Abstract
An astute trotter-observer hardly ever fails to ignore a budding and slowly shaping perception: there is acute regional, divisional and village diversity in Bhutan. The labour productivity and crop yields are low, and the technology catch-up process has rather been slow. In this least developed country, there is a vicious circle of common services deprivations, community diseases, individual illiteracy, infant mortality, regional malnutrition, transport bottlenecks and exclusionary standards of living in the country. Bhutanese economy is presently characterised by perennial deficits in the supply of not only food grains but also the dairy products like cheese and butter and poultry products, such as chicken, pork meat, beef and eggs. Bhutan is today a net importer of food, and it has been dependent on sustained imports in both food and oil for a long time. On a systematic note, a visit to a nearby library in the Sherubtse College (Kanglung) in Trashigang in the eastern region and to the RNR and other government offices nearby Tashichho Dzong in Thimphu in the western region is warranted to peruse a tourist map, garner a few volumes of the National Income Account Statistics and turn over the pages of the government-sponsored survey reports, and to get reassured that the ordinary observations of an explorer on move are true regarding the regional disparity and food insecurity.
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Notes
- 1.
The southern region is the home of the Nepali -language-speaking Lhotshampa, while the Scharchopa constitutes a majority in the eastern region. Since the deprivations are large and economic performances are disappointing in the eastern and southern region, the regional divide has clear divergent implications across ethnic lines as well. The ruling ethnic sect of the Drukpa who is in majority in the western region has not suffered much from such deprivations , and they are thus comparatively better off.
- 2.
Till 2007, this was the only graduate degree college (being academically affiliated to the University to Delhi, India , in the 1990s) offering courses in arts, commerce and science disciplines. In 2007, another graduate degree college, the Gaeddu College of Business Studies, offering courses in commerce and business administration , was established. Till today, very few postgraduate degree courses are not taught in Bhutan.
- 3.
The words in italic font are the names of the headquarter of administrative districts. The district office is generally located in a fortress , mostly situated at the steep slope of a hill that houses not only the district magistrate/collector and his/her staffs but also a battery of Buddhist lamas. The district administration has traditionally been run from the precincts of the fortress , locally called ‘dzong’ .
- 4.
In the eastern region, they were the households of the ethnic group of the Scharchopa who were the victims of low and uncertain crop yields of land under the shifting cultivation practice and no income from the fallow land. The Drukpas in the western region were however not only the owners of improved breeds of livestock but also of agricultural machinery on the farms.
- 5.
For details, refer to the chapter written by Dr Caroline Brassard on disaster governance and GNH in the present book.
- 6.
This is not the situation in the context of other South Asian countries, for example, the ex-colonized countries of India , Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka ; there exist historical records, pertaining to even the nineteenth century, on output and production of food in these countries.
- 7.
Since the households belonging to the Scharchopa in the eastern region have been the major producers and consumers of maize, the lower crop yield in maize and deficit in maize has not affected their standard of living. Moreover, a major part of maize (already in deficit) has not been diverted to the manufacturing of the local hot drink called ‘araa’; there have been acute deficits in the staple food of maize among the households of Scharchopas.
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Ansari, M. (2017). Regional Disparities and Food Problems in Bhutan. In: Schmidt, J. (eds) Development Challenges in Bhutan. Contemporary South Asian Studies. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47925-5_10
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