The Dragon's Voice

by Bunty Avieson

  To avoid such arduous and dangerous walks, some parents build makeshift homes for their children near their schools. During the school term, older siblings look after the younger ones, cooking meals and overseeing homework. It causes enormous anguish for the parents and the children.

  Newspaper readers respond to these stories with letters urging the government to do more. Education is a national priority and preoccupation. It is always in the news.

  The First King started Bhutan’s education revolution. In 1914, while most of the world was preoccupied with the First World War, he set about introducing modern education. Before then, only monks knew how to read and write, and people outside monasteries were illiterate. The First King believed that illiteracy bred ignorance. He wanted to develop the nation and made it his first challenge to ‘remove the ignorance of his people’.

  He wrote to the Viceroy of India and asked him to fund Bhutanese boys at the Scottish mission school in Kalimpong, 120 kilometres away. The Viceroy agreed. Over the next ten years, 45 boys walked over high, snow-covered mountain passes to and from Kalimpong. The King also opened a school in the country’s west with teachers from the Church of Scotland mission, and in 1915 he opened a royal school for the Crown Prince and some children of people serving in the royal court. By 1920, Bhutanese boys had started going to Indian universities.

  The King first wanted teachers, then medical doctors and veterinarians. Next he wanted students trained in forestry and mining, to develop the nation’s resources. At that time the people also faced many hardships from a lack of roads: it took a farmer 21 days to traverse the country east to west. Thus, the King sent the following batch of students to become engineers to build roads, and to harness the great rivers of Bhutan for hydro-electricity.

  He also sent two boys to learn printing. ‘A printing press is a necessity for carrying on the organisation of the country under the new conditions and of supplying the necessary educational apparatus,’ he said.

  The First King’s plan was for those boys to spearhead the process of nation building. And they did. A few generations on and Bhutan provides its own education and medical care, and the country has a forestry industry. The Bhutanese mine cement, coal, dolomite, gypsum and limestone, as well as produce hydropower. A highway connects Bhutan from east to west. And the country has a number of printing presses, producing educational materials and servicing the growing newspaper industry.

  Even among the educated classes, however, few read newspapers for enjoyment. While Kuensel has been around for more than 30 years, and has grown from a record of government events to a lively, critical newspaper, its readership is mainly upper-level government employees. For many, reading newspapers is seen as work, something you do as part of your government job or because your university lecturer makes you. Why else would you read one? Bhutanese children don’t grow up seeing newspapers being read by their parents, or even sold from street corners and shop counters. They are found mostly in the offices of government officials.

  The director of Bhutan’s media regulation agency tells me he doesn’t read any newspapers. ‘I would like to hire someone to do that,’ he grumbles. ‘The rest of us are too busy.’

  I’m shocked. The university-educated head of the media regulation agency doesn’t read the newspapers over which he is watchdog? He doesn’t consider it necessary for his job? This is the challenge facing the newspapers. While the industrialised world struggles with print media losing readers to the internet, the majority of Bhutanese have yet to discover newspapers – what they do, why they might be useful or enjoyable, or how they might contribute to democracy.

  BBS radio reaches most corners of the kingdom, playing news and Bhutanese music. It is cheap, immediate and doesn’t require literacy. Farmers and yak herders stream it through their mobile phones. BBS television brings images of the Kings into homes throughout the country. It also shows traditional dancing, as well as any news from the government. Why would you waste Nu.10 (A$0.27) on a newspaper?

  Needrup tells me that none of his university peers read newspapers now that they don’t have to. His extended family, back in his home village, has no idea what he does as editor-in-chief of Bhutan Observer. The family watches BBS TV at a neighbour’s home and listens to the radio. They have heard of Kuensel, but don’t really understand what it does. Newspapers are a mystery, another of those new-fangled foreign things that just aren’t relevant to their lives. Newspapers exist on the periphery of society.

  With such a lack of interest from the public, it is not surprising that many shops don’t see the point in stocking newspapers. They take up space and provide a profit of just Nu.1 (A$0.03) per copy. Among those shopkeepers who do stock newspapers, few understand the news business. Often, the latest edition is mixed in with a pile from last week.

  There is also a lack of interest in journalism jobs, which makes finding staff difficult. In developed nations, working in the media is seen as an exciting career and university graduates vie for limited places at news organisations. In Bhutan, however, the media business is viewed with suspicion. Most parents prefer their children to find a job in the civil service, which is seen to be protective, part of an extended Bhutanese family. Such a job provides security and prestige, especially compared with the uncertainties of newspapers, an unfamiliar private industry.

  For her interview at Bhutan Observer, reporter Tandin Pem had to sneak out of the house without her father knowing. The very capable advertising director, 24-year-old Gopal Singh, is under pressure from his parents to get ‘serious’ about his life. In their eyes his success at the newspaper means little. It is time he finds a wife and gets a real job, one with the civil service.

  But most significantly, Bhutan is traditionally an oral society. They aren’t used to reading. Or writing. For the average farmer or villager, the written word is a new concept. Historically only the monks needed books – prayer books – which were written in Choekey, a variation of Tibetan.

  There are about 23 official Bhutanese dialects, and around 20 years ago, the Fourth King decreed that the country needed a common language. He chose Dzongkha, a dialect from the wealthier population in the country’s west. The first step was to give it a written form.

  A committee of 12 eminent Bhutanese men oversaw the creation of a script and applied it to Dzongkha words. The Fourth King wanted every schoolchild to learn Dzongkha in order to encourage cultural pride and unite the country. He also wanted them to learn English, the language of the wider world. Dzongkha is still a work in progress and a source of contention among people of the east and the south. The Dzongkha scholars still disagree on aspects of the language, and few teachers are qualified to teach it.

  A government minister from western Bhutan tells me he was raised speaking Dzongkha. It was his farming parents’ greatest aspiration that he learn English, which 30 years ago was considered the language of the educated. The minister wants his own son, however, to learn Dzongkha, which is spoken in parliament. He reasons that the more fluent his son is in Dzongkha, the more eloquent he will be in parliament. He also sees it as the language of the future. English has dropped to second place in importance.

  Phuntsho, however, grew up in the east speaking Sharchop and had to learn Dzongkha and English at school. She remembers children from the west teasing her about her accent and her way of pronouncing certain Dzongkha words. Even now, as the owner of a newspaper, and a respected person in the community, she is shy about speaking Dzongkha publicly. Her son Tsangyang has just started school and is finding communication a struggle. Like his mother, he speaks Sharchop at home but is not allowed to at school, where he must learn both English and Dzongkha, two foreign languages.

  At Bhutan Observer, news conferences slip in and out of all three languages. Nearly all of the 50 staff were raised in homes that speak Sharchop and that’s what they use to talk to each other in the office. They tell me that Sharchop, which has no wr
itten form, is simple, but Dzongkha and English are both difficult to learn. The journalists are well educated and hired for their language skills, yet they struggle with one or the other or both. It is the same in most offices around Thimphu.

  Language, like everything else in Bhutan, is fluid; and reading is considered something of an oddity. It is yet to catch on in the mainstream as something one might do for pleasure or to be informed.

  Kuensel quotes a local joke that if you want to keep a secret in Bhutan, write it in a book. No-one will read it.

  11

  Bhutanese Faces

  January is the coldest month and also the driest, making winter the bushfire season. The office receptionist hands out small individual bar heaters for us to put under our desks. Still, the cold blows through the cracks between the windows and walls, and seeps up through the cement floor. I wear thermals under my thermals and huddle so closely over my heater that my long woollen skirt catches alight, leaving a decorative singe along the hem.

  No matter the weather, the gho and the kira don’t change. As far as I can tell, only the underwear does. Men cover up their knees, wearing long johns under their long socks. But the fashion-conscious young women such as Tandin Pem continue to wear strappy bare sandals. As I shiver next to her in a news conference, I ask if her feet are cold. She says yes, of course, and I feel stupid for asking. What’s logic got to do with fashion? Young Bhutanese men wear square-toed shoes a few sizes too big and some look like Mickey Mouse, flapping up Norzin Lam. At least both sexes are suffering equally for fashion.

  The Bhutan Observer executive is invited to a grand government reception – the launch of a comprehensive study into how media is affecting people. As it is an official government function, Phuntsho lends me a spare rachu, a narrow embroidered red scarf that she tells me I must wear draped across my left shoulder, over the top of my kira, toego and wonju, or I won’t be allowed into the government building. Needrup and the other editors wear the male equivalent, the kabney, a silk shawl draped from the left shoulder and twisted into a loose knot at the right hip of their gho. In the office, the men check each other’s pleats while Phuntsho adjusts my folds and tightens my belt, before we walk the short distance to the Ministry of Information and Communications. We are shown to the grand reception hall, which is already full with newspaper owners, editors and reporters, TV and radio people, and bureaucrats. If this building burned down today, there would no longer be a media industry in Bhutan.

  The Media Impact Study 2008 is a follow-up to a 2003 study jointly conducted by Stanford University and Siok Sian Pek-Dorji, founder and head of the Bhutan Centre for Media and Democracy. For months her teams have been conducting focus groups across the country, drilling down into people’s homes and thoughts.

  Pek, as she is known, is a formidable analyst and one half of Bhutan’s most powerful media couple. She is married to Kinley Dorji, who has recently left his post as Kuensel editor-in-chief to work for the Ministry of Information and Communications. Kinley was Bhutan’s first journalist, one of a handful of promising young men whom the Fourth King had sent to study at foreign universities in the 1980s. Kinley went to Bathurst, Australia, and studied journalism alongside Andrew Denton and Amanda Keller. Pek was a fellow student and a former presenter on an investigative television program in Singapore. The couple returned to Bhutan, where Kinley launched Kuensel and Pek worked with the new Bhutan Broadcasting Service. Throughout their careers they both continued to study. Pek completed a Master of International Relations at Macquarie University, Sydney, and Kinley studied a Master of Arts in Journalism at Columbia University, New York. They have co-presented papers at academic conferences around the world on media, ethics and democracy.

  Kinley and Pek were the country’s first journalists, and it seems fitting that as the media has matured in Bhutan, so have their roles. He is like the godfather of journalism, a steady hand advising government from the inside, while Pek’s organisation acts as an independent overseer of the whole industry.

  Pek starts her presentation by saying that in the past five years, it is as if Bhutan has been living on speed – even the rate of change itself is accelerating. A murmur of agreement goes around the room. The arrival of democracy, a new King and a burgeoning media, including television and the internet, all in such a short space of time, has left people dizzy.

  In 2003, media was used for information but in 2008, she says, it has become about entertainment. While radio continues to be the most popular form of media, it is the newer forms that have caused the biggest cultural changes. At every level of society the mobile phone has become an indispensable tool, part of everyday life. Bhutanese use it mainly to talk but also to stream radio, play music, send messages, take photos and play games. Television is bringing the outside world in all its diversity and complexity into homes, from WWE wrestling (a big hit) and Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Korean rock music, CNN and nature documentaries. Many parents believe this exposure is good for their children, making them more confident. But overwhelmingly the Bhutanese want to see themselves on television. More Bhutanese faces, more Bhutanese stories. Nearly 40 per cent say Bhutanese television is their favourite form of media, with just 9 per cent favouring international TV – which is particularly impressive given that BBS doesn’t broadcast all day and repeats its shows. Viewers also mistrust foreign television. Nearly 30 per cent said BBS TV was always believable, but just 7.5 per cent said the same about international television.

  For the 10,000 internet users there is Wikipedia and more. They can find out anything they want to know at the click of a mouse. In a country with few books and even fewer libraries, this is a sudden abundance of information. Young adults working in offices in the main towns are discovering a revolutionary new way to socialise with each other: Facebook. It is also how they keep in touch with Bhutanese friends studying abroad.

  And the connectivity is set to spread. The government is working to provide high-speed internet to each of the 205 gewogs (groups of villages) across the country. Every school, health clinic and local-government hub will be connected.

  Newspapers have been the slowest to make headway. The launch of new ones means a dynamic, sometimes raucous, national public conversation is now going on, but only among the educated in Thimphu and the major cities. Rural readers say they feel left out, with one farmer commenting that because his village was never mentioned, he no longer felt part of Bhutan. Others commented that they did not like it when newspapers disagreed with each other – how could there be two sets of facts?

  I feel Phuntsho nodding beside me throughout most of the presentation. The study confirms all her instincts. Bhutanese want Bhutanese voices telling Bhutanese stories.

  I take home the report and digest its 1,505 pages. I sort out the parts that seem the most relevant to Bhutan Observer and put them into a PowerPoint presentation. During a three-day workshop with editorial, advertising and management, we unpack what Pek’s findings mean for the newspaper.

  Our workshop starts well. The staff are amused by the reactions of rural people to nudity on television. They knew that Kuensel got most of the government’s advertising but are shocked at just how much – nearly half of the Nu.100 million (A$2.74 million), while the rest is divided between the other seven media organisations.

  But when I get to the readership figures, they start to look miserable. Kuensel is the market leader with 34.7 per cent, followed by Bhutan Times with 21.7 per cent, and Bhutan Observer last at 20.9 per cent. They say the survey is no good. It cannot be true. We can’t be behind Bhutan Times. That’s not possible.

  I say that the study is credible and we should not be defensive. The survey shows that the newspaper is highly respected. It just doesn’t have a very high profile: many people still do not know about it. Perhaps the reason Bhutan Times did better has something to do with the newspaper giveaway they did in the weeks leading up to the survey. Perhaps Bhutan Times sta
nds apart because it is different, not necessarily better, while Kuensel and Bhutan Observer are more alike, both more serious. Maybe Bhutan Observer needs to develop a personality away from Kuensel, to give it a point of difference.

  The mood in the room lifts when I get to Pek’s recommendations. Everything she says should be done is what Bhutan Observer is already doing. Rural stories, children’s pages, no stories from the internet and more stories about Bhutan. Pek’s recommendations perfectly match their vision for a socially responsible newspaper.

  It takes all day to go through the study and the staff come up with lots of areas in which the paper can improve, such as finding more advertising, raising our profile among students and schools, making rural people feel more included, developing our webpage, and connecting to radio listeners. The next day, the different departments brainstorm specific ideas, with the limitations being that the paper cannot afford more staff, and any idea must maintain the values of the newspaper.

  The advertising department reports back first. Their head, Gopal, starts humbly. He says the advertising department had believed that readers bought the newspaper for the advertisements, so they were disappointed to discover that only 8 per cent of readers did so.

  But, he says, it has made them realise something else. If 37 per cent of people buy the newspaper for the news, then it is up to the journalists to get better news to attract more readers. Gopal says they feel that the journalists write too many negative stories. He recommends they should write softer, nicer, more positive stories, ones that make people feel good. The mood in the room plummets.

  Editorial has its turn after lunch, and the political reporter strikes back, explaining what the word ‘news’ in newspaper means. Softer, nicer, more positive stories, indeed! The political reporter tells the advertising department that they should concentrate on getting advertisements and leave to editorial the more important job of producing a credible newspaper. He speaks eloquently and the reporters nod furiously throughout.