development of our products and services for the international market - not a surprise - seems to be the cause of our trivial economic progress. The socio-economic implications from any improvement of this may lead  to a contribution in the increase of middle class - a very good thing. What are the challenges then to be able to produce sustainable products and services to serve the international market?

Personal happiness - this tends to be more philosophical - but from a collective perspective I think Maslow's pyramid above (rethink's post) is about close as we can get in achieving the affects of hapiness. As I mentioned earlier in the post that all these three factors are interrelated - and as such, Maslow's pyramid doesn't hold well if we were to violate the basic 'economic life' (which depends on the outcome of social justice) principles of Robert Nozick's fairness rules:
 
1. The state must enforce laws that establish and protect private property.
2. Private property may be transferred from one person to another only by voluntary exchange.


I did warn that this stuff is complex and chaotic at the beginning.