Municipal Solid Waste Management in Phuntsholing City, Bhutan

Municipal solid waste problem is a major concern in major cities in Bhutan. Despite the lack of reliable data on both waste composition and quantity, no studies have been conducted to identify problems and alternatives to improve the current system. The study objectives are: 1) to determine solid waste composition and generation rate; and 2) to investigate current solid waste management system. Six waste samples were selected in Phuntsholing city from three designated collection spots and from three collection vehicles and analyzed for their composition. Waste generation rate was computed from waste collected by collection vehicles. The investigation was carried out through interviews with municipal authorities, existing document reviews, and field observations. The organic fraction of solid waste composition comprised about 71 percent. The waste generation rate was estimated to 0.40 kg/capita.day. The current management system is inefficient, and recommendations are given to improve the current situation

Effective School Discipline Practices of Some Primary Schools in Pema Gatshel Dzongkhag

The study was conducted under Pema Gatshel Dzongkhag (district) to investigate the effectiveness of school discipline under Pema Gatshel district in Bhutan. The main objective of this article was to evaluate the perception of the effective school discipline according to the principals, teachers, and parents. This paper was a qualitative study based on in-depth semi-structured interviews which were limited to forty-five key participants from six different schools under the Pema Gatshel district. Data were analyzed employing content analysis. The major findings of this study revealed that for efficient functioning of school discipline policy in schools, various stakeholders like parents, teachers, students and the community should work collaboratively. The study also revealed that schools should include students and parents in the decision-making process particularly while trying to bring changes to school discipline policy

Incentive to Innovate: Dynamic Optimization Strategy in the Case of a Symmetric Duopoly

Technological dominance and spillovers play important roles in a firm’s decision to investment in innovated products. It is intuitive to think that a firm which is technologically ahead will dominate the market for innovated products. However, the question of the spillover advantage a firm gets when they are technologically behind makes the decision to invest in new technology more complex. Therefore, in this paper, I consider the investment in new product and cost of doing research, along with capital and level of technology, to be primary factors affecting a firm’s profit. I ask, when is it a good time to invest in new product and when is it appropriate for a firm to allocate more funding for research? I find that firms tend to do more research when they have more market share and invest less when the total capital in the market increases. They tend to invest more when they are technologically ahead and do more research when they are behind. This is a dynamic game because a firm’s decision to invest depends not only on its own level of technology but also on the rival firm’s level of technology and market share. The presence of technological spillovers also adds onto the dynamics of the game since it discourages the firm, which is technologically ahead, from investing in technological advances

What Confucius Might Say in a Free Society

Panel: Freedom’s Limits? Core Values in a Changing Worl

Challenges English teachers and students face in teaching and learning poetry in Class VI of Rangaytung Primary School, Chhukha Dzongkhag

The poetry question of class VI is marked out of 8 both in the mid-term as well as in the annual examination according to the English Curriculum Framework, Classes PP-XII, of which the poem should be from outside Reading & Literature, Class VI. After studying the marks scored by 14 students of class VI of Rangaytung Primary School, Chhukha in the mid-term examination, 2023, more than 75% of the students on average scored below 4. Therefore, the study found out what reasons students had for not fully understanding the poems taught in the classroom. The study also touched on the perceptions English teachers of class VI had on the partial understanding of poetry taught in the classroom by the students. The participants for the study were selected based on purposive sampling. The study adopted qualitative research design to collect data from the students and teachers. Qualitative thematic analysis was used to interpret the collected data. The findings of this study include difficulty in understanding the meaning of words because of the use of linguistics and taking the teaching and learning of poetry lightly by both the teacher and the students in the first place. As a consequence of this, students took less interest in learning poetry than other genres of literature. Teaching strategies used by the English teacher also played a vital role in making poetry learning interesting to the learners. Understanding of poetry was better when the teacher used simple sentences with appropriate examples to explain the poem. Moreover, poetry lesson were rarely repeated, which was actually necessary. Keeping all difficulties aside, the teacher played a crucial role in making poetry learning interesting to the children. Recommendations to English teachers of class VI are discussed separately towards the end of the study