India's Remote River of Tea

By Roderick Eime CARRY ON: Hindu men pray to the Hindu Sun God during the religious festival Chhat Puja in Guwahati, Assam. The engines pushed and pushed, churning great clouds of silt in the water, but we were stuck. The Brahmaputra River, a wide voluminous waterway, carries enormous amounts of water and silt all the way from Tibet on its journey to the Bay of Bengal, where it joins forces...

Nasim Akhtor Leads The First Ever Team From Northeast India to Climb Mt Everest

By Teresa Rehman It's a bold decision to take at the age of 53. But Nasim Akhtor, the first woman mountaineer from Northeast India, is as strong as the lofty Himalaya. At an age when most retire from sports, she has taken the ultimate vow - to lead the first ever team from Northeast India to climb Mt Everest. There is no tinge of misgiving to her resolve. "I have everybody's love and prayers," she...

The Learning Curve

‘Having thrown away our tribal values, what we are clinging to today are simply remnants of a lost culture’ By Patricia Mukhim Last week in these columns, I looked at the neighboring state of Mizoram in an effort to understand its society better. After all, a state without a people is a vacuum. The article elicited a phenomenal number of responses from the Mizo Diaspora spread across the universe...

Battle Over Cannons of Waterloo

Aizawl, Mar 30 : Battle lines have been drawn between the Mizoram unit of the Indian National Trust for Art and Natural Heritage (INTACH) and the Assam Rifles over possession of two cannons which were used in the battle of Waterloo in 1815, reports PTI. The Mizoram unit of INTACH said that the two pieces of artillery displayed at the Assam Rifles battalion headquarters since 1892 were taken away...

Tripura Constitutes Police Accountability Commission

Agartala, Mar 30 : The Tripura government has constituted a police accountability commission to ensure "impartial and efficient" policing, an official said here Sunday. "The four-member commission, constituted Saturday, would formulate guidelines for efficient, effective, responsive and accountable policing and identify performance indicators," the police official told IANS. Former Tripura advocate...

Meghalaya Plans ‘Seed Money’ For The Weaker Section

Shillong, Mar 29 : The Meghalaya government has planned to arrange ''seed money'' to the weaker sections of society to raise loans and take up income generating schemes. "The government is planning to introduce a scheme to provide seed capital to beneficiaries to raise loans and take up income generating schemes. This will facilitate the enhancement of the flow of credit to marginal farmers, especially...

The Best Paper Fold Pinhole Ever

We've seen our share of pinhole cameras before, including a room sized pinhole and one that uses Polaroids. However, we've never seen a pinhole camera as nice as the one from Francesco Capponi (AKA dippold) before. You can print it on paper (A4!) so all you really need to have is a printer (and if you are reading this via computer, I assume you have one right to your left). You'd need a thick...

Northeast Woman Makes Computer Learning Easy

Indrani Medhi Guwahati, Mar 29 : A young woman from Assam has achieved honors in the challenging realm of computer literacy. What is more she, along with two co-workers, have earned a patent from the US Patent and Trademark Office last year. Indrani Medhi, an associate researcher with Microsoft, has developed text-free user interfaces designed to help illiterate and semi-literate users for whom...