Cholera Deaths Worry Assam Govt

By Samudra Gupta Kashyap

Guwahati, Nov 2 : With as many as 21 deaths occurring due to an outbreak of diarrhoeal diseases, including cholera, in a cluster of tea estates in Sonitpur district over two weeks, the Assam government on Monday decided to file cases against three tea estates for gross negligence of healthcare of labourers. The government also suspended three officials of the Health Department.

Assam Health Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said the state government was convinced that deaths due to diarrhoea and cholera had occurred because of gross negligence of the tea estate managements.

“The government is filing cases against the management of three such tea estates — Pratapgarh, Sadharu and Baghmari — all in the Biswanath sub-division in Sonitpur,” he said.

While the first case of cholera was reported from the Sakomatho tea estate in Biswanath on October 20, the first death was reported from Pratapgarh tea estate — owned by Williamson Magor, the largest tea company — a day later, official sources said.

Since then, over 200 persons have been affected in six tea estates, with most deaths occurring in Pratapgarh, Sadharu and Baghmari, they added.

DoT Sets Deadline For Subscriber Re-Verification in Northeast

Guwahati, Nov 2 : Mobile network operators offering services in the Assam and Northeast telecom circles have been called on by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to complete the re-verification of their subscribers by early next year before any unregistered customers are prevented from accessing their service.

According to India’s Economic Times, the regulator has said that after 19 January 2011 those subscribers in the two regions that have failed to re-provide their details to their respective operators will be disconnected.

Cellcos with a presence in Assam and the North East have, however, criticised the timeframe, with it understood that many believe they will be unable to process the subscriber data in time.

‘There are nearly 50,000 multi-brand mobile stores/distributors in the region and merely a few hundred have been security cleared by DoT's telecom equipment resource monitoring wing.

As a result, it will be pretty difficult for these franchisees to conclude the customer re-verification exercise of 20 million existing mobile users by 19 January as part of the new security rules,’ noted an unnamed executive at state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL).

Miss Kut 2010 is Divya Chingtham

Widespread Kut celebrations today

Imphal, Nov 2 : The Kuki-Chin-Mizo-Zomi people of Manipur will be celebrating Kut 2010 with pomp and gaiety in different parts of the state tomorrow.

The state level Kut 2010 will be celebrated with grand functions at the 1st Battalion Manipur Rifles Ground in Imphal.

Governor of Manipur, Gurbachan Jagat will be the chief guest, MP Rajya Sabha, Rishang Keishing, Minister of TD, District Council & Hills and Veterinary & Animal Husbandry, DD Thaisii, Minister of PHED and IPR & Tourism, TN Haokip will be guests of honour and president respectively at the inaugural function, which will start at 10.30 am.


Miss Kut 2010 Divya Chingtham (centre) along with 1st runners up Kimkhanthem Haokip (left) and 2nd runners up Khuraijam Rajeshwori (right) posing for lensmen after being crowned for their respective titles.

Dr Chalton Lien Amo, Chairman of State Level Kut Committee, will welcome the gathering.
Besides a lot of cultural programmes, Miss Kut Contest will also be held.

Chief Minister, Okram Ibobi, MLA and president of MPCC, Gaikhangam, Minister of Agriculture, Social Welfare and Minor Irrigation, N Loken and Minister of Power, Horticulture & Sericulture and Science & Technology, T Phungzathang Tonsing will be chief guest, guests of honour and president of the function respectively at the evening session of the programme.
The Kut celebration will also be held at other parts of the state where Kuki-Chin-Mizo-Zomi people settle, especially Kangpokpi, Chandel and Moreh.

Deputy Chairman, State Planning Board and MLA Bijoy Koijam will be the chief guest at the function of Moreh.

Chairman of Hill Areas Committee and MLA Thangmin Lien Kipgen, MLA Doukhomang Khongsai and MLA Haokholet Kipgen will be chief guest, guest of honour and president respectively at the celebration of Kangpokpi.

Delhi's Ashish Chopra in Love With The Northeast

By Devesh Gupta / Sanjay Kumar

A Punjabi by origin and a foodie by heart, Ashish Chopra has travelled extensively in the northeast and has documented its culture, cuisines and traditions.

Forty four -year-old Chopra has been travelling to the northeast along with his father since the age of three. A food critic and a writer, Ashish is the author of "NE Belly" - a book on the cuisines of the eight Northeastern states with his latest book being "A travel guide to North-East India".

To Chopra North-East India is an obsession that has taught and given him much.

"I thought the best way to reciprocate the love that I received from north-east was to write on people of Northeast and write positively. Because when you go to any place across India, the people of northeast are very sadly branded as chinkis, little realizing their diversity and versatility in their culture. So very few people know what northeast is all about," says Ashish Chopra.

He has made documentaries on Chins of Mizoram, the Nocte tribe of Arunachal and Konyaks of Nagaland.

Having travelled extensively through northeast, Ashish speaks many tribal languages.

He tells that he has studied the culture, food, language and the people of the region. Sharing his travelling experience to interior areas of the north- east region, Ashish says it was simply a great experience.

He says the real North-East is not In Guwahati, it is in the small villages like Jorhat, Mokokchung, Ukhrul, and others. "And being a natural traveller, I loved my adventure so I kept on traveling to newer areas at the grassroots levels, which helped me meet a lot of people," he tells.

Chopra's house in New Delhi reflects the kind of influence the northeast had on him all these years, as inside his house one notices the sofa covers made of fabric from Nagaland and wooden antiques from Manipur.

Talking about his obsession with the North East, Chopra says, "My whole designs are tribal designs from Northeast, they are primarily Naga to a large extent and they are quite colourful. My house is very much designed in Northeast style for a simple reason that at first I liked northeast, and then I started loving it, then became passionate about it and finally obsessed with it."

A former advisor to the Governor of Mizoram, Ashish is presently the Executive Director of the Institute for Environmental Management and Social Development.

He says that the Northeast is so much culturally rich and a vibrant region that there is always so much that remains to be explored.

Assam Police Bust Elephant Smuggling Ring

By Wasbir Hussain

In this Jan. 4, 2007 file photo, elephants come to camp in Kaziranga about 250 kilometers (156 miles) east of Gauhati, India. Indian police busted an elephant smuggling ring in northeastern Assam, arresting five people and seizing three wild elephants, two of them calves, authorities said Monday Nov. 1, 2010. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath, File) (Anupam Nath - AP)

Guwahati, Nov 1 : Indian police busted an elephant smuggling ring in the northeastern state of Assam, arresting five people and seizing three wild elephants, two of them calves, authorities said Monday.

Documents seized during the operation Sunday night showed the gang had been engaged in the illegal elephant trade for years, smuggling at least 92 elephants from the state to other parts of India over the past five years, said P. K. Dutta, superintendent of police in Kokrajhar, a district in the west of Assam.

Selling elephants is barred under Indian law and even getting permission to move domesticated elephants between states is a lengthy and complicated procedure.

Regardless, authorities say there remains a thriving trade in elephants, with many wealthy landowners in the states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh buying the elephants as status symbols.

Authorities say the elephants are usually transported by truck. The smugglers are suspected of colluding with forestry officials, who have checkpoints along the major roads to prevent this type of smuggling.

The police investigated the ring after a local conservation group, the Green Heart Nature Club, filed a written complaint last week, Dutta said.

After a three-day operation, authorities arrested five people and took custody of the three wild elephants, which did not have the identifying microchip implants required of all domesticated elephants, he said.

The group planned to smuggle as many as 10 elephants out in its latest operation, Dutta said.

The smugglers regularly captured wild elephants from the forests of Assam, trained them for a year or two, and then claimed they were the offspring of the state's many domestic elephants, Dutta said.

Wildlife authorities in Assam, home to more than 5,000 wild Asiatic elephants, denied the existence of the illegal elephant trade.

"We are examining the matter, but I can say there is no smuggling of elephants out of Assam," said Suresh Chand, the state's chief wildlife warden.

Aizawl Locality Bans Zawlaidi

Aizawl, Nov 1 : A few days after it has hit the market, Mizoram-made grape wine branded Zawlaidi (or love potion) has been banned in a locality here by a committee comprising of different NGOs and churches.

The joint action committee has served a diktat to a retail vendor in Bawngkawn locality, one of the ten licensed vendors in Aizawl, to move out of the locality if he wanted to continue his business.

''A joint action committee, comprising all NGOs and church denominations in Bawngkawn locality, has unanimously agreed to ban selling of grape wine. ''We have served an order to a lone vendor in our locality to discontinue his business of selling grape wine or move out of the locality,'' a local leader said. In a 'cleanliness drive', the joint action committee has literally cleansed Bawngkawn, which used to be a hub for drug peddlers and bootleggers in the past, of all such social evils.

Since Zawlaidi contains 14 per cent alcohol, it comes as a perfect substitute to liquor which is totally prohibited in the Christian dominated state since the past 13 years.

''The grapewine, with its high alcohol content, would certainly leave a negative impact on the society. So, we have decided to ban the drinks as preventive measures,'' the local leader said.

The Mizoram government in 2007 made an amendment to the Mizoram Liquor Total Prohibition Act, passed in 1997, to enable grape growers in Hnahlan and Champhai in northeastern parts of Mizoram to manufacture wine from their fruits of labour.

Even as the grape growers have heaved a sigh of relief at the governments move, the churches in Mizoram, who were behind the prohibition law, have expressed their resentment on the liberalisation of grape wine.

Hnahlan Grape Growers Society said that it has earned a revenue of Rs 27.82 lakh from selling 20,957 bottles of grapewine to the 14 licensed vendors across the state since October 16. The grape growers are happy as they would soon be able to repay their loan with which they had set up two wineries. In Hnahlan village 80 per cent of the total population of 670 families was engaged in producing grapes and 325 families in Champhai area.

Now, Schools in Tripura to Charge Only Exam Fee

Agartala, Nov 1 : The Tripura government has asked all school authorities in the northeastern state not to charge students  any payment except the examination fee, officials said here Sunday.

"No government, semi-government and government aided schools up to 12th standard are to be allowed to take any kind of fee except the examination charge from the students," an education department official told reporters.

According to the official, a large number of schools have been charging various kinds of fees from the students. These include development fee, library fee, annual cultural and sports fee, computer fee and magazine fee, among others.

This decision will benefit over 812,000 students of 4,400 schools. Since 1978, education in Tripura up to Class 12 has been free.

The examination fee ranges from Rs.20 to Rs.100.

Nagas Should Be Grateful to Bengalis: Rio

Kohima, Oct 31 : Nagaland Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio has said the Nagas should be grateful to Bengalis for the fact that the bengalis was instrumental in establishing the administrative system in the state during the initial period of statehood.

Delivering his inaugural speech at the Nagaland Day celebration at ICCR Auditorium in Kolkata yesterday, Mr Rio made a special mention of the invaluable services rendered to Nagaland by former Governor Shyamal Dutta.

Mr Rio also mentioned the contribution of Mr Dutta towards various developmental initiatives in the state, official sources said today. Mentioning that he was once a student of Sainik School, Purulia, and the college in which he received higher education was in Darjeeling, Mr Rio said he was mentally integrated with Bengalis and their culture.

''I feel at home in their company,'' Mr Rio added. Speaking on the occasion, former governor Shyamal Dutta expressed his fond memories during his stay in Nagaland.

''Nagaland is a lovely state. It is a place known for its people and culture. The diverse culture of Nagaland is not only unique but also bold and beautiful.