Shillong, Nov 4 : Health authorities in Meghalaya Sunday sounded a dengue alert after 18 people from Tura, the district headquarters of West Garo Hills, tested positive for the virus in about the last four days.
"We have sounded a dengue alert in the district after 18 people, who were down with flu-like symptoms for the past few days, tested positive for dengue," Pravin Bakshi, the district magistrate of West Garo Hills, told IANS.
Initially, the patients were admitted to the Tura civil hospital. They were later discharged, but are still under medication, the official said.
Bakshi said health officials have been issuing public notices to alert the people on the disease, while a team of medical officials from Shillong, Meghalaya state capital, rushed in to Tura to monitor the situation.
"A team of epidemiologists will also visit the district to study the pattern of the disease," Bakshi, who is also the chairman of the district health society, said.
Health officials will also undertake fogging in various localities to ensure that aedes mosquitoes, which are responsible for the outbreak of dengue, do not find breeding ground.
Bakshi said that he has directed hospital authorities across the state to provide adequate treatment and medicines to those suffering from the disease.
Dengue is a tropical disease. Common symptoms include fever, headache, muscle and joint pains and skin rash. There is no vaccine for dengue and the only way to reduce infections is to improve hygiene levels so as to prevent mosquito bites and stop mosquitoes from breeding.
It is particularly difficult to create a vaccine because the disease is caused by different viruses and there are no animal models available for testing.
The disease kills over 5,000 Indians every year, and remains a seasonal threat, particularly during the monsoon.
When
a film student from Arunachal Pradesh decided to make a film about
home, his village volunteered to be the cast and crew. Yolande D'Mello
reports.
When 33-year-old filmmaker Sange Dorjee began work on his first film,
he had his entire family, including his wife and in-laws, pitching in.
“We had a little money that my dad contributed, so we tried to cut
costs. I had members of my family playing the roles of drivers, cooks,
cleaners, etc,” says Dorjee who screened Crossing Bridges, his first
feature film at the Mumbai Film Festival.
The 100-minute drama about Tashi, a protagonist who mirrors the
director’s emotions, was shot in his native village of Shertukpen in
Arunachal Pradesh and aims to immortalise the rich culture of the
community that is eroding with time. “Young people leave the village for
education or employment and then become infrequent visitors in their
own home,” says Dorjee.
Not much has changed in Shertukpen. The main occupation is agriculture
and in the last three years, natives have taken to growing cash crops
like tomatoes. Two years ago, the first mobile network tower was set up
in Shertukpen, five years ago the village got electricity (it lasts for
4-5 hours a day) and in the last seven years, three schools have been
built in the two villages that house the tribe with a population of
3,000.
“I’m fluent in my mother tongue,” admits Dorjee, who studied in
Itanagar and Delhi and then graduated from Satyajit Ray Film &
Television Institute in Kolkata.
The dialect of Shertukpen does not have a written script. Stories and
songs must be passed on orally. “But when I sat down with the village
elders, I realised that they were starting to forget the songs and there
were disagreements about what the songs meant,” explains Dorjee. Other
aspects are already fading even in the homeland. These include dances
that last the length of the day, prayers that invoke rainfall and
shamans who are taught about medicine from spirits. The filmmaker wanted
to capture this “on film because it is forever”.
To do so, Dorjee employed the help of the entire village, where he
prepared and shot for four months. Members of the community were chosen
to act, Dorjee provided the amateur actors with the situation and the
actors wrote the dialogues.
The director’s next film will address social issues in the northeast.
According to him, the region has enough issues to feed film scripts for
several lifetimes. However with the current state of apathy towards
issues in the region, it would be more than helpful to filmmakers like
Dorjee if there was a dance to secure funding as well just like the rain
dance.
The director
Crossing Bridges was shot in the hilly villages of Arunachal Pradesh
using a Canon 5D. The film will be showcased at the upcoming
International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK) in December.
This is the director’s first film since he graduated from Satyajit Ray Film & Television Institute in Kolkata.
Sange Dorjee is also working on preparing a database of songs and
folklore by recording them on film. He has identified and translated 20
such sogns and 40 stories so far.
In this excerpt from the forthcoming Junkyard Planet, author Adam Minter explores China's central role in the world's vast global recycling trade.
By Adam Minter
A Shanghai scrap yard (Adam Minter) China’s
reputation as the “world's factory” is well-established. But what
happens to everything the world throws away? Since 2002, the
Shanghai-based journalist Adam Minter has sought to find out. The son
and grandson of scrap metalists, Minter traveled throughout the world to
investigate how what we discard—and reuse—helps drive the global
economy.
Minter, who has written for a variety of publications (including both the print and digital versions of The Atlantic), now writes a weekly column on China for Bloomberg. In this excerpt from his forthcoming book Junkyard Planet, which will be published by Bloomsbury Press on November 12, Minter travels to the epicenter of the global scrape trade: southern China.
I remember the first time I reported in Foshan, China, population 7 million.
I flew into Guangzhou Airport, where I was met by a scrap dealer, his
sleek BMW, and a fresh-from-the-countryside driver. It was 2002, and
Foshan wasn’t much more than a spread-out set of underdeveloped villages
somewhere west of a Chinese wherever. I’d only been in-country a couple
of weeks at that point, and I’d had trouble finding Foshan on a map.
This all seemed like a bad idea.The drive from the airport traversed
newly built highways and not so newly built country roads lined with
high-voltage power lines that sagged to a few feet off the ground.
Overloaded delivery trucks were the dominant means of transportation,
jamming up the roads and—when there were shoulders—the shoulders, too.
Back then it took almost two hours to reach the faux-rococo
Fontainebleau Hotel, a yellowed porcelain doily in the heart of Foshan’s
Nanhai District.
Cigar-chomping scrap dealers from around
the world sat in baroque chairs and discussed where they’d get a decent
hamburger when they made it up to Shanghai on the weekend.
By then, Nanhai was already one of the world’s biggest processors
of scrap metal, and you only needed to walk into the lobby to know it.
Set amid lush, manicured landscapes that would make Louis XIV
blush, cigar-chomping scrap dealers from around the world sat in
baroque chairs and discussed where they’d get a decent hamburger when
they made it up to Shanghai on the weekend. But that wasn’t all: at any
hour of the day, you could walk into the lobby of that hotel and find at
least a couple of Caucasian scrap exporters having tea, coffee, or
whiskey with a couple of Chinese scrap importers while some of Guangdong
Province’s finest prostitutes sashayed by, on the way to visit clients
upstairs. If you needed to know the price of insulated copper wire—well, the global market was being made right there, all day and all night long.
Jet lag defined much of what happened in the Fontainebleau in those
days. I remember seeing scrap guys consuming breakfast at midnight,
steaks at 7:30 a.m., and poorly mixed cocktails any time at all. But that
was just as well, because scrap processing was (and often still is) a 24-
hour-a-day activity in southern China. It had to be: Two decades into
the country’s modern development, everything was starting to
accelerate: airports, highways, apartments, cars. And everything,
needless to say, needs metal.
Take, for example, subways: On the day I moved to Shanghai, it
had precisely three subway lines. Ten years later it’s the world’s
largest system, with 11 lines and 270 miles of tracks. However, China
lacks ready access to sufficient raw materials of its own to build all
those subways, so in very short order it’s become a net importer of
scrap copper, aluminum, steel, and the other metals needed in the
infrastructure of a modernizing society.
Back then, if you were jet-lagged and had an amenable scrap-metal host
(and they were all amenable if it meant access to American scrap metal),
you could head out to the scrapyards in the dead of night. You’d arrive
in the processing zones via expensive cars that zigzagged down a narrow
brick-lined alley, out into a boulevard with murky, poorly lit signs,
back into an alley, finally pulling up at some metal gate
indistinguishable from other metal gates. The driver would honk, the
owner would roll down his window so the guard could see him, and a
worker would push aside the gate. Then you’d drive into a wide lamplit
space, the headlights bouncing off piles of metal fragments, giant bales
of wire, and, off to the side, a shed where two or three men—it was
mostly men—fed scrap cables into machines that ran an incision along the
insulation. Nearby, another team—often female—used that incision to pull away the insulation and expose the copper wire.
What I saw was so alien—except for all of that scrap. I knew
what that was. It looked like what we used to send to China, only now it
was in China. Automobile scrap (Adam Minter) Meanwhile, over in the farthest corner of the yard, the flicker of flames
might send black smoke into the not-quite-as-dark night. The smell
would be noxious (and, depending on the wire, dioxin-laced), but the
goal would be anything but: profit. Wires too small to run through the
stripping machines were a favorite item to burn, but anything would do
if copper demand was strong; in the morning, the copper could be swept
out of the ashes. One night, I recall clearly, I saw a row of a
halfdozen electrical transformers—the big cylinders that hang on
power lines and regulate the power—smoking into the night. When I
realized what they were, I backed off: older transformers contain highly
toxic PCBs. But nobody seemed to mention that to the workers who,
through the evening, poked at the flames. I didn’t like it, but there’s
not much to be said when you’re standing in the middle of a scrapyard in
a village you’ve never heard of in a province you’ve just barely heard
of, as the guest of somebody you’ve just met. I wasn’t sure that I was
in much position to be complaining, anyway: I’m a child of the industry
too.
To be honest, I was shocked by the number of people who worked in these
scrapyards, and by their low pay. But I was not shocked by the menial
jobs, and I was not surprised by the pollution. After all, my
grandmother and her siblings cleaned metal into adulthood, and her
younger brother, Leonard, told me that he knew how to “break” a
motor—that is, take it apart with hammers and pliers, and extract the
copper—as well as anybody in the Twin Cities. That’s what you do when
you’ve got nothing else— and their generation didn’t have much else.
That wasn’t the only thing the Chinese and my family had in common.
For example, I’m not ashamed to admit that my family often
paid contractors to burn our wire in farm fields outside Minneapolis (we
also ran an aluminum smelter with an open smokestack—arguably a
worse off ense). If it couldn’t be burned, it would’ve been landfilled,
and so we were doing what countless other scrapyards were doing in those
days: using the cheapest means available to clean up other people’s
messes.Those days are over (for my family, at least) but I know of
people who still do it in North Dakota— and there isn’t an impoverished Chinese farmer among them.
To be sure, Foshan in the early 2000s was far more polluted than anything I saw in the United States while growing up in the 1980s and ’90s, and surely more polluted than what my great-grandfather knew in his early years. But from my perspective, that difference was a matter of scale, concentration, and history. For better or worse, they weren’t doing anything in 2002 that we didn’t (or wouldn’t) do in 1962. They were just doing much, much more of it. And as dirty as it might have looked at times, I didn’t get the sense that the people around Foshan felt that scrap was “dumped” on them. Instead, they actively imported it, or they migrated from other provinces to work on it.
The pay, after all, couldn’t be beat, especially if you were
uneducated and illiterate. Depending on the scrapyard, salaries might be
anywhere from 10 to 20 percent higher than what the local high-tech
factory might pay. By U.S. standards, though, it wasn’t much: maybe $100
per month plus room and board. Still, if your prospects were limited to
a life of subsistence farming, that was more than enough money to
send home to pay school fees. The next generation would have a better
life, and the negative health consequences of scrapyard conditions could
be worried about later.
***
In 2011 I fly into Guangzhou on one of my twice-yearly trips to its scrapyards,
and lo, there’s a subway that will take me to Foshan in less than an
hour. Nanhai, which had once felt to me like a Wild West
outpost divorced from all non-scrap-metal reality, is now another suburb
of yet another Chinese megalopolis (Guangzhou: population 20 million
plus). As I climb out of the station, I glance around me: I’m at the
intersection of two busy, newly paved roads and four pieces of entirely
empty farmland. Two blocks away, however, is the incoming wave of
wealth: dozens of construction cranes hovering over dozens of
high-rises, some as tall as 30 stories, each taking a bite out of open
space recently home to farms. I roll my suitcase in their direction,
through crabgrass and dirt littered with paper instant noodle bowls, to
the front door of a new five-star Intercontinental Hotel, next to a new
three-block-long shopping mall.
When people ask me why China needs all the scrap metal Americans send
to them, I wish I could show them the view from my hotel room that day.
20 stories below is that shopping mall, as big as anything I grew up
visiting in suburban Minneapolis. It required steel for the structure,
copper and aluminum for the wiring, brass for bathroom fixtures, and
stainless steel for all of the sinks and railings. And that’s just the
start.
Then there’s this: On the other side of the mall, in all directions,
are dozens of new high-rises—all under construction—that weren’t
visible from the subway and my walk. Those new towers reach 20 and 30
stories, and they’re covered in windows that require aluminum
frames, filled with bathrooms accessorized with brass and zinc fixtures,
stocked with stainless steel appliances, and—for the tech- savvy
households—outfitted with iPhones and iPads assembled with aluminum
backs. No surprise, China leads the world in the consumption of
steel, copper, aluminum, lead, stainless steel, gold, silver, palladium,
zinc, platinum, rare earth compounds, and pretty much anything else
labeled “metal.” But China is desperately short of metal resources of
its own. For example, in 2012 China produced 5.6 million tons of copper,
of which
2.75 million tons was made from scrap. Of that scrap copper, 70
percent was imported, with most coming from the United States. In other
words, just under half of China’s copper supply is imported as scrap
metal. That’s not a trivial matter: Copper, more than any other metal,
is essential to modern life. It is the means by which we transmit power
and information. So what would happen if that supply of copper were cut off ? What if Europe
and the United States decided to embargo all recycling to China, India,
and other developing countries? What if, instead of importing scrap
paper, plastic, and metal, China had to find it somewhere else? Some
Chinese industries would substitute other metals for the ones that it
couldn’t obtain via recycling—that’s technically doable in many
cases—but for some applications (like the copper used in sensitive
electronics) substitutions are not possible. That leaves mining. To make
up the loss of imported scrap metal, there’d need to be a lot of holes
in the ground: even the best copper ore deposits require one hundred
tons of ore to obtain one ton of the red metal. What would the
environmental cost of all that digging be? Would it exceed the
environmental cost of recycling the developed world’s throwaways? What’s
worse?
***
In October 2012 I drive north on Minnesota’s Highway 53 into the so
called Iron Range, which once supplied the American steel industry with
some of the world’s purest ore. As I approach Virginia, Minnesota, I
begin to see the high, looming walls of dirt excavated from pits as
deep as 450 feet, and as wide as 3.5 miles. They look like crater walls
from the highway, left by meteor impacts and defining the landscape for
miles. If you climb one (I did), you’ll look out at a lifeless gray
moonscape. This is what’s left behind when steel is made from iron ore,
and not scrap metal. I continue north for nearly an hour and then take a
right turn just outside the town of Ely, onto Highway 1. It’s beautiful
out here, green, lush, and uninterrupted. I see only two other cars on
the road for the first 10 miles; I stop my car on bridges over the
shimmering blue Kawishiwa River without fear of being hit; I close my
eyes down by the water, the only thing cutting the heavy blanket of
silence the individual
lapping waves.
Foshan, China, is the living, breathing
alternative to the mine that will one day be dug somewhere near Spruce
Road. It’s not the cleanest industrial town I’ve ever seen, but it
doesn’t leave me with a feeling of intense personal loss.
I follow directions given to me earlier that morning and take a
sharp left on to Spruce Road. There, at the intersection, is a
bumper-sticker festooned minivan that belongs to Ian Kimmer, staff
member with Friends of the Boundary Waters, a group that aims to
protect, preserve, and restore the federally designated million-acre
Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW), one of the largest
unspoiled regions in the United States.
Ian has a big job. From the time the BWCAW was established in 1978 until now, the communities that surround it have expressed considerable hostility to the idea of an unexploitable wilderness in their midst. From their perspective, wilderness inhibits growth and the resource extraction industries that their towns and families were built upon. So far, they haven’t made much progress in turning back or damaging the mostly pristine status of those million acres. But that’s likely to change, and the single factor responsible for the shift is one that scrap-metal men know well: the price of copper.
For decades, geologists, mining companies, and miners have
known that the land around the BWCAW contains deposits of copper ore.
But those ore deposits are of such low quality that nobody could figure
out how to mine them profitably. Then, in the 2000s, China entered
the market for copper. What had once been worth 60 cents per pound
became an occasionally $4-per-pound commodity, and a low-grade,
unprofitable ore deposit became a mother lode that mining executives
speculate might be the largest untapped extractable copper reserve in
the world, worth around $100 billion.
Ian shakes my hand, takes a seat in the front seat of my Saturn,
and sends me down the rutted dirt lane that is Spruce Road. On the left
side, he notes, is the BWCAW. On the right, he says, pointing, is where
the mining companies are doing test drilling.
“It’s that cut-and-dried?” I ask.
“Yep.” He asks me to stop, and we walk up a hill. Near the top, we
reach a crumbling gray and red rock outcropping. It contains copper ore,
he explains, as well as something called sulfides. When rain or snow
comes into contact with sulfide ore like this, Ian explains, it produces
caustic sulfuric acid. “That’s why the rock is so crumbly.”
Ian points at the base of the outcropping, where a
several-foot-long streak of dirt is completely devoid of vegetation.
“That’s where the acid leaches out and down the hill,” he explains,
killing the vegetation. The phenomenon is not unique to northern
Minnesota. Sulfide ores are mined around the world, and the left over
rock—the tailings—have become a long-standing environmental problem,
contaminating rivers and lakes, and killing vegetation and the wildlife
that depends on a clean environment.
According to Twin Metals, the mining company that controls the rights to
the ore on this side of Spruce Road, Ian and I are standing atop 13.7
billion pounds of copper, 4.4 billion pounds of nickel (used to
make stainless steel), and some of the world’s richest untapped precious
metal reserves outside of South Africa. Twin Metals hasn’t received the
permits to mine, yet, but if and when they do, each ton of copper will
require the processing of as much as 100 tons of ore. Multiply 100 tons
of sulfur-bearing ore by the 13.7 billion tons of copper beneath my
feet, and the scale of the problem becomes epic.
What will happen to the 99 tons of sulfite rock once the copper has been
extracted from it? Some will go back into the ground, Twin Metals
claims, but an unknown percentage of those billions of tons will need to
remain on the surface, exposed to rain and snow.
But that’s not the only surface impact of this proposed project.
Twin Metals is promising an underground mine—an “underground city”—using
a method called “block caving.” Superficially, at least, block
caving sounds like a great compromise: the miners get the ore, and the
wilderness remains untouched. But that’s not how things work in reality.
At some point, the surface will subside into all of the space left
behind by the excavated ore, leaving a landscape substantially different
from the one that was there before the mine. Rivers and creeks might be
redirected; new lakes might be created. But that’s the thing: nobody
knows for sure. The one thing everyone knows, though, is that the unique
character of this natural landscape will forever be altered.
Ian and I get back into the car, and he directs me down Spruce Road and
an in-progress logging operation just off the BWCAW boundary. Trucks are
loading freshly cut logs onto flatbeds, leaving behind little more than
scrub. But Ian wants me to look past the logging, to two chest-high
pipes painted red and sticking out of the ground like pins. “That’s a
test drilling site,” he tells me. “There’s hundreds of them all over the
place. They’re looking for the richest places to run the mine.”
No Chinese company is involved in the Twin Metals project (the company
is a joint venture between Canadian and Chilean firms), but Chinese
demand is what makes the mine a virtual certainty. While Twin Metals
investigates northern Minnesota, the Chinese are already digging some of
the biggest and most controversial copper mines in the world today. In
Afghanistan, the Aynak mine threatens ancient Buddhist sculptures. In
Burma, a copper mine run by the Chinese military is destroying ancient
farmland and causing mass protests.
Let me be clear: a doubling of U.S. copper scrap exports to
China wouldn’t halt this destructive trend. But it might just reduce
some of the demand for that virgin copper.
In any event, when it comes out of the ground, all of that Chinese
mined virgin copper will have competition—from imported scrap metal, as
well as from the scrap metal that the Chinese are generating in
greater volumes at home. But cut off access to imported scrap copper,
and the demand for mined copper will only grow— including the demand to
allow mining in more places like Spruce Road.
Foshan, China, is the living, breathing alternative to the mine
that will one day be dug somewhere near Spruce Road. It’s not the
cleanest industrial town I’ve ever seen, but unlike Spruce Road and its
test drilling sites, it doesn’t leave me with a feeling of intense
personal loss. If anything, I always leave Foshan energized.
***
Abandoned cars near the Great Salt Lake in 1974 (US Environmental Protection Agency)
For the last two decades, much of the U.S.-and European-generated scrap
metal exported to China flowed into Foshan, home of the
Fontainebleau Hotel. But these days, if you’re riding on the elevated
highway that cuts through and above most of Foshan, you won’t see any
piles of metal, much less the smoke of burning wire and unvented
furnaces. The people who live in Foshan’s expensive new high-rises won’t
tolerate it. Instead, you’ll just see under-construction buildings and
long strip malls filled with restaurants and small workshops that sell
construction-related supplies.
These days you need to turn off the highway, down the narrow city
streets, and then into the even narrower lanes and alleys of
Nanhai. The buildings are one and two stories high, and every one sits
behind a high brick wall. But if you’re lucky or—even better—invited, a
gate will open here or there, and you’ll see piles of baseball-and golf
ball-sized metal chunks; neat stacks of baled-up wire; machinery that
takes fistsized chunks of shredded automobiles and sorts them by size;
and workers slowly combing through those same chunks, sorting them by
metal type. It’s a cleaner and wealthier Foshan, where worker salaries
have quadrupled in a decade and many of the earliest and biggest
recyclers sit
on fortunes worth hundreds of millions.
I saw workers in little more than
T-shirts, cotton slacks, and sandals working around open furnaces; I saw
other workers using cutting machines and acetylene torches with their
bare hands; and even today I’m not surprised to see scrapyard employees
going about their work in flip-flops.
Aizawl, November 2: The Congress
today re-nominated all its sitting 32 MLAs except two legislators for
elections to the 40-member Mizoram Assembly and said that it would
contest the state polls alone and would put up candidates in all the
seats.
Mizoram Chief Minister Lal
Thanhawla would contest from two seats - his home turf Serchhip
constituency and also from neighbouring Hrangturzo seat in Serchhip
district in the coming election to be held on November 25 as per the
candidate list announced by the party today.
Presently the Hrangturzo seat is held by Lalthansanga of the Mizoram’s People’s Conference.
The
Congress which bagged 32 seats in the 2008 assembly polls re-nominated
all its MLAs except Revenue and Excise Minister J H Rothuama and former
minister Nirupam Chakma.
In place of
Rothuama, state PCC Mahila president T B C Tlangthanmawii would contest
from the Aizawl West - I while Chakma would be replaced at Tuichawng
seat by the present chief executive member (CEM) of the Chakma
Autonomous District Council (CADC) B D Chakma.
Top
party leaders -- Home Minister R Lalzirliana and Finance Minister H
Liansailova and Assembly Speaker R Romawia would contest from Tawi,
Aizawl North-II and Aizawl North-I respectively.
Opposition
Mizo National Front (MNF), MPC and Maraland Democratic Front (MDF)
combine have announced 12 candidates and the rest would be announced on
Monday while the Zoram Nationalist Party (ZNP) would also announced its
official nominees on Monday.
Following is the list of 40
Congress candidates for Mizoram Assembly election issued by
AICC tonight:
Name of Constituency
Candidates Selected
-------------------- -------------------
Hachhek - ST
Lalrin Mawia Ralte
Dampa - ST
Lal Robiaka
Mamit - ST
John Rotiuangliana
Tuirial - ST
Hmingdailova Khiangte
Kolasib - ST
P.C. Zoram Sangliana
Serlui - ST
K. lalrinthangao
Tuivawl - ST
R.L. Pianmawia
Chalfilh - ST
Dr. Ngurdingliana
Tawi - ST
R. Lalzirliana
Aizawl North-I-ST
R.Romawia
Aizawl North-II-ST H. Liansailova
Aizawl North-III-ST Lal Thanzara
Aizawl East-I R.
No nominations filed for Mizoram Assembly polls till now
An election official checks an EVM before taking it to the respective
constituency from Aizawl
No nominations have been filed so far for the coming
40-member Mizoram Assembly elections scheduled for November 25, even as
the filing of nominations started from Friday last.
State Joint Chief Electoral Officer H. Lalengmawia told PTI that no nomination has been received till 3 p.m. on Sunday.
The filing of nominations will continue till November 8, he said.
Meanwhile,
the ruling Congress has announced its candidates for 40 seats with 31
seats to be contested by sitting legislators and Chief Minister Lal
Thanhawla contesting from two seats -- his home turf Serchhip as well as
from the Hrangturzo constituency, now being held by Mizoram People’s
Conference (MPC).
There were five new faces while
veteran politicians like former speaker Hiphei and former chief
executive member of the Lai Autonomous District Council C.
Ngunlianchunga also in the fray.
Opposition Mizo
National Front (MNF), MPC and Maraland Democratic Front (MDF) forging a
pre-poll alliance under the banner of Mizoram Democratic Alliance (MDA)
had announced 12 candidates and other 28 names would be announced
tomorrow.
The Zoram Nationalist Party (ZNP) would
also announce its candidates tomorrow while the BJP, which would contest
11 seats, has already announced its candidates.
CM Lalthanhawla is his constituency's ‘chief guest minister’
There are no petrol pumps in Thenzawl, a sub-town of 8,000 people 78 km south of Mizoram capital Aizawl. So Zoram Engmawia pays Rs. 20
more per litre from the black market to fill up his autorickshaw. It
works out cheaper than travelling to the nearest oil outlet at Serchhip
town, 28 kms away.
Engmawia, 36, does not mind the inconvenience; he earns an average Rs. 500 a day despite the fuel ‘surcharge’, more than double the sum he used to make as a farmer.
“Lal
Thanhawla will provide us a petrol pump too if there are more like us,”
said fellow autorickshaw-owner RC Lalrintluanga, 37. He has a point.
Thenzawl had no auto-rickshaws until four of them were made
beneficiaries under the Rs. 2,873-crore New Land Use Policy (NLUP), the Congress’ flagship self-employment programme.
Lal Thanhawla, Mizoram’s chief minister, represents the Serchhip
assembly constituency, which encompasses large swathes of Serchhip and
Thenzawl civil sub-divisions. Weaver Malsawmi, 37, is also effusive in
her admiration of Lal Thanhawla’s policies.
Four months ago, she received fiscal aid under the NLUP for expanding her weaving unit at her village in Upper Thenzawl.
The
NLUP, though, is not the only factor why Serchhip roots for arguably
the tallest politician in Mizoram. It invariably gets preference for all
beneficiary schemes and developmental projects. Lal Thanhawla’s other
pluses are his sociability.
He attends public, social and private functions across his
constituency. The frequency of his visits has made the opposition refer
to him as the ‘chief guest minister’. The chief minister does not mind
this sobriquet. “My people know the reality, and that’s what matters,”
he said.
Locals say his approach to his constituency changed
after the Mizo National Front’s K Thangzuala ended his winning streak
(since 1984) in 1998. He wrested the seat back in 2003, and the
attention he showered since then, made him retain the seat in 2008 by a
bigger margin.
Mizo Oppn parties launch joint campaign
Christening themselves the Mizoram Democratic Alliance (MDA), three
Mizoram opposition parties on Friday kick-started their joint campaign
for the upcoming polls and announced 12 candidates that will contest
from southern Mizoram. The rest are expected to be declared next week.
The MDA is made up of the Mizo National Front, the Mizoram
People's Conference and the Maraland Democratic Front. The trio has five
seats between them in the current 40-seat Mizoram Assembly. Under a
seat-sharing agreement finalised earlier this week, the MNF will field
candidates in 31 seats, the MPC in 8 and the MDF in 1.
Deputy
Chief Minister of Manipur Gaikhangam inspecting the Moirangkhom Bus
Stand in Imphal which was rocked by a bomb blast on October 30, 2013
Imphal, Nov 3 : BJP has
sought the resignation of Manipur Chief Minister Okram Ibobi Singh
accusing his government of failing to maintain law and order in the
state, which has witnessed a series of bomb blasts recently.
The
series of bomb blasts in the past one week and loss of lives of innocent
people indicated deterioration of law and order and intelligence
failure in the state, party national secretary Tapir Gao told reporters
last evening.
The Chief Minister should take responsibility for
the poor law and order situation and resign as his government has
"utterly failed" to maintain peace and protect lives of innocent
civilians, he said.
Powerful bombs exploded on Tuesday, Wednesday
and Saturday in the heart of Imphal city in which three persons were
killed and eight others injured.
Tattoo studios and artists proliferate as an ancient art turns hip.
By Kaavya Chandrasekaran
Some artists from Delhi, the country's tattoo capital
It prevented the soldiers from deserting the army in ancient Rome,
and marked the identity of prisoners. Today, a tattoo is a badge of
coolness. "It is seen as a fashion statement," says Mo Naga, owner of
Headhunters' Ink Tattoo School. "It must be the fastest growing
industry, but it is going unnoticed."
Naga's school, attached to a
tattoo studio, in Guwahati, Assam, opened last December, and charges
about Rs 1.2 lakh for a 10-week course. Many studios offer training
programmes, and typically accept no more than five students at a time.
Basic knowledge of sketching and painting is generally a prerequisite.
Some of the more accomplished artists even do portraits - and these
aren't cheap. Lokesh Verma, owner of Devilz Tattooz in South Delhi,
specialises in them, and a 4X5-inch portrait takes about four hours and
can cost as much as Rs 20,000.
Naga
says he wants to revive traditional tattoo art in the North-east. "We
don't have to imitate western culture blindly," he says. He is
rese-arching the art, and says that traditionally, it was used by Naga
men and women as a mark of achie-vement. In the past, that achiev-ement
was sometimes headhunting, or the practice of preserving someone's head
after killing them for reasons including ritual and warfare. For women,
tattoos marked stages of life, such as puberty and marriage. The Nagas
are a number of tribal groups from Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur,
Myanmar and Nagaland.
In the late 1980s, says Naga, tattooing
began to be influenced by Chinese and Burmese designs. "In 2007 and
2008, it became influenced by western culture all over India," he adds.
He says TV shows had a huge impact, such as Miami Ink, a reality show
about a tattoo parlour in the US state of Florida.
"It was a
craze for DJs a year ago. It's a huge market now. Before that, only
musicians and artists had tattoos." Delhi, he maintains, is India's
tattoo capital today.
Men usually want tattoos on their biceps, shoulders and forearms, while women go for the bust, shoulder blades and ankles
Hardy
Mitra, owner of Funky Monkey in Delhi, says it is the city's oldest
tattoo studio. "The revolution was started by me 11 years ago, when I
had parlours in Bangalore, Chandi-garh and Bombay," he says. He now has a
studio in South Delhi and one in the neighbouring city of Gurgaon.
Funky
Monkey's customers range from 18- to 63-year-olds. "The phobia has
gone," says Mitra. "Tattoos are no longer associated with bikers and
drug addicts. Now, even a mother of two gets tattooed. You see people at
interviews with tattoos."
Tattoos may be popular, but they are
not cheap. Studios typically charge Rs 1,500 for the first square inch,
and Rs 500 for every additional square inch. Interestingly, growing
demand does not seem to have affected prices. "It was Rs 1,500 ten years
ago, and hasn't gone up since then," says Mitra.
Customers
happily cough up the money to subject themselves to the pain. Men
usually want tattoos on their biceps, shoulders and forearms, while
women go for the bust, shoulder blades and ankles. Vaishali Nanda, a
26-year-old architect in Delhi, has five tattoos from different places
in Delhi, Goa and Mumbai. She says: "The first time was really good,
even though I was kind of nervous." She says all her experiences were
smooth, except for one time when she blacked out. She was getting inked
on her hip, a sensitive region. "I passed out for two seconds when it
hit the pelvic bone area," she says.
It is difficult to estimate
the size of the industry, given that it is not organised. Mitra says
there are about 60 studios in Delhi.
Studios charge around Rs 1,500 for the first square inch and Rs 500 for every additional square inch
It
is also difficult to trace the growth of tattoo studios in India.
Sameer Patange of Kraayonz Tattoo Studio in Mumbai's Bandra suburb says
he is among the earliest to start one. He learned the art from
psychiatrist J.A. Kohiyar, who doubled as a tattoo artist in his clinic
in South Mumbai and got up to three clients a week. Kohiyar is widely
acknowledged as a pioneer in the industry. "When I joined him 15 years
ago, he had been doing it for 25 years," says Patange. Back then, he
adds, tattoos were much simpler and minimalistic in terms of lines,
colour and shape.
"I became the youngest tattoo artist at 20,
into my fourth year of tattooing," says Patange. He says he received
extensive media coverage, after which other artists and studios came up.
Now, his Mumbai studio averages two customers a day. His Bangalore and
Pune studios get one or two customers daily. He says that although Goa
is a seasonal market, business is good, with as many as six customers on
a good day. "I get clients who know what they are getting into," he
adds.
Kraayonz has follow-up sessions to ensure that the tattoo
is healing well. "A tattoo is an open wound - different skin types may
react differently," he says. Healing time is generally two weeks. During
that time, the tattoo must be washed daily, and protected from direct
sunlight.
A chunk of the business in some places is cover-ups of
shabby tattoos or declarations of a love that did not last. Chennai's
Irezumi studio gets 30 to 40 cover-up customers a month. Owner Naveen
Nanda-kumar says Irezumi advises people against getting names tattooed.
"They come here asking for their girlfriend's or boyfriend's names, but
we tell them it's hard to remove. Very few listen." He adds that a few
who have heeded the advice have later thanked Irezumi located in
Nungambakkam. "Others return after three months with a sorry face," he
says. Mitra of Funky Monkey backs this up. "Thirty per cent of our
customers come in to cover up other tattoos," he says.
Cover-ups of shabby or regrettable tattoos account for a good chunk of business
Irezumi's
story is indicative of how business is growing. The lavish studio began
with an investment of Rs 20 lakh in 2006 (a simpler set-up would need
an investment of Rs 5-6 lakh). Nandakumar recovered his investment in
about two years. He also owns a studio in Ooty and two in Coimbatore.
"What Chennai was seven years ago, Coimbatore was three years ago," he
says. His clientele has grown 20 per cent year-on-year since 2006.
Not
surprisingly, more and more people are becoming artists. The money is
not bad: at Abhishaik Madhur's Indelible Tattooz studio in South Delhi,
artists earn around Rs 40,000 a month.
Irezumi's Nandakumar says:
"Real estate agents and blacksmiths are getting into it. They buy a
basic kit from me and start tattooing." He distributes equipment from a
US-based supplier called Tattoo Gizmo. He says there are about 150
artists in Chennai.
Tattoo equipment has evolved rapidly. "In the old
days, we had machines that made noise," says Mitra of Funky Monkey. He
adds that newer machines are quieter, and cost 300-400 euros (Rs 25,200
to Rs 33,600).
Although there is hardly any regulation of the
business, studio owners emphasise hygiene. This means using disposable
equipment parts, protective plastic covers, and lots of disinfectant.
Given
the absence of legal regulation, pretty much anyone can open a studio.
"There are more than 375 artists on the loose and the competition is
growing," says Naga. He adds that some artists offer "unbelievable
discounts", and says vendors on the street can spread disease. A studio,
he says, should be maintained like a clinic.
The art is becoming
increasingly sophisticated. Madhur shares the story of a client who
survived a horrible car accident unscathed. He wanted a tattoo to mark
his life-changing experience. After four days of mulling over ideas,
Madhur's studio came up with an image of light streaming in through an
open door, signifying new life. The client has this tattoo on his
forearm.
Prime Minister, Sonia and Rahul to campaign for Congress in Mizoram
Aizawl: Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh, UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi and Congress
vice-president Rahul Gandhi will campaign for the party in Mizoram ahead
of the state Assembly election, scheduled for November 25.
All
India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretary Luizinho Faleiro told
reporters that Sonia would come on November 18 and visit south Mizoram's
Lunglei town, while Rahul would visit the state on November 21 and
addresses rallies in Mizoram-Myanmar border Champhai town and
Mizoram-Assam border Kolasib town.
The detailed programme of the Prime Minister was yet to be finalised, Faleiro said.
When
asked whether the three leaders would address rallies chaired by the
local forums of the Mizoram People's Forum (MPF), he said that they
would have to be taken care of as per the norms of the Special
Protection Group (SPG).
In an agreement inked by the MPF, the
church-sponsored election watchdog, all the political parties agreed
that all rallies and meetings would be chaired by the MPF leaders.
There
was severe criticism against the Congress leaders, including Singh,
Sonia and Rahul as they did not follow the norms of the MPF during the
2008 Assembly polls.
Several MNF leaders join Congress in Mizoram
A number of opposition Mizo National Front (MNF) leaders including Dr John V Hluna joined the Congress on Thursday.
The group led by Hluna earlier belonged to the People's Conference, a breakaway faction of the Mizoram People's Conference (MPC) which merged with the MNF on November 8 last year.
Top leader of the group and former deputy chief minister Lalhmingthanga and other senior leaders, however, did not attend the press conference convened by Hluna, where he told reporters that they did not like the alliance between MNF and MPC which was finalised on Tuesday last.
