Groups of nomads from Trashigang’s northern community

Groups of nomads from Trashigang’s northern community are beginning to frequent the little town.

Clad in their maroon traditional costumes, 10 men from Sakteng appeared yesterday in front of the election office.

They were there to fulfil the process of filling up election forms, a prerequisite for filing in their nominations for the numerous local government posts.

The 10 rough-looking men were among those contesting for the gup, mangmi and tshogpa posts in the upcoming local government election.

Two recently passed the second functional literacy test and the rest completed the first.

The group walked for two days until Phongmey, before hitching a ride in a taxi towards Trashigang. Phongmey is about 35km from Trashigang.

Many of them said they foresaw opportunity to bring in developments to their community, besides exposure and experience they might gain in the course of running one big community.

Tswangpay, 36, who wants to contest the post of mangmi, said they wished to complete all paperwork and initial formalities to avoid any delay in the upcoming election.

“We have to make sure we have our no-objection-certificate, medical certificate and other such documents on time,” he said. “We live very far and can’t afford to be running to Trashigang for small formalities.”

Tswangpay attended non-formal education.

He intends to bring changes to his community that he said remained cut off for a long time.

Rinchen Letha, 31, contesting for gup’s post, said this was a call towards realising his ambition to do something big for his community and earn a reputation for himself.

“People of my community believe I can make a difference,” the class VIII drop out said. “It’s on their instance and belief that has me vying for the most important post in the local government.”

Except for two, the remaining 10 interested candidates for the upcoming election were interested in the gup and mangmi posts.

Younten Jamtsho, a retired lay monk, 38 has been a tshogpa for almost two years, and intends to contend for the same post.

“Being a tshogpa I’ve learnt, we’re more close to people and understand the issues facing them better,” he said.

He explained the salary structure of the tshogpas was unfair, especially given that they had to do most of the running-around, understood issues facing each individual in a community that made them the real representatives.

“For these reasons no one is interested in becoming a tshogpa,” he said. Others contesting for other two prestigious posts agreed many in their community expressed dissatisfaction over the miserly pay.

“In our entire community in Sakteng, we’ve only five people contesting for the tshogpa post,” he said. “The government really ought to do something about it.”

Failure to act on this matter would soon lead to disappearing of the post.

“The tshogpas are not given enough salary but the parliament members are entitled to state funds for campaigning,” one said, adding that no one raises this issues at the capital. “Our previous representatives, though not qualified, spoke on our behalf and bore our interests in mind.”

Rest of the candidates from Merak and Sakteng are expected to reach Trashigang today.

The dzongkhag electoral officer Sonam Wangdi said they were here to learn what to do before election and fill up the forms.

“We hope to have all the rest,” he said. “These group will hopefully inform the rest in their village.”

Source: Kuenselonline

Bhutan showing some important progress

Although the health ministry projects that about 893 people will live with HIV/AIDS by 2013, Bhutan is showing some important progress and true commitment to reaching universal access to HIV services, according to the UN resident coordinator Claire Van der Vaeren.

The resident coordinator was reflecting on Bhutan’s response to AIDS during the launch of the United Nations secretary-general’s report on HIV/AIDS in Bangkok yesterday, where Bhutan joined nearly 30 countries from Asia to review progress and challenges, and develop key actions for the way forward in the region’s efforts to ensure universal access to HIV services for all.

“Moving forward, one of our key challenges is continued funding support of the HIV and AIDS program in Bhutan,” said the resident coordinator. “We need to explore new and innovative avenues to ensure a sustainable AIDS response to improve the lives of Bhutanese men, women and children living with HIV and those vulnerable to infection.”

A press release from the UNDP office in Bhutan stated that, in Bhutan, there has been significant progress in scaling up HIV prevention and treatment, in providing free healthcare services and, importantly, in bringing Bhutanese living with HIV into the national response.

However, universal access across HIV prevention, treatment, care and support is still not a reality in the Asia-Pacific region, including Bhutan, it stated. Across the region, one in three people does not have access to treatment; 60 percent of people living with HIV in the region do not know their HIV status; and key affected communities continue to be subjected to stigma and discrimination, punitive laws, policies and practices, which obstruct access to services.

Many countries in the region – including those with or approaching middle-income status — rely heavily on international funding for their AIDS responses.

At the regional consultation, UNAIDS Asia-Pacific regional director, Steve Kraus, said that governments must create a new form of mutual accountability –government to government – to build a unified regional AIDS response beyond national borders.

“Governments in this region have the economic means to take on greater responsibility for financing AIDS, the results of which will directly impact their continued development,” he said.

ESCAP social development division director, Nanda Krairiksh, added: “The world’s most populous region can’t afford complacency on AIDS. Political leadership with civil society and the key affected communities as the cornerstone of the response requires fresh perspectives from the ground.”

Health officials, during the mid-term review meeting of the ministry last December, said that, of the many millennium development goals that Bhutan has been lauded for keeping steady towards meeting, reversing and stopping the spread of HIV/AIDS by 2015 looked grim.

This, they said, was because, at the start of 10th Plan, the number of people detected with HIV was 140. The country’s projection is 893 HIV patients by 2013. Since the first case in 1993, the ministry has so far detected 217 cases. World Health Organisation estimates revealed Bhutan had 500 cases in 2008 alone.

Source: Kuenselonline

Bhutan: Dzongkha readers now have three newspapers to choose

Dzongkha readers now have three newspapers to choose from. The third newspaper was launched by the Secretary of the Dzongkha Development Commission, Dasho Sherab Gyeltshen on Sunday.

The Druk Gyalyong Sharshok, a weekly, will be available every Sunday.

An editor from the newspaper said the paper will help increase readership and help promote the national language.

Bhutan may not have to import coffee

Bhutan may not have to import coffee for long. We may soon be able to grow and produce our own coffee. It is possible. In fact, it is already being done in Hangey village in Samtse.

A few years ago, a few farmers here started cultivating coffee on trial basis. The trail was a success. The area, they have found, is favourable for coffee cultivation. Now a business firm is already planning on starting a plantation.

Deo Dikshit, the consultant, said “we grew different varieties of Arabica. It is the best coffee in the world.”

The firm will grow coffee in Hangay Kalamati and Sasboty in Sibsu on 300 acres of land leased from the government. It will soon be signing a Memorandum of Understanding with the Ministry of Agriculture to start commercial production on a public private partnership.

“We are hoping to start by May or June, as soon as we complete all the formalities.”

It takes about four years for the coffee plants to start bearing fruit. The firm also plans to set up a production factory and export the coffee abroad.

“We hope to export to Europe, North America, Japan, Singapore and other coffee consuming countries and create a brand name for Bhutan,” said Deo Dikshit.

The firm has employed 16 farmers to work on the nursery. It plans to employ more once work on the plantation begins.

Buddhism and GNH appear like peas in a pod

Buddhism was so pure when it was born and first delivered to the world. Since then the great vehicle of compassion has been through an evolutionary process of constant change. Today, the way we practise the religion begs the question of whether it is already corrupt? If it is so, then it is a sign of the times. And it is only fitting to explore whether our other values have also suffered the same fate.

The religion has become a sanctuary of some sorts for the unsuccessful and the ambitious. Our practice of it is overwhelmed by the ever increasing reliance on it for success and protection. We have somehow settled down in the belief that praying for the well being of all beings somehow secures our own well being too. Every religious action is linked to our own welfare. We deliberately defy logic and common sense, and believe that our prayers have the “power to liberate” all beings. Numbers seem to matter the most as we target millions and billions bead by bead parrot-fashion. What is expected of us as Buddhists hardly becomes a source of inspiration for our practice? No matter how hard we try to believe in the inerrancy of the religious beliefs that we hold, and acknowledge the power of faith in our lives, it is difficult to wrestle down the inexorable view that Buddhism is certainly not about all these.

In a way, we have succeeded in ‘customising’ the religion to suit our own existence. When Buddhism actually requires us to remain aloof from worldly desires, we tend to use (or misuse) it to reach to those desires. We have become selfish to the extent that we are not even willing to accept what divine providence has to say about us through the numbers on the dice. We roll and reroll it, until the number that lands on the top of it is interpreted in our favour.

As Buddhists, it is challenging to clear one’s way out of the contradiction involving contentment and selflessness on the one hand, and the fervour with which we observe the rites and rituals with a rather strong material objective on the other. Our religious beliefs may be sacrosanct, but challenges such as these do haunt and fluster the ever inquisitive Buddhist minds, who try to make Buddhism relevant in their lives.

Buddhism and GNH appear like peas in a pod, at least in the way we have come to develop our understanding, expectation and the practice of it. Of course, associating the great vehicle of compassion with a development philosophy would be inapt, as the latter pales in comparison to the former by many measures. It nonetheless provides an opportunity to show how GNH too could have been possibly corrupted by the same people, who have corrupted Buddhism.

We are adamant in simplifying the great philosophy into something as narrow as individual happiness, and see it as a pair of hands that feeds and clothes every individual. Such association of the powerful concept with individual happiness only goes to show how it has become corrupt.

How could Bhutan ensure individual happiness, when rich nations like the US and Japan could not? We would be only chasing rainbows in trying to deliver happiness to every individual. It will never be achieved no matter how hard we try, for there is no limit to people’s desire for happiness. When it is in our culture to maintain the lifestyle of the rich, while our bank account might be suffering, how do we sustain such happiness? We have advocates of happiness for the masses, who slam GNH as being “ineffective”. But what is missing in their action is the will to nip something in the bud that will get them to their first base - corruption. There is so much in the rhetoric, but almost nothing in what can actually help achieve what they are advocating and championing. Perhaps the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

There is no denying that GNH represents a basic covenant between a nation and its people. But to say that that is the be-all and end-all in our grand scheme of things is debasing the powerful concept. We have to be prepared to take the rough with the smooth, if we believe the Buddha nature in us is still not corrupt. There are those, who chafe under the popular version of the GNH philosophy, wringing their hands to see that the concept be given the due respect and regard it deserves by the Bhutanese themselves first for what it is. We ought to understand that GNH is a common vision for our planet and its well-being. We ought to understand that it is about how we figure in the invisible cost of development in our calculations. We ought to understand that it is about assigning value to everything that is around us. That is why it is quite uncommon to be hit by a pang of realisation that perhaps we might have completely missed the wood for the trees.

But it is not that we do not know about it. We simply do not want to know about it. Sadly, there is a broad public apathy about what GNH is capable of. We want Gyalwong Gakid Pelzom to be dancing right in the middle of our living room. We are in pursuit of our own individual happiness. We have failed to recognise that GNH has come to symbolise the indefatigable spirit of a selfless King in pursuit of a fundamental change in the way we approach advancement into the future. And he needs our support to give it shape. But we are like ships that pass in the night when it comes to working together on GNH and providing him that support. Consequently, we still do not have a basic agreement on what constitutes GNH for us as Bhutanese. It might seem like a red rag to a bull, but it stands to reason that a people that have only their individual happiness in mind will never appreciate the greatness of the profound concept. That way, we are all perhaps complicit in debasing a great vision.

We simply write off GNH as an abstract philosophy and a utopian quest. Buddhism too is an abstract philosophy, and it does not even have an index to measure how enlightened one is. Yet, it has worked and accepted the world over, for and by those, who understood what it truly is, and who have not succumbed to self-serving impulses. How we give GNH the right kind of support depends on how we understand it and appreciate its potential. We cannot afford to have a seven-year itch, for GNH is our conviction. And it has to be the best. But we cannot make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. Everybody needs to pitch in with their best. For now, the real concern is that GNH is being corrupted faster than Buddhism. While it took about 2,500 years for the latter to get corrupted, the former took just 40 years. At this rate, we seem to be fighting a rearguard action against the forces from within our backyard. This, coupled with our relentless pursuit of trying to “extract” happiness out of GNH, we will have only ourselves later to blame for stifling the great philosophy to a mere shadow of what the thinker has originally envisioned, and have it sacrificed on the altar of individual happiness.

Source: Kuenselonline