Akademi Award A Boost For Northeast Writers: Janice Pariat

By Manosh Das

Shillong, Sep 2 :  The first person from Meghalaya to receive Sahitya Academy award in English literature, Janice Pariat, is all about humility.

"I'm honoured. I hope this would be a step in recognizing the enormous wealth of English literature written in this part of the world by several young writers," the Assam-born Khasi author, who grew up in Shillong said over the phone from the UK.

Janice won this year's Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar, which is given to writers below the age of 35 years (usually for their first book), and awarded for work published in any of the major Indian languages recognized by the academy.

"The wonderful thing is that unlike most literary prizes, there is no discrimination/preference among novels, short stories, poetries, dramas - each are valued for their own worth," the young author said.

Nomination process for the prestigious award begins with a list of works sent by a preliminary panel of 10 referees. The works are then considered by a three-member jury selected by the president. Either by a consensus or a majority, the members then recommend a book for the award.

Asked on her take on contemporary writers in English in the northeast, Janice said, "Though I can't claim to be familiar with all the literature being written in English in the region, it certainly feels like an exciting, thriving phase. Aruni Kashyap's novel 'House with a Thousand Stories' has just been published, and so has Prajwal Parajuly's 'Gurkha's Daughter'. All this, of course, follows the literary accomplishments of established writers such as Temsula Ao, Mamang Dai, Mitra Phukan, Dhruba Hazarika, among many others".

"From Meghalaya, we have the very talented Robin Ngangom, Anjum Hasan, Siddhartha Deb, Daisy Hasan, Desmond Kharmawphlang, Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih, Samrat Choudhury, and several upcoming poets and writers (many of whose writings have been featured in Pyrta - the online literary journal that I edit). We have wonderful support system in place - whether something more formal like The Northeast Writers Forum, or an encouragement and informal mentorship that established writers offer to younger ones," she said. Janice attributed the coveted award to "all the story-tellers in my life".

When asked what got her into writing, Janice said, "I wanted to make sense of and re-imagine the world. Also, I wasn't particularly skilled as a musician or a painter and I had to choose a profession." On what keeps her writing, she said, "For the same reasons why I started writing in the first place - it's not really a choice."

The Seven Sisters Project

A phone call away

By Hansika Chopra


The Seven Sisters Project, aimed at bridging the information gap in the north-eastern States, uses the mobile phone to record stories on issues that concern and interest people of the region

“We came to this village in 1984. I was quite young at the time when I came with my parents and grandparents to settle in this area,” narrated Rajiv (name changed), an inhabitant of the Chakma settlement in Sibinosora in Mizoram. Residents of the settlement were forcefully evicted by prominent students’ bodies.

“In 1991, the State government introduced the New Land Use Policy (NLUP) programme for activities such as horticulture among many others. So the concerned village councils of Tlabung, and Lungsen had sought approval from the forest department to allow us to use these lands for these developmental projects under the NLUP programme. The then forest Minister, Mr. Zalawma, had ‘verbally’ allocated these areas…We toiled hard for many years and developed horticulture projects under the NLUP programme,” recounts Rajiv. Today, each of these projects is worth Rs. 20-25 lakh each. The evicted families have been forced to part with the hard work of over two decades and are struggling for a roof over their heads.

Rajiv’s story was recorded on telephone at the Seven Sisters Project’s toll free helpline number. Many such stories are finding an outlet thanks to the project which is a first of a kind cell-phone based revolution, aimed at bridging the information gap for the people living in the seven states of north-east India.


Arunachal Pradesh: Recurring soil erosion by NoaDihing River has forced people to relocate to forest land

Although the dearth of access to traditional media in the north-east has caused information gaps, the region has witnessed a massive cell phone and social media revolution. Making use of cell phone penetration, the project has introduced a toll free number (08376952143) where anyone from the seven states can call and record their reports or listen to previously recorded messages and comment on them, hence facilitating awareness among residents across the region.

The functioning of the project combines an interactive voice response system and the use of its Facebook page to create a mobile reporting network throughout the north-east region. The reports are filtered by a moderator and are published through the Seven Sisters Project’s website (www.sevensistersproject.org), Facebook page, Twitter handle and Soundcloud.

Shibayan Raha, founder of the project, who was infuriated by the indifferent approach of the central government and fellow Indians towards the north-east, says, “I realised if we can somehow connect people with a platform where they can call a toll free number to record their opinion/stories on issues they care about, then we will be able to at least make an effort to bridge this information gap.” The project uses an open source voice portal technology where the callers can record and listen to messages.

Like Rajiv, Meera, a Chakma refugee staying in Sakunalla, Diyun (Arunachal Pradesh) recorded her story on the helpline about her daughter Aleesha- born at Diyun Health Centre in 2011, who has not been issued a birth certificate.

Another woman in Thwaichung, Mizoram reported that the only source of drinking water for 41 families of her village is a tap that provides water once a week for 30 minutes. Other days of the week people have to walk to a small stream to collect drinking water that is not fit for human consumption. Similar stories of environmental degradation leading to soil erosion and dislocation of families have also come to light.

According to Shibayan, many stories expressing their support and demand for Gorkhaland are being recorded, and have increased in frequency ever since the State government has cut the cable TV supply in the region.

Prabhat Giri from Sikkim University on behalf of the Gorkha students in the University recorded a message on the helpline, urging the politicians who took part in the all-party meeting on August 16 in Darjeeling to take note that four generations have gone unheard while demanding a separate land for the Gorkhas.

The project receives almost daily reports from across the region and has become a beacon of hope for many. “What started as an idea has now gone to become a window for people who had no other means to talk about their issues. The Seven Sisters Radio has now become a source of information gathering, sharing and disseminating for people in these regions,” says Shibayan who is currently planning to take the model to Ladakh.

 Mizoram: This stream is the only source of drinking water for 41 families in Chakma village of Thwaichung.

Indian Government May Ban Gmail Use

The government will soon ask all its employees to stop using Google's Gmail for official communication.

Bangalore, Sep 2 : The government will soon ask all its employees to stop using Google's Gmail for official communication, a move intended to increase security of confidential government information after revelations of widespread cyberspying by the US.

A senior official in the ministry of communications and information technology said the government plans to send a formal notification to nearly 5 lakh employees barring them from email service providers such as Gmail that have their servers in the US, and instead asking them to stick to the official email service provided by India's National Informatics Centre.

"Gmail data of Indian users resides in other countries as the servers are located outside. Currently, we are looking to address this in the government domain, where there are large amounts of critical data," said J Satyanarayana, secretary in the department of electronics and information technology.

Snowden fallout

The move comes in the wake of revelations by former US National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden that the US government had direct access to large amounts of personal data on the internet such as emails and chat messages from companies like Google, Facebook and Apple through a programme called PRISM.

Documents leaked by Snowden showed that NSA may have accessed network infrastructure in many countries, causing concerns of potential security threats and data breaches. Even as the new policy is being formulated, there has been no mention yet of how compliance will be ensured.

Several senior government officials in India, including ministers of state for communications & IT Milind Deora and Kruparani Killi, have their Gmail IDs listed in government portals as their official email.

A Google India spokeswoman said the company has not been informed about the ban, and hence it cannot comment on speculation. "Nothing is documented so far, so for us, it is still speculation," Google said in an email response.

A senior official in the IT department admitted on condition of anonymity that employees turn to service providers such as Gmail because of the ease of use compared with official email services, as well as the bureaucratic processes that govern creation of new accounts.

"You can just go and create an account in Gmail easily, whereas for a government account, you have to go through a process because we have to ensure that he is a genuine government user."

Last week, IT Minister Kapil Sibal said the new policy would require all government officials living abroad to use NIC servers that are directly linked to a server in India while accessing government email services. Sibal said there has been no evidence of the US accessing Internet data from India.

Sunil Abraham, executive director of Bangalore-based research firm Centre for Internet and Society, said he agrees with the government's decision to ban Gmail for official communication and that any official violating this needs to be punished.

"After Snowden's revelations, we can never be sure to what extent foreign governments are intercepting government emails," he said. Abraham, however, called the government's decision a "late reaction", as the use of Gmail and other free email services by bureaucrats has increased in the past.

"Use of official government email would also make it easier to achieve greater transparency and anti-corruption initiatives. Ministers, intelligence and law enforcement officials should not be allowed to use alternate email providers under any circumstance."

Justice For Assaulted Tripura Doctor After 15 Years

Agartala, Sep 2 : After waiting for 15 years, a doctor from Tripura, who was picked up by two police officers and tortured in police custody has finally got justice. The Tripura high court on Thursday held the two police officers guilty of human rights violation and slapped a fine of Rs 50,000 on each of them.

The case was pending for judgment with the Agartala bench of the Guwahati high court ever since Sanjit Reang filed his writ petition in 1998, alleging that the then deputy superintendent of police, Arindam Nath, who is at present the SP (traffic), and the officer in charge of West Agartala police station, Rupak Chakraborty, who has retired now, beat him up in police custody without any valid reason.

A division bench comprising Chief Justice Deepak Gupta and justice Subhashis Talapatra observed that the incident was a gross violation of human rights because Reang was arrested and tortured in police custody without proper evidence.

Reang, who was posted in a remote location at that time, had come to his home in the Bijoy Kumar Chowmuhani area the city when one night a police team led by Nath and Chakraborty stormed the house and picked him up.

"Branding me as a collaborator of a banned militant outfit, they took me into custody and beat me up severely, which resulted in irreparable damage to my body. However, ultimately, they could not prove any of the allegations levelled against me," Reang said.

Reang's counsel, Chandrasekha Sinha said, "This was a clear case of violation of human rights by the policemen. The verdict has established the high-handedness of police in the name of raids and anti-insurgency operations in Tripura."

Government advocate Abhijit Ghosh said, "The incident occurred during such a period when militancy was at its peak and there was panic and tension among the civilians. We argued that it was difficult for police to immediately establish Reang's association with the militants." He added that the state government will take the decision as per the high court's direction and if the accused officers so desire, they may move the Supreme Court.

Police said the raid had been conducted on specific information of militant movement in the house. Later, it turned out that before the policemen could reach, the militants had fled.

Here’s Why India is Never Going To Be Safe For Women

By Sidin Vadukut

Protests can't succeed unless India's streets are well-policed and its courts are quick and efficient. Reuters/Danish Siddiqui

 

A few days ago, after news of the sexual assault case in Mumbai broke out, someone on Twitter said something that got me thinking. A female resident of Mumbai, presumably, lashed out after seeing the umpteenth tweet asking women in Mumbai to “take care” and “be safe.”

Enough of this patronizing nonsense, she said. Instead of asking women to “take care” it was time that men actually did something to make the city safer for women.

In the days since that attack, such outbursts from men and women alike have become common. And they have been part of a much broader collection of discussion and debates about women’s safety. There are several concurrent threads to these debates: How can we teach our men to respect women better? Is violence against women an expression of social faults, if so which ones? How can these faults be alleviated? How does the portrayal of women, women’s issues and violence against women in mass media play a role in making things better or worse? Should minors involved in sex crimes be treated as adults? What can we do to make our neighborhoods safer? More recently there has been substantial debate on the trivializing of the idea of rape in the form of jokes and in other contexts not directly related to sex crimes.

Essentially, I suppose we are all trying to figure out how India can be made safer and more empathetic for all women. And these lines of questioning are legitimate. They might eventually help us make our cities, towns, and homes safer. But not immediately, not right now.

Right now, make no mistake about it, we need something that forms the foundation of a safe society: a functioning law-and-order system. No amount of soul searching, cultural self-flagellation, sex education, local activism, and behavioral conditioning will succeed unless our streets are well-policed and our courts function with speed and efficiency.

And this is exactly why I am afraid India will remain an unsafe country for women for the foreseeable future. Now I know this is not the message that many campaigners for women’s safety want to hear. Many of them are optimistic that some kind of governmental or non-governmental campaigning will make India safer. But as long these campaigns are divorced from a substantial overhaul of law and order mechanisms, they will not work.

Let us just take the case of of the city of Mumbai, arguably India’s most commercially important metropolis. Mumbai has a sanctioned police strength of approximately 45,000 officers. Around 3,000 of these posts are currently vacant. The effective number police on the streets are even lower. The New Indian Express recently said that Mumbai had a serving police force of 33,000 officers.

Earlier this month, in response to a Right To Information request, Mumbai police revealed that in the first two months of this year 27,740 police personnel had been deployed on VIP security duty, generally meaning they guard politicians. It is unclear if these deployments were short or long term. But there is no question that this substantially reduces the number of police officers the city actually needs on its streets.

An optimistic estimate suggests that, on an ongoing basis, Mumbai police has around 20,000 police taking care of its population of around 20 million residents. Therefore, Mumbai enjoys an effective police coverage of approximately 100 police officers per 100,000. (This number can vary somewhat depending on how you approximate police and population. But by my reckoning, it gets no better than around 165 per 100,000.) The United Nations recommends coverage where a population of 100,000 are served by 220 to 250 police officers.

What about courts? It is common knowledge that Indian courts have millions of cases pending at any given point in time. Yet another Right To Information request, filed by the same applicant in June, found 49,170 cases of crimes against women pending in courts across the state of Maharashtra (Mumbai is its capital). This number has increased by 40% between 2008 and 2012. Of the 14,414 rape cases tried in Maharashtra last year, 13,388 remain pending.

To be sure, better police and faster courts will not solve these problems alone, and columnist Praveen Swami explains this, but I can think of no conceivable solution that does not include better police and faster courts as key elements.

The need for immediate intervention is staring us in the face. So why don’t the people who run Mumbai, Maharashtra or India see this? What prevents them from overhauling the police force and legal system? Why does law minister after law minister lament about the masses of pending cases in Indian courts … and then actually do nothing radical about it?

This situation is doubly ludicrous when you consider that the government is also struggling to create sufficient jobs each year to occupy its exploding youth demographic. The nation is simultaneously drowning in both unemployed youth and undelivered public services.

Is it because these reforms are overly complex?

Cleaning up the courts is admittedly complex. But surely hiring a few thousand policemen can’t be as complex as rolling out multi-billion dollar job guarantees, food security or biometric identity schemes? Those are all initiatives the government has somehow managed to undertake.

Is it too expensive?

One estimate puts the annual budget of Mumbai’s police force at about 6 billion rupees (or $91 million). Almost all of this, around 85%, goes toward paying salaries. Can Mumbai, the beating heart of India’s economy afford to, say, double this? Given that the budget of the city of Mumbai is 280 billion rupees ($4 billion), and the city has a GDP which is at least 10 times as much, an escalation wouldn’t break the bank.

Then why not?

Your guess is as good as mine. But I think it is because overhauling Mumbai’s police or drawing up a radical plan to create new courts and hire new judges is exactly the kind of granular reform that, from a political perspective, Indian governments find difficult to execute. And unless these reforms deliver an immediate return (and one that can be politically leveraged), most stakeholders aren’t going to be interested in at all. In a given term in office there are only so many fights you can fight. So why pick the tough ones?

This is perhaps why the life cycles of legislation such as the Food Security Bill are relatively short, while those of a politically unsexy but economically important nature such as a new Companies Bill take decades.

There is a peculiar pattern that often pops up when “India’s problems” are discussed on social networks or in the comments section of news websites. Somehow while all of India’s problems are all universal—rapes happen in the US also, corruption happens in China also, malnutrition happens in Indonesia also—all the solutions to India’s problems become unique and complex. Police reform is complex, education is complex, food is complex, taxation is complex and on and on.

Not always. Some of India’s problem are simple things with simple solutions that unfortunately have no political capital.

I am afraid efficient courts and more and better police are among these problems. And I don’t think we should expect major reforms any time soon. Of course I hope I am proven completely wrong and Mumbai, and Delhi, and every other local administration immediately implements steps to improve law and order. Volunteer action, social awareness campaigns and neighborhood watch programs can all make marginal improvements. They will not, however, make up for a law and order system that works.

Until that happens—and I have no intention of being patronizing or sexist here—my fellow citizens will have to take care and be safe.
**Sidin Vadukut is a London-based writer. He is the author of three novels and is currently working on a non-fiction book on Indian patriotism.

The Wireless Network With A Mile-Wide Range That The “internet of things” Could Be Built On

By Christopher Mims

Now you can drive your remote-controlled car over the horizon. Flutter

 

Robotics engineer Taylor Alexander needed to lift a nuclear cooling tower off its foundation using 19 high-strength steel cables, and the Android app that was supposed to accomplish it, for which he’d just paid a developer $20,000, was essentially worthless. Undaunted and on deadline—the tower needed a new foundation, and delays meant millions of dollars in losses—he re-wrote the app himself. That’s when he discovered just how hard it is to connect to sensors via the standard long-distance industrial wireless protocol, known as Zigbee.

It took him months of hacking just to create a system that could send him a single number—which represented the strain on each of the cables—from the sensors he was using. Surely, he thought, there must be a better way. And that’s when he realized that the solution to his problem would also unlock the potential of what’s known as the “internet of things” (the idea that every object we own, no matter how mundane, is connected to the internet and can be monitored and manipulated via the internet, whether it’s a toaster, a lightbulb or your car).

The result is an in-the-works project called Flutter. It’s what Taylor calls a “second network”—an alternative to Wi-Fi that can cover 100 times as great an area, with a range of 3,200 feet, using relatively little power, and is either the future of the way that all our connected devices will talk to each other or a reasonable prototype for it.

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Flutter’s range is 3,200 feet in open air, but multiple Flutters can also cover even larger areas in a “mesh” network.Flutter

“We have Wi-Fi in our homes, but it’s not a good network for our things,” says Taylor. Wi-Fi was designed for applications that require fast connections, like streaming video, but it’s vulnerable to interference and has a limited range—often, not enough even to cover an entire house.

For applications with a very limited range—for example anything on your body that you might want to connect with your smartphone—Bluetooth, the wireless protocol used by keyboards and smart watches, is good enough. For industrial applications, the Zigbee standard has been in use for at least a decade. But there are two problems with Zigbee: the first is that, as Alexander discovered, it’s difficult to use. The second is that the Zigbee devices are not open source, which makes them difficult to integrate with the sort of projects that hardware startups might want to create.

Flutter’s nearest competitors, Spark Core and Electric Imp, both use Wi-Fi, which limits their usability to home-bound projects like adding your eggs to the internet of things and klaxons that tell you when your favorite Canadian hockey team has scored a goal. Flutter’s other differentiator is cost; a Flutter radio costs just $20, which still allows Taylor a healthy margin above the $6 in parts that comprise the Flutter.

Making Flutter cheap means that hobbyists can connect that many more devices—say, all the lights in a room, or temperature and moisture sensors in a greenhouse. No one is quite sure what the internet of things will lead to because the enabling technologies, including cheap wireless radios like Flutter, have yet to become widespread. The present day internet of things is a bit like where personal computers were around the time Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs were showing off their Apple I at the Palo Alto home-brew computer club: It’s mostly hobbyists, with a few big corporations sniffing around the periphery.

Flutter radios connect to tiny Arduino computers, which is the de facto control and processing system for many startup and open source hardware projects.Flutter

“I think the internet of things is not going to start with products, but projects,” says Taylor. His goal is to use the current crowd-funding effort for Flutter to pay for the coding of the software protocol that will run Flutter, since the microchips it uses are already available from manufacturers. The resulting software will allow Flutter to create a “mesh network,” which would allow individual Flutter radios to re-transmit data from any other Flutter radio that’s in range, potentially giving hobbyists or startups the ability to cover whole cities with networks of Flutter radios and their attached sensors.

Taylor’s ultimate goal is to create a system that answers the fundamental needs of all objects in the internet of things, including good range, low power consumption, and just enough speed to get the job done—up to 600 kilobits a second, or about 1/20th the speed of a typical home Wi-Fi connection. One reason for that slow speed is that lower-bandwidth signals, transmitted in the 915 Mhz range in which Flutter operates, travel further. These speeds are more than sufficient when the goal is transmitting sensor readings, which are typically very short strings of data.

Relief for Students From Northeast who were denied admissions in Maharashtra

Mumbai, Sep 2 : Several students from the northeast who sought admissions to technical institutions in Maharashtra post the deadline (August 15) set by the Supreme Court have got some relief.

Intervention by the ministry of human resources development (MHRD) has ensured provisional admissions for the students in the institutions where they were originally allotted seat. The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) too has filed a review petition in the SC seeking an extension in the deadline for this year to facilitate admissions for affected students.

On July 1, the MHRD sent a letter to state governments stating that seats be reserved in technical institutes for northeast students. Around 1,500 students from the northeast were allotted seats in technical institutions in several states. The letter stated that the students could take admissions till August 30. However, a SC order set a deadline of August 15 for admissions to all technical institutes in the country. While some candidates sought admissions before the August 15 deadline, some could not, for several reasons. In Maharashtra, around 40 candidates were denied admissions as they arrived post August 15. - Yogita Rao

The AICTE has now filed a review petition seeking an extension in the admission deadline. "We have also sent letters to the technical board in all states asking them to give provisional admissions to the affected candidates up to September 15. The review petition was filed in the court three days ago and we are expecting the matter to be resolved," said AICTE chairman SS Mantha. A student from Sikkim claimed that their state government, AICTE and MHRD officials have ensured that all students who returned to their respective states, after not getting a seat, were called back.

Home Ministry Report Reveals Infiltration Woes

Shillong, Sep 2 : Meghalaya has been in a quandary over infiltration for the past many decades and the problem continues to persist till date with no concrete solution in sight.

Going by media handouts from the BSF, infiltrators have been detected almost every second day from the frontier areas of Meghalaya and the faces of infiltration are predominantly found in the coal mining areas of the state.

Meghalaya, a state blessed with enormous coal and limestone deposits in various pockets from Jaintia Hills to West Khasi Hills and to the Garo hills region, has arguably been at the receiving end of infiltration as “infiltrators” manage to squeeze themselves in and get refuge in the mining areas.

According to the annual report of the Union ministry of home affairs for the year 2012-13, the Indian side of the Indo-Bangladesh border passes through West Bengal (2,216.7km), Assam (263km), Meghalaya (443km), Tripura (856km) and Mizoram (318km).

The entire stretch, comprising plains, riverine belts, hills and jungles, is heavily populated and is cultivated right up to the border.

“The Indo-Bangladesh border is marked by a high degree of porosity and checking illegal cross-border activities has been a major challenge. The main problem is of illegal migration from Bangladesh into India,” the report added.

In order to prevent illegal immigration and other anti-national activities from across the border, the Centre had sanctioned the construction of border roads and fencing in two phases.

The total length of Indo-Bangladesh border sanctioned to be fenced is 3,359.59km of which 2,762.11km of fencing has been completed (up to December 31, 2012), the report stated.

The report, however, said there had been some problems in fencing certain stretches on the border because of riverine/low-lying areas, population residing within 150 yards of the border, pending land acquisition cases and protests by border people, which led to delay in completion of the project.

In addition to the fencing, 3,585.53km of border patrol roads were constructed out of a sanctioned length of 4,407.11 km.

In Meghalaya, the 198.06km first phase of border fencing has been completed.

Of the 264.17km second phase, 129.07km has been completed.

Of the border roads, 211.29km has been constructed in the first phase while only 152.24km has been completed out of the 320km second phase.

At the internal security meeting held in New Delhi in June this year, Meghalaya chief minister Mukul Sangma was candid when he touched upon the issue of infiltration.

He told the gathering that Meghalaya had a 443km border with Bangladesh and 695km border with Assam but had only 265 sanctioned posts of police officers and men under the prevention of infiltration scheme.

“There are about 125 BSF border outposts whose main responsibility is to guard the border and check illegal infiltration from across the international border. Considering the length of the international border, the existing number of posts under the PIF scheme is highly inadequate to deal effectively with the illegal influx of foreign nationals,” he had said.

He said Meghalaya had also been facing the problem of “influx of outsiders with doubtful citizenship” from the neighbouring states of Assam, Tripura and West Bengal “claiming to be genuine residents” of these states.

Since illegal influx of foreign nationals poses a threat to the demographic structure of the state, the chief minister had informed that an anti-infiltration directorate had been set up with 117 posts sanctioned in the first phase.

Another 206 posts would be sanctioned in the second phase in due course, he said.

Recently, Sangma had stressed the importance of the National Population Register (NPR) biometric enrolment, which is presently suspended in Meghalaya, to enable the state to detect and segregate non-citizens from genuine Indian citizens.

The chief minister had informed the Assembly last year that over 12,000 infiltrators had been detected between 2008 and July 2012 (See chart).

However, the popular demand, as spearheaded by more than a dozen pressure groups in the state, is the implementation of the inner-line permit (ILP) system to check influx and illegal immigration.

The ILP regulates visit of Indians to states where ILP regime is prevalent under the Bengal Eastern Frontier Regulation, 1873.

In terms of Section 2 of Regulation, the system is prevalent in the three northeastern states of Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram and Nagaland. Citizens of other states require a permit to visit these three states.

The main aim of the ILP is to prevent settling of other Indian nationals in states where ILP regime is prevalent to protect the indigenous/tribal population.