Assam Gears up For Bihu Festival

Guwahati, Apr 14 : Assam is getting dressed up to greet "Bihu", a weeklong annual festival that marks the onset of Assamese New Year. In Guwahati, locals are thronging market to buy the traditional articles, particularly those associated with Bihu. The merry making festival Bihu is associated with dance, called Bihu Dance, a folk dance in which both young and old people dance, to the sounds of...

Weaving is The Traditional Livelihood For Women in Manipur

Handloom weaving is famous in Manipur,a north-eastern state of India.Handloom Industry is the largest cottage industry in Manipur.Only women weave marvelous handloom products.Women weavers from Wangkhei, Bamon Kampu, Kongba, Khongman, Utlou are famous for their skill. Traditional tribal shawls of various shapes and sizes are available in all over Manipur and other parts of India.These shawls...

Green Gold Wasted in Mizoram

Aizawl, Apr 13  : Mizoram’s bamboos, which are considered as the state’s ‘green gold’, have literally gone down in production during the past five years due to the government’s alleged failure to extract them properly. The report of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India for March 30, 2009 also slammed the Mizoram government for massive loss of funds due to poor implementation...

Lafarge to Pay Rs 100 crore For Afforestation of Meghalaya

New Delhi, Apr 13 : French multinational Lafarge on Monday agreed to the Centre’s proposal to increase its contribution from Rs 90 crore to Rs 100 crore towards afforestation and development of Meghalaya to get speedy permission to resume limestone supply from the state to its cement plant in Bangladesh. But the Supreme Court insisted on environment clearance for the 116 acres of forest land...

Biometric Ration Cards For Northeast Soon

Shillong, Apr 13 : The central government is working on introducing biometric ration cards in the northeastern states to weed out bogus cards and curb corruption in the distribution of subsidized food commodities, an official said Monday. "We are looking at the new technology to computerize the public distribution system (PDS) to ensure it is corruption free," union Food Secretary Alka Sirohi said....

For a Review of Counter-Insurgency Doctrine

By Praveen Swami WHEN TACTICS FAIL: A member of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) expresses shock over the massacre of his colleagues by the Maoists, in Jagdalpur, Chhattisgarh, in this April 9 photo by Arunangsu Roy Chowdhury. Key to India's failure in combating Maoist insurgency is an a historical, one-size-fits-all security doctrine. Eric Hobsbawm wrote: “There is nothing in the purely...

Ferment in The Northeast

By Udayon Misra A complicated situation in the Northeast, posing the gravest challenges to the Indian nation-state TROUBLED PERIPHERY - Crisis of India's North East: Subir Bhaumik; Sage Publications India Pvt. Ltd., B 1/I-1, Mohan Cooperative Industrial Area, Mathura Road, New Delhi-110044. Rs.595. The book opens with an overview of the cultural mix and diversity of India's North-East region...

'Laburnum...' on Northeast an Evocative, Powerful Read

Gripping, not in the sense of a thriller novel, but one in which the reader feels compelled to go on as events unfold in each of the tales. Temsula Ao's collection of short stories, "Laburnum- For My Head" is a sensitively written book, which draws inspiration from the vibrant and troubled region of northeast India. A bouquet of eight stories, the book is interesting because of its sheer diversity....