Beyond The Oath

YAMBEM LABA REPORTS ON THE GOINGS-ON AT THE REGIONAL INSTITUTE OF MEDICAL SCIENCES, IMPHAL, WHICH RESULTED IN THE BOMBSHELL DROPPED BY THE CENTRE

A visit to the director’s office at the Regional Institute of Medical Sciences in Imphal is akin to visiting an ultra high security zone. You go past unarmed guards provided by an agency and then you enter a fortified area complete with sandbagged posts manned by the CRPF wielding automatic weapons. Past that you are greeted with signs that read “Visitors not allowed beyond this point” and then you get to the ante room and find Manipur Rifles personnel armed with AK-47s — the personal security detail of the director. The aura of the institute being an advanced centre for medical sciences seems to have been lost somehow.

It is now a premier centre for medical sciences and draws students from across the North-east region save Assam. It celebrated its 43rd foundation day on 14 September and has so far produced 2,904 doctors and 1,053 specialist doctors. Today it has 418 undergraduate students, 414 postgraduate students, 161 BSc nursing students and 95 pursuing a degree in dentistry on its rolls. It also has 24 different departments dealing in subjects as diverse as anatomy and otorhinolaryngology and provides service and care to patients who flock to fill the 1,071 beds available. Last year, it catered to 43,317 in-house patients while another 299,178 were treated as outdoor patients.

Initially, it began as the Regional Medical College funded by the North Eastern Council but was converted into a Centrally managed institute under the Union ministry of health and family welfare in 2007 with a board of governors headed by the Union health minister as chairman and the Manipur chief minister as vice-chairman. Its executive council is headed by the Union health secretary as chairman and its director as member secretary. With such a vast infrastructure and an even more impressive management set-up, one would be coerced into thinking that all is and has to be well with its affairs. On 14 September 2010, Professor S Sekharjit Singh was appointed its director of by the UPA-II set-up in Delhi.

Then on 25 August the bombshell arrived from Delhi in the form of an order signed by a deputy secretary in the Union health and family welfare ministry which stripped Sekharjit Singh of his post and Professor Chongtham Arun Singh of the Department of Orthopaedics was asked to take charge as director until further orders. The drama began unfolding bit by bit, revealing murky business at the Rims where Singh and his caucus functioned much beyond the Hippocratic oath. First, he refused to recognise the Centre’s order stating that a director cannot be removed just like that and he bolted his door and bolted. The Centre then advised Dr Arun Singh to take police help, break open the door and assume charge, which he did the next day. Sekharjit Singh then attempted to take the help of the judiciary and moved Manipur High Court, but Justice N Koteshwor turned down his appeal for a stay on the dismissal order. Then he, accompanied by his son and daughter, both medical doctors, left the state and has not been heard of since.

In the meantime, the CBI had earlier registered a case against Sekharjit Singh on charges of corruption relating to irregularities in the purchase of dental chairs and other misappropriations. On 23 May this year, the CBI furnished the FIR copy to the District and Sessions Judge, Manipur East, and earlier it had also earlier registered a case against Dr L Fimate,  Sekharjit Singh’s predecessor.

Then the CBI, which hitherto in Manipur had only been dealing in murder cases, decided to go a step further and raided the official quarters of Sekharjit Singh and nine other places, including his wife’s and daughter’s houses. The seized items included documents, laptops and computers that were said to have revealed a wealth of information but the most damning of all seems to be a letter alleged to have been written by Sekharjit Singh’s  wife to the president of Manipur’s BJP unit asking him to return the Rs 1 crore paid earlier to forestall the impeachment move and the CBI raids. This amount seems to be a pittance for a man said to be owning three houses in Manipur and others in Guwahati, Kolkata, New Delhi and Bangalore and is said to have paid Rs 4 crore to the personal assistant of then Union health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad for his appointment as Rims director.

But what Sekharjit Singh did goes much beyond the records on the CBI files. For instance, he recruited 121 nurses against 71 sanctioned and advertised posts. The bribe fee was said to have hovered around Rs 15 lakh each for the first 71 and Rs 25 lakh apiece for the remaining 40. And although he tried to get post facto sanction for the 40 seats from the executive council, he failed but they continue to be on the rolls and received salaries till date. He also managed to turn the Rims into a hotbed of corrupt contractors, most of them said to be relatives of his wife.

He went on a spree of digging drains and constructing walls all around and even stripped the wooden planks of the Gymkhana, paved it with cement and again installed teak flooring — all on contract. He also decreased the retirement age of the heads of departments from 65 to 62 years to enable his wife to head the department of anatomy.

When the Nursing College was established, he appointed her principal and when protests arose he made her the advisor of the college, overriding the principal. What was shocking was the manner in which he treated 47 men and women hired as daily wage workers who were being paid a paltry Rs 3,000 a month. The women were utilised by his wife as domestic help and have not been paid for the last five months while their salaries had been withdrawn. And often it was his wife, referred to as “Madam”, who would dole out their salaries at her residence — not in cash but in the form of Amway products for which she is today a platinum card holder agent.

According to Chongtham Bijoy Singh, who resides in the village adjoining Rims and had spent the last three years chronicling Sekharjit Singh’s misdeeds, the man was trying to behave as a despot and his wife, Damayanti, acted as if she was a reincarnate of Imelda Marcos.

Professor Chongtham Arun Singh acknowledged to The Statesman the public perception of Rims being in the centrestage of corruption and added that while he did not know how long he would be holding the office, he pledged to bring about transparency in all spheres of life at Rims, which, he hoped, would mitigate the apprehension of the public in days to come. For now, his morning walks have been rendered impossible because of the bevy of security guards detailed for his protection.

The writer is based in Imphal

India’s Gateway To The East

By G PARTHASARATHY

Given the shared heritage, there’s tremendous potential for New Delhi to push its economic interests with Yangon

In the minds of New Delhi’s elite, India’s South Asian neighbourhood is made up solely of the seven members of Saarc, even though we share no land borders with three of them. We tend to forget that four of our north-eastern States — Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur and Mizoram — share a 1640 km land border with Myanmar. Not only is Myanmar a member of Bimstec, the Bay of Bengal grouping linking Saarc and Asean, it is also our gateway to the fast growing economies of East and Southeast Asia.

While successive leaders of Myanmar, who are devout Buddhists, have looked upon India predominantly in spiritual terms, as the home of Lord Buddha, they recognise that an economically vibrant India provides a balance to an increasingly assertive China. Sadly, we have not been able to take full advantage of either our shared Buddhist heritage by facilitating increased pilgrimages, or used our economic potential effectively to promote our interests.
Changing situation

Ties between India and Myanmar have quietly blossomed over the past two decades. The respective militaries and security agencies of the two countries have facilitated cooperation across the border. This has led to effective action against cross-border insurgencies and narcotics smuggling. Myanmar’s information minister recently reiterated his government’s readiness to crack down on Indian insurgent groups such as the ULFA (Assam), PLA (Manipur) and NSCN-K (Nagaland). India, in turn, has acted firmly against Myanmar insurgents entering its territory.

Myanmar has moved steadily in easing the rigours of military rule since the elections that swept President Thein Sein to power in 2011. The military still has a crucial role in national life, as negotiations are on to achieve a comprehensive ceasefire with 16 well-armed insurgent groups drawn from ethnic non-Burmese minorities. This is no easy task, but is a prelude to negotiations on the highly sensitive issue of federalism and provincial autonomy for ethnic minority areas.

After years of bonhomie during military rule, Myanmar’s relationship with its largest neighbour China is under strain. China’s Yunnan province borders the sensitive and insurgency-ridden Kachin and Shan states in Myanmar.
The China factor

China has helped significantly in building Myanmar’s infrastructure and equipping its military. India’s fears of Chinese bases in Myanmar were not borne out. But differences between China and Myanmar have grown recently, especially on large projects like the Myistone dam, which had to be junked, and a proposed railway line to connect Yunnan to the Bay of Bengal. There is growing opposition to Chinese projects in copper and nickel mining. The sentiment is that China has taken Myanmar for a ride regarding an oil pipeline linking Yunnan to the Bay of Bengal port of Kyaukphu.

There are concerns over Chinese involvement with insurgent groups such as the Kachin Independence Army and the United Wa Army. Despite this, border trade across the Yunnan-Myanmar border is booming, reaching $4.17 billion in 2013, against a mere $35 million border trade across the India-Myanmar border, though the “unofficial trade” (smuggling) across this border is estimated at around $300 million annually.

India’s former Ambassador to Myanmar VS Seshadri has authored a report spelling out how India has been tardy in building connectivity through Myanmar to Thailand and Vietnam and securing access for our landlocked north-eastern States to the Bay of Bengal. Our border trade regulations are formulated by mandarins in North Block and Udyog Bhavan who have no idea of the ground situation. They could learn a thing or two from China’s pragmatism — the manner in which it treats the markets with its neighbours not as foreign, but as extensions of its own markets. Opening up such trade will also enable our north-eastern States to meet their growing requirements of rice at very competitive rates.

Unless we learn to look at our neighbours the way China does, bearing in mind the inherent strengths of our economy, we can never match the economic influence of China on our borders in the North-East. The new minister for north-eastern affairs VK Singh has served at length in the North-East. It is hoped he will liberalise procedures and permit trade across borders with Myanmar in currencies traders mutually agree upon. Vehicles should move freely across the borders on roads through Myanmar, to Thailand and Vietnam.

Moreover, the “Kaladan multimodal corridor” linking our north-eastern States through the port of Sittwe in Myanmar will be useful only if Sittwe becomes the key port for India-Myanmar trade. India has done remarkably well in human resource development projects in Myanmar. It has played the lead role in the establishment of the Myanmar Institute of Information Technology, an advanced centre for agricultural research and education, an agricultural university and welcomed many Myanmar professionals for training in its medical and engineering institutions.
Tardy record

But we would be less than honest if we did not admit that in project and investment cooperation, our record has been tardy. After having secured exploration rights for gas in the Bay of Bengal, we conducted our project planning and diplomacy so clumsily that we did not have a strategy ready for taking the gas to India through a pipeline across Myanmar and our North-East, or for transporting it as LNG. China deftly stepped in and took away all this gas by expeditiously building a pipeline to Yunnan province.

In the mid 1990s, Myanmar offered us hydro-electric projects with a potential of over 1,000 MW across rivers near our borders. We took years to scrutinise these projects, which companies in South Korea earlier offered to construct. After nearly two decades we backed off. Our private companies too not been able to avail offers of land for plantations across Myanmar.

India was offered hundreds of acres of land for agriculture and for bamboo plantations for making paper pulp, close to its borders. Two private sector companies signed MoUs with Myanmar counterparts. But Myanmar officials found our private sector to be more bureaucratic than our government. India lost access to huge bamboo resources which went to a Thai company that clinched a deal in weeks — something our companies could not achieve for nearly two decades.

The writer is a former High Commissioner to Pakistan

YMA Members To Be Given Training On Disaster Management

Aizawl, Sep 24 : Mizoram Disaster Management and Rehabilitation Minister C. Ngunlianchunga today said that members of the Young Mizo Association (YMA) in each village and locality would be imparted training on the issue.

Attending the passing out parade function of the 11th batch of State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) at the headquarters of the fifth battalion of the India Reserve Police near Aizawl, Ngunlianchunga said that YMA members were the main disaster response volunteers before the formation of SDRF.

“The YMA members were the first response force whenever disaster struck in a village or in the urban area,” he said, adding that better and state-of-the-art rescue equipment would be provided for the SDRF and local YMA members.

Policemen belonging to the state armed police and IR battalions were selected for the SDRF training and were continually trained by the personnel of the first battalion NDRF from Guwahati.

Ziro To Music Haven, in 4 Days

Sleepy Arunachal town wakes up to fest from tomorrow

By RANJU DODUM

The Vinyl Records performs at Ziro Music Festival last year. Picture by Shiv Ahuja Itanagar, Sep 24 : The quiet Ziro valley in Arunachal Pradesh will come alive with the sound of non-stop music from Thursday. Located in the heart of Lower Subansiri district and surrounded by rolling green hills, Ziro valley is home to men and women of the Apatani tribe and attracts a number of tourists. From Thursday, the number of visitors to the sleepy town will swell as the third edition of the Ziro Festival of Music kicks off. In a span of just two years, the festival has become the mainstay of India’s ever-expanding festival circuit. With an eclectic collection of folk, Indie and electro-rock artistes performing against the backdrop of the picturesque valley, it’s not difficult to imagine why. Festival co-founder Anup Kutty attributes the event’s success to the location, the people and the artistes. “It’s a potent combination of all three,” he said. The festival was started after Anup and his bandmates from Menwhopause were touring the Northeast and festival director Bobby Hano took them to Ziro for a break. One thing led to another and in 2012 the first festival was organised. Even with showers making the venue ground slushy, it created a buzz across the country. By 2013, the festival had gone global. Last year, American artistes Lee Ranaldo and Steve Shelley of the erstwhile Sonic Youth headlined the festival and this year, a reunited Indus Creed will bring down the curtains on Sunday. Such is the lure of the festival that singer Uday Benegal is returning with the troupe many feel is India’s first rock band. Benegal, who was at last year’s event as part of the Whirling Kalapas, says the “valley is a fabulous piece of earth” and that he is “kicked about going back”. Apart from Indus Creed, this year will feature a host of big names like Ska Vengers and Your Chin. Additionally, the third edition has the largest line-up of folk artistes and musicians from the Northeast. With the likes of the Nagaland-based Tetseo Sisters making their first appearance at the festival and Manipur band Imphal Talkies set to return, music lovers are in for a treat. With close to 30 bands set to perform, little wonder that the festival had to be extended by a day. Anup says that “three days just didn’t seem enough” and we “decided to keep the first day free for the people of Ziro as a tribute to the wonderful place”. Aside from the support of the people, this year Living Dreams, an Arunachal-based trust that documents and promotes local culture and Pepsi MTV Indies, will support the festival. Among its long list of supporters is the Arunachal government. Last year, tourism minister Pema Khandu said he was “very pleased with the overwhelmingly stunning response” and made a call to make the festival the “Woodstock of the East”.

Militant Camps Still in Bangladesh, Claims Tripura Chief Minister

RAB’s operation on Jun 4, 2014 yielded arms at the seven bunkers atop hillocks inside Satchharhi jungles of Habiganj, about three km from the Indian border in Tripura.

Militant camps still exist across the border in Bangladesh, Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar alleged on Monday.

He said this while addressing a large gathering of the elite Tripura State Rifles (TSR) personnel and the members of their families at a blood, eye, and body donation programme at the battalion headquarters in Tripura's Agartala.

Sarkar has been praising the present government in Bangladesh, saying it is friendly towards India and has acted against Northeast Indian militant groups using Bangladesh territory as their launching pad.

But he added several camps of Tripura militants still existed across the border.

“The problem of insurgency has not yet been entirely solved. They have been weakened and cornered, but not totally uprooted.”

He said 19 to 20 camps still existed in Bangladesh. Of the two Tripura militant groups - NLFT and the Tiger Force – the former was still ran camps in Bangladesh, though with a depleting cadre strength.

According to him, there were no records any camp of the banned All Tripura Tiger Force (ATTF) in Bangladesh at present.

The Chief Minister said the militants were trying to achieve a revival in Tripura and hamper development work.

Sarkar praised the TSR for its counter-insurgency operations in the state.

Tripura has an 857-km border with Bangladesh, of which more than 90 percent has been already fenced.

Landslide on Guwahati-Shillong Highway

Guwahati, Sep 24 : More than 72 hours of incessant rainfall has caused huge floods in Assam and Meghalaya with several villages in Goalpara, Dhubri, Lakhimpur and Kamrup (Rural) district, besides major areas of Guwahati city, inundated by water on Tuesday.

The Army, IAF, BSF and NDRF are assisting the district administration in rescue operations. IAF swung into action with its helicopters pressed into service and began rescue and relief operations in flood-hit Goalpara district. More than 500 people in the district are suspected to be still missing.

A child was killed in a landslide in Dhubri district’s Hatsingimari, while one person was electrocuted in Guwahati where a body floating on river Bharalu was also recovered, state government officials said.

The Kaziranga National Park and the Pobitora Wildlife Sanctuary were also flooded forcing hapless animals to move to highlands to protect themselves.  The National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) and the State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) have been pressed into service.

In Goalpara district, the army and SDRF were assisting the district administration in rescuing the over 50,000 people marooned in 100 villages due to the deluge in Krishnai, Dudhnoi and Bolbola areas, district Deputy Commissioner (DC) Preetam Saikia said.

The National Highway 37 was water logged with tin-roofed and thatched houses in many areas in Goalpara district submerged, converting huge tracts of human habitation and farmland with standing crops into a vast body of water, Saikia said.

Heavy rains in Goalpara coupled with that in neighbouring Garo hills of Meghalaya was causing the deluge in the district, the DC said.

Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi personally monitored the situation and directed the various agencies to provide relief assistance to the affected people.

In Lakhimpur district, heavy downpour for the last two days along Arunachal Pradesh, had forced the waters of the swollen Ranganadi river to rush through a breached dyke at Kharkati, district officials said. A dyke that had breached at Borsola along with the Kharkati bund on August 14 last also caused waters from Singara river to flood the area, they said.

The flood waters have marooned over 30,000 people in 30 villages in the Kharkati and Borsola area, they added. The situation turned worse in Majuli, where several villages have been submerged since Sunday.

Protests in Itanagar Over Leak Of State Civil Service Paper

Itanagar, Sep 24 : Hundreds of candidates appearing for the Arunachal Pradesh civil service exams staged a protest here Tuesday demanding an inquiry into the alleged leak of a question paper for the main examination.

According to students, the General Studies-2 question paper was a copy of the extra set of question paper prepared for 2011 mains exam and was already with many students.

"Firstly the set of question paper was a ditto copy of General Studies Paper-2 of 2011 and secondly the said question paper was already in circulation and possessed by some candidates since Nov-Dec 2013," Oyam Saring, a candidate told IANS.

Arunachal Pradesh Public Service Commission prepares 2 sets of question papers to meet any eventuality.

Earlier the students had protested outside Chief Minister Nabam Tuki's official residence following which the commission had postponed the exam until further notice.

"The candidates are shocked how the question paper which is kept in a secured room came into the hands of some candidates. The officials have also shown their laziness by copy pasting questions from the extra paper of 2011 exam," Saring said.

DU's Gyanodaya Express to Take students to Northeast

New Delhi, Sep 24 : Delhi University's Gyanodaya Express train will travel to Northeast this year to enrich students' understanding about the culture and heritage of the region.

As many as 900 students will be given the opportunity to travel on Dharodhar-Gyanodaya Express from December 20 to 30. They will be given basic working knowledge of eight different languages of the northeast under special certificate courses run by DU, Registrar Tarun Kumar Das said in a statement Tuesday.

The students accompanied by around 100 teachers will be selected from colleges on basis of project proposals and will be divided into group of 11-15 with a mentor each. Each group will have at least one member from the northeast.

The projects are to be based on ideas that shall give a deeper understanding of richness of the region and its contribution in diverse ways towards the well-being of the nation, he said.

During the trip, students will get to meet representatives of local universities as well as senior functionaries of northeastern states, Das said, adding, issues related to citizenship, national integration and ideals propounded by eminent leaders would be addressed in the study conducted by the students.

Started as the 'College on Wheels' project in 2012, this will be the fourth edition of Gyanodaya Express.