Is Dzongkha publication in newspapers serving purpose?

It is mandatory for the English newspapers in the country to also have an equivalent edition in Dzongkha. This is one of the policy directives of the Bhutan InfoComm and Media Authority, BICMA, while issuing a license to the newspapers and magazines. But has this mandate really helped in promoting the Dzongkha language?

The mandate of English newspapers to publish a Dzongkhag edition is now seen by most private papers as just a formality.  Except for Kunesel, the National Newspaper, all the other English newspapers have just a few pages of Dzongkha edition.

Bhutan Observer, one of the first private newspapers, started its publication with an equal number of a team for both Dzongkha and English in 2006. But after a few months, they had to discontinue the Dzongkha edition.

The Chief Executive Officer, Phuntsho Wangmo, said it was expensive to publish separate Dzongkha edition, with only a few buyers. The Dzongkha edition also received very less advertisement. “In 2007, we suspended it for two months,” she said. “There was some concern from the government. We received a warning letter from BICMA that if we discontinue the Dzongkha edition, our license will be revoked. We were given a certain period of time to resume,” she added.

She said that when they resumed they had lesser pages with lesser staff but with a separate edition. “We continued till 2011, and then we reduced it into inserts. We did not have much choice because of the increasing number of Medias in the market. It was difficult to sustain.”

Like Bhutan Observer, most of the private newspapers with English publication shared the same predicament.  Some of them said that with the responsibility to publish the Dzongkha edition with English, it is not helping the growth of media. The ground reality, they said is, there is no readership for the Dzongkha papers.

They are left with no option but to reduce their Dzongkha team. Some agreed that they are not even able to focus on the content and maintain the standard of their Dzongkha inserts. They agreed that it is not helping in promoting the language.

“While it is the responsibility of every Bhutanese to ensure the promotion of Dzongkha, for media it has not served its purpose. Because it is mandated, we print and publish Dzongkha but there are no readers,” Tenzin Rigden, Editorial Advisor of the Journalist and Bhutan Media Services said.

He added that Dzongkha development is, in fact, impacting the media development ‘because the few resources at their disposal are used to publish Dzongkha, which we could have used for media development’.

“It is better to do away than have a poor quality Dzongkha inserts. It really does not help both media and Dzongkha development. It also does not help even the Dzongkha readers since it is just an insert in the English edition. If you have it than have it in better quality,” said Phuntsho Wangmo.

According to Tenzing Lamsang, CEO of the Bhutanese, private newspapers are forced to carry Dzongkha inserts and more than helping Dzongkha it is harming Dzongkha. “As there are many papers, which are not able to get professional Dzongkha team due to technical issues. As a result Dzongkhag quality in most papers is below par. This goes contrary to the original intention of the government to promote Dzongkha.”

While there is a committee established by the Dzongkha Development Commission and Ministry of Information and Communications to improve the Dzongkha standard in media, the question is- Is the content being monitored? Unlike the English papers, people say that most of the mistakes in the Dzongkha edition go unnoticed.

The Chief Information Officer of the BICMA, Lakshuman Chettri, said that they currently are not able to focus on the content of the Dzongkha edition, as they do not have the manpower. But they do remind the papers about the standards.

“We remind them if the Dzongkha paper is not up to the standard and that they should improve it. We had to remind Bhutan today because earlier they said they lack manpower and competent people to publish Dzongkha. We had to tell them it has been quite a lot and that they have to continue it,” said the Chief Information Officer.

The mandate to have an equivalent Dzongkha edition in English publication is also not followed by many papers.

The BICMA said since papers have cited many reasons for not being able to do so, there is no standard number of Dzongkha papers needed in the English publication. But, for the private newspapers they said that with exclusive Dzongkha papers in the market, there is now no need for the English papers to publish Dzongkha edition. They have submitted a proposal to BICMA to discontinue last year.  They also appealed to Prime Minister on this issue.

Meanwhile, the Ministry says that the mandate is based on the resolution passed by the National Assembly in 2007.

“This being an NA resolution, we can’t change it ad hoc. The papers have claimed that producing the Dzongkha edition is too expensive for them and are commercially not viable. But now DDC is saying that Dzongkha edition is poor because they are not investing enough. There are Dzongkha translators and experts, but many of them are not paying enough to get good people,” said Dasho Kinley Dorji, Secretary of the Ministry of Information and Communications.

In September 2010, the Ministry with the Dzongkha Development Commission established a committee.  The committee meets once a month to review the Dzongkha standard in the Media, including the papers. The Committee looks after only the spelling and Dzongkha language structure. The Committee Secretary, Singye Wangdi, said the standard of the Dzongkha in some the papers is poor. He said that since some papers have outsourced their Dzongkha edition they repeat the same language mistakes. However, he said, it has improved with the formation of the committee.

The Secretary of the MoIC said they are now looking at strengthening the mandate of the Committee. In the past, the committee does the evaluation and comes up with a report. But now the Ministry says the government must act according to the report. The Ministry will be submitting a proposal to the government on the Dzongkha issue.

“What the Ministry is doing is, take a comprehensive view rather than take a short term action. We want to make sure that the Committee established by DDC and MoIC has the responsibility of thoroughly evaluating the standard and the quality of the Dzongkha,” said the Secretary.

He added that the government should then respond to that once it is announced or declared that in certain publication Dzongkha quality is not good enough. “Government should decide whether we should stop the subsidy and Government should also subsidise the media where Dzongkha is of desired quality.”

There are currently about seven English newspapers with Dzongkha edition as the inserts. The proposal of discontinuing the Dzongkha edition in English publication will not be taken up any time soon as the issue has to be discussed in the parliament.