STIPEND: It should be increased.

Students studying in the various government colleges in Bhutan are privileged with free education as well as a monthly stipend to meet the daily expenses. Just like the other college, Sherubtse College is of no exceptional. What excites more with the month coming to the end is looking at the notice board of respective hostel whether there is any notice of stipend or not. Usually hostel counselor’s writes a notice ie, “Collect your stipend from room 308 by 5:30pm” (Notice board of DH 8, 2014). Monthly stipend provided by the government to the full scholarship students in Sherubtse College is one thousand five hundred which has been not revised for the longtime. Consequently, if you visit the Choesung shop in the upper market of Kanglung, you will be surprised to see many student keeping their national identity card for keeping the debt which shows that the stipend given to the students is not sufficient and there is an immediate need to increase in the stipend to meet the increase in food prices, to continue giving the quality and quantitative food to the mess catering students and to provide with the right amount of balanced diet food to the future leaders of the nations.

With the recent Indian economy infatuating and the issue of rupee crisis,Bhutan has been affected as Bhutanese depends on Indian market. So with the crisis, there has been increase in the prices of all the commodities imported. With increase in prices, there should be increase in stipend too but unfortunately there is no increase. On the contradictory, there was a rise in the stipend of the Bhutanese students who are studying in India under government scholarship stating the reason as “rising cost of living and inflation” which came to effect from July 1,2011. So as India is the closet trading nation of Bhutan, every change in Indian price has an immediate impact on Bhutan but when stipend in India was increased, there wasn’t any such increase in colleges in Bhutan.  With the rise in prices, one thousand five hundred of which one hundred and fifty is already deducted by the concerned authorities as room charge is not enough to buy the food items for the following month. If you visit some of the shop in upper market area where Sherubtsean buys their food item, you would not be surprised to see credit book listing names of the student. Today the price of 50 kilogram rice has increased by up to Nu.50 (Bhutan Broadcasting Service, 2012) and the vegetables prices are increasing with hike in neighboring country.

Other area where fewer stipends can affect is the quality and the quantity of the food served to the student of mess catering hostel. Stipend of the mess catered student is directly used by the college authorities to give them three daily meals. However, it won’t be possible to give them the same quality of food that was once served to the student few years back with the same stipend and changing prices of the food item. For a student, it is must to give both quality and quantity food but with constant rise in food prices, it would not be enough to give it.Even the conversion of mess catering hostel to self-catering hostel like the recently of DH (Degree Hostel) III shows that with more numbers of student and less amount of money, it is not possible to give good food so there is a change as self-catering hostel works better than mess one. This can be shown by the deaths of student in Orong higher secondary school in 2010 showed lacked of nutritional content in food in boarding school (Tenzin, 2012) which mean boarding school does not provide good quality food.

 While our body need right amount of nutrition for better functioning of the body system and also to live healthy, it won’t be possible with current stipend which when further divided to individual day comes not more than Nu. 50, which is not enough to buy all the necessary food items required to have healthy diet. Consequences of insufficient balanced diet food cause malnutrition. With little amount of money, it won’t be possible to buy all the food and as in the case of Orong High school which states that “Their nutrition level is below the recommended daily allowance (RDA),” “It’s 0.7 milligram a decilitre (mg/dl), when they’re required to have 1.5mg/dl a day,” “They are lacking vitamins like B1 and B12” (Pokhrel, 2012). Vitamin B12 which is available from meat, egg and fish only cannot be brought by Nu.50 a day stipend.Not just vitamin, our body needs carbohydrate, protein and fats which come from the variety of food items and to purchase variety of food item, more than Nu.50 is must. Given the importance of health as “Health is wealth” there is a need to revise the stipend. Let not the case of Orong happen in Sherubtse and it’s always “Prevention is better than cure.”
Source: Kinzang Gyeltshen (Geo-Honours)