Talk:Districts of Bhutan

zones

What is the function of the zones? Is it worth coloring the map to match the colors in the tables? --Lasunncty (talk) 06:02, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

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External links modified

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• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110706163151/http://www.nsb.gov.bt/pub/phcb/PHCBfactsheet2005.pdf to http://www.nsb.gov.bt/pub/phcb/PHCBfactsheet2005.pdf
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I found updated URLs for the first and third ones. No luck with the second one. --Lasunncty (talk) 08:27, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

Little to no information on Zones and page move

In the 2017 census, zones aren't even mentioned. I don't see any sources for the zone stats but it may be the 2005 census, which I haven't read. Also, since this page is listed as a "list" on a template (?) in Dzongkhag (only appears on desktop mode), I'll move it to List of dzongkhags of Bhutan. Edit: some corrections to what I previously wrote and now have removed. So, from my "research", the word "Dzongkhag" is written always in italics, unless part of a name — like "Dzongkhag Series" report or "Thimphu Dzongkhag". In the Constitution, the word is always capitalised, but I think that makes sense, since in the Constitution, all political divisions are always capitalised. In Bhutanese documents, they never use the word "district", they just say dzongkhag, always italicized. Also, unlike this page says, the word dzongkhag isn't both singular and plural. I've seen "dzongkhags" written many times. TryKid (talk) 08:42, 1 June 2019 (UTC)

I forgot to mention the most important thing. I'm going to completely replace this article with content from User:TryKid/sandbox (1 June 2019). As I couldn't find anything about zones, it doesn't say anything about zones. TryKid (talk) 11:06, 1 June 2019 (UTC)

One more thing! There is LITERALLY NOTHING about capitals of dzongkhags. Nowhere. I couldn't find anything about capitals of dzongkhags and this page mentions them but without any sources. So my replacement doesn't have anything about capitals too. TryKid (talk) 11:08, 1 June 2019 (UTC)

Also, the Dzongkha spelling of dzongkhags feel like random trivia that'll be more suitable in their respective pages. TryKid (talk) 11:09, 1 June 2019 (UTC)

Also, I've modelled my article after FA List of states and territories of the United States and therefore don't include information about number of gewogs and stuff. TryKid (talk) 11:13, 1 June 2019 (UTC)

"in proportion"

In https://www.ecb.bt/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/ElectionActEnglish.pdf (cited in the article) it says

A Delimitation Commission shall, for the purposes of section 4, allocate to each Dzongkhag a number of seats in the National Assembly, so far as practicable, in proportion to its registered voter population.

According to the article, Thimphu, with 138,763 people, has 2 representatives; while Trashigang, with less than a third as may people, has five. I'm not saying that the article is wrong, but I think some explanation is needed. Maproom (talk) 08:56, 12 June 2019 (UTC)

@Maproom:. In his book, The Royal Semi-Authoritarian Democracy of Bhutan, Dhurba Rizal talks about this along with some other criticism of Bhutan. Delimitation Commission was criticized for this by some people, saying how Gasa and Thimphu both have two constituencies even though they are the least and most populated dzongkhags respectively. The only explanation is that Delimitation Commission didn't do a good job. You can try to add that and cite Rizal's book but it's very hard to access it. I could only gather a few pages of the book from Google Books preview. I'm pretty lost on this topic though. Another issue you might have noticed is that dzongkhag areas add up to more than Bhutan's total area, by like 2-3 thousand square kilometres. There isn't an explanation for that other than that the official PHCB is wrong. Some websites outside Wikipedia do mention the issue of different sources having different area measurements for same dzongkhag. Sometimes it differs by a small margin but sometimes it's more than 50%. The previous source (NSB too from 2010) for area data mentioned probably more correct measurements but adding that would mean that population density data wouldn't make sense. I chose to just go with PHCB. All in all, I don't know if I should mention all this in the article. It would be great if you could fix all that, but I don't think there's a way to fix it. Regards, TryKid (talk) 15:44, 12 June 2019 (UTC)

Some stuff I missed in previous message: 1. I meant criticism of Bhutan's political system, not Bhutan itself. 2. About the area thing: I've already added a note saying all data from PHCB, at least that'll count for something once someone notices how areas don't add up. 3. About the delimitation: this type of stuff happens everywhere, some provinces get more, some get less. Should be fixed in next delimitation. really sucks for Thimphu though. Also, do you think this article even stands a chance for Featured List? I want to nominate but I'm not really sure. It'll be great if you help. Regards, TryKid (talk) 16:00, 12 June 2019 (UTC)

One more thing! So, I'm checking a draft Delimitation and noticed that Thimphu's registered voter population is just 13,000! It is much lower than some dzongkhags with lower populations. For example, Samtse (4 representatives) has 40,000 registered voter population. Each Constituency has roughly 10,000 registered voter population more or less (some exceptions are where dzongkhag population is too low to have two constituencies with 10k — like Gasa with ~1k voter population each and Thimphu is ~5k each. So it looks like Delimitation Commission did a good job and I misremembered what I read in that book. I'm trying to find the link to the document again but mysteriously the download isn't appearing in the downloads page on Chrome. If you want it, I can upload it somewhere and send a link. It's a draft but it doesn't look like the final Delimitation was changed from the draft. Pinging once more, @Maproom:. Regards, TryKid (talk) 17:30, 12 June 2019 (UTC)

Lead edit

In response to the author's request posted at the Teahouse, I contributed some edits in a bid to help improve the article. The changes made primarily concerned the lead. I deleted the entry involving Bhutan's geographical location. I hope to make it more concise. Feel free to do a revert or further improvements. Thanks. Darwin Naz (talk) 03:06, 13 June 2019 (UTC)

Hey @Darwin Naz:! Thank you so much for edits. I really love when others help me. I liked Orville's version though, it looked cleaner. I still appreciate you edits. Keep being awesome! Helping newbies is probably the best thing someone could do on Wikipedia. I really appreciate everyone helping other on Teahouse. I'll also try to be on Teahouse, helping others where I can. Regards, TryKid (talk) 13:13, 13 June 2019 (UTC)

Dzondags

I'll try to find about Dzongdags and incorporate information about them. But I think that'll be more appropriate for main dzongkhag page. TryKid (talk) 15:17, 15 June 2019 (UTC)

Issues

• Although Thimphu dzongkhag and Thimphu thromde (municipality) were within the boundaries of Zone I, they stayed outside the zonal system.

• Inaccurate. USA Country Reports ought not be trusted for their accuracy.

• By 1991, however, only Eastern dzongdey (Zone IV) was fully functional.

• Notwithstanding the close paraphrasing, how is "fully functional" defined?

• Zone I, Zone II and Zone III were "indefinitely" disabled in early 1991. Zone IV also ceased to function in mid-1992.

• G-Snippeted out of a book that appears to fail the test of reliability at the first glance. In reality, they remained in paper (I am unsure about the practical aspects) for a long time - consult Sangay Ngedup's comments in the National Assembly, as reported in The Kuensel of 6 March 1999. Else, how can a disabled administrative structure "slowly lose relevance and go defunct"?

• in each of the newly created dzongkhags

• When were these dzongkhags created? In around '81? Were they 20 in number or did they grow with time?

• Last but most importantly, primary sources like constitutions, laws etc. cannot be used esp. without taking aid from secondary (or tertiary) sources.

TrangaBellam (talk) 06:07, 6 July 2022 (UTC)

Absent improvements, I will proceed for delisting. TrangaBellam (talk) 11:37, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

How do you propose we go about improving this. For point four, there might be some information Bhutanese class 9 or 10 history textbook, and another biography of the kings. "Newly" created is probably quite inaccurate, it was either the first or second king who introduced "administrative reforms" which seem to have the current district structure in place. But my memory is hazy. I'm not sure there are usable sources that talk about the latest structure in detail. I can try checking. TryKid ^{[dubious – discuss]} 11:50, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

The biography book was "Leadership of the Wise, Kings of Bhutan" by Karma Ura. I'll leave the two paragraphs I had in mind here for reference. These are from Chapter 3, on the second king of Bhutan, Jigme Wangchuck.

1. As soon as His Majesty ascended the throne, he started to systematically study the tax system. Before making any change, the incidence, severity, effects, and value of the various taxes were assessed. At his command, all the royal secretaries were involved in studying the entire tax system. This thorough investigation led His Majesty to realize that the layers of administration that had accumulated over the centuries were the main reason for the extremely high tax levels. There were gewogs, upon which were dungkhags. Further up the multiple tiers of administration, there were dzongkhags, before finally ending up with central entities like the Punakha Dratshang, where a portion of tax was delivered directly by the tax payers. At the time of Domche, all kinds of commodities were delivered to Punakha dzong. There were also taxes payable directly to organisations beyond the government. Taxes were paid to aristocratic families, like that of Wangdicholing and Lame Goenpa, by a considerable section of the population.

2. The burden of taxation was compounded when it came to dzongkhag level, where there were many high officials like dzongpon, droenyer, zimpon, tapon, gorab, etc. All had to be kept in a manner to which they had become accustomed at the expense of the people. As a result, His Majesty boldly dismantled a large number of dungkhags to reduce the tax burden on the people. In the mid 18th century, Bhutan had 126 dungkhags according to the list given in Desi Sherab Wangchuck’s biography. And, this must have been roughly the number of dungkhags that existed when His Majesty contemplated abolishing most of them.

TryKid ^{[dubious – discuss]} 12:01, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

"The Dynamics of Public Sector Reform: Implementation of the Position Classification System in Bhutan" by Lhawang Ugyel (a thesis, later adapted into a book, "Paradigm and Public Sector Reform") says [t]wo subdivisions in southern Bhutan were created in the early 1960s and 13 dzongkhags in northern Bhutan. The increase in the number of dzongkhags was to facilitate in the implementation of the development programs (Rose 1977). By 1974 there were 15 dzongkhags (Rathore 1974) and the number of dzongkhags presently stands at 20, which is further sub-divided into 205 gewogs. The thesis has some information on the administrative structure of Bhutan, but doesn't say anything about the "zones" and doesn't have enough information to pin down the history of "dzongkhags". The two cited works might have more information. Dhurba P. Rizal's "Administrative System in Bhutan: Retrospect and Prospect" appears valuable from the snippets, but I have no access to it. If someone could go scan it that would be very useful.

Fixing the history section would be difficult without more sources, which are looking difficult to access. There might be accessible sources for the current state though. TryKid ^{[dubious – discuss]} 13:04, 10 October 2022 (UTC)