The Dalai Lama is currently on a tour of the United States, a country he is visiting for the umpteenth time -- and not without reason. Though he is not pencilled in to meet any officials or President Barack Obama, the US State Department is by far the largest donor to the Tibetan exile economy at almost $3.5 million annually. And the US has the largest bloc of individual and organisational donors.
Almost 70 per cent of the Tibetan exile community's budget is still reliant on long-term funding from a battery of foreign donors as projects to generate income from within the community have not delivered.
Upon their arrival in India, land was leased to the Tibetan refugees by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru in Karnataka. Here the Dalai Lama attempted at creating an economy that could sustain itself on agriculture and the cottage industry. But that has failed.
Image: A tourist poses for a picture near the Potala Palace in Lhasa. | Photograph: China Daily/Reuters
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