Working at the Bhutan Observer

Interviews. Conferences. Road trips. Meetings. Research– there is no such thing as a ‘typical day’ at the Observer office.

At the moment I’m working on an upcoming issue of BO Focus, which is a monthly insert focusing on specific social issues in Bhutan. This issue is on ‘Food nutrition and food security’. Contrary to my preconceptions, food security is not about locking your food up at night and is actually a really interesting issue! I’ve been assigned three articles and have been working on them non-stop. 

In 2007-2008 there was a global food crisis. India banned the export of rice to other countries so that they could feed their own population. Bhutan, which imports 90% of it’s rice from India, faced a potentially devastating situation. Luckily, India lifted the ban on Bhutan after less than a month because of good relations between the countries. But the question remained: What would’ve happened if India HADN’T lifted the ban?  The rice crisis made the Bhutanese realize how ill prepared they would be if they were cut off from their supply of imports and food security became an important topic on the national agenda. 

An important part of the research has been finding out what the government is doing to ensure food security in Bhutan and this entails interviews with politicians and ministers. In a country as small as Bhutan, getting access to public officials is relatively easy but getting answers out of them is definitely not! Traditionally, the Bhutanese culture doesn’t encourage the questioning of authority figures and people are still very wary of the media. The perception of politicians and public officials during the transition to democracy is quite interesting. The boundary between being disrespectful and merely questioning public officials has not yet been established and it seems that the media is at the forefront of testing this boundary. 

I’ve interviewed people from the United Nations Development Project, Ministry of Agriculture and the Food and Agricultural Organisation. Despite my initial frustration after a lot of persistence I was able to get some really good quotes and information for my articles.

One of the best parts of researching for the issue was my road trip to Paro with some other people from the  Observer team!  We went there to interview a lady who’s had to stop cultivating her rice on her farm. With all the hotels and resorts that have sprung up around Paro there’s no longer enough water to go around. She gave us a tour around her traditional Bhutanese farm and showed us the old rice fields, which are now completely useless because of the water shortage. Meeting and speaking to someone who's been directly affected by urbanisation made me really think about the true costs of development

Aum Rinchen Wangmo, who has had to abandon her rice farm because of urban development

Apart from this, my big project for the three months of my internship is to create a strategy to encourage support for the media from the government, readers, writers, students and advertisers. As I’ve mentioned before, free media is a relatively new concept in Bhutan so there is no culture of “using” the media and media literacy is very low. Madame Phuntsho has suggested doing a short documentary and supplementing this with brochures but this may change as I get to know the country more and figure out what the best method of communication would be.

Road trip!!!!

Bhutan’s national dress - My battle with the kira

Unless it’s exam time or I’ve had a big night, I can usually walk out of my house feeling reasonably confident that I’ve dressed myself correctly. Unfortunately, since I decided to start wearing a kira to work I haven’t had this luxury. After two weeks of trying to master the intricate process of folding and wrapping, getting dressed still takes me half an hour and at least four failed attempts. I can’t help but envy the elegance of the Bhutanese women as they glide around the city in their perfectly wrapped kiras while I struggle, tripping over my hem as I shuffle from my house to the office. 


Bhutan’s national dress code (Driglam Namzha ) was introduced in the 17th century and is worn everywhere that formal dress is expected i.e. the office, government buildings, school and special occasions.  In the 1980s Bhutan began to implement a series of laws to protect their culture from the dominant influence of China and India, and the national dress became enforceable by law. Anyone found in public out of national dress was charged by police.

Coming from Australia where the closest thing we have to a national dress is a flannelette shirt, boardshorts and thongs, the cultural importance of clothing is easy to underestimate.  But to the Bhutanese the significance of their clothing extends far beyond fashion or aesthetics. The debates surrounding Bhutan’s national dress symbolise many of the contentious issues facing modern Bhutan. The old vs the new. Culture and tradition vs modernisation. Cultural protection vs cultural diversity.

A Bhutanese woman in her kira and men wearing the gho which is their national dress.

The half kira

I find it hard to believe that anything, apart from perhaps childbirth, could be harder than putting on the kira. But the kira now worn by the majority of women in Bhutan (including me) has actually been adapted from the traditional full kira and is apparently much easier to put on. This transition has not been without controversy and has been a hot topic, even in national parliament.  While the younger generation sees the half kira as a necessary adaptation to modern life, older generations see it as cheapening of Bhutan’s traditional culture. Singay Dorki, 81, believes that “When you wear clothes in half, it means your life span gets shortened by half.” And others believe that this is just the beginning of the path that will inevitably lead to the loss of the kira altogether. 


Personally I see the adoption of the half kira as a positive compromise between the protection of culture and the inevitable modernisation of Bhutan. Women are able to meet the demands of modern life and still observe the national dress code. The half kira has prevented (at least temporarily) the complete abandonment of the kira. 

Attempting to look elegant in a kira!

And while I think that the full kira is beautiful and an important part of Bhutanese culture I don’t think I’ll be donning one anytime soon if I plan on making it to work before lunchtime