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Nagaland chief secretary R.S. Pandey is the new director-general of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). Before he left to take on the new assignment this week, Pandey let loose his emotions on the eve of bidding goodbye to Nagaland, where he had served on different capacities as an IAS officer.
Pandey’s fond memories about Nagaland was strewn with stories of aversion of IAS officers to serve in the insurgency-prone Nagaland in particular, and Northeast in general.
After being selected in 1972 as a Nagaland cadre officer, he went to the library to weep, Pandey said to peals of laughter during his farewell ceremony. He had suffered another shock of life when he was posted as deputy commissioner in distant Mon district. However, two years later, the same young IAS officer refused to move out of the district when asked to take on another assignment. “I had become so close to the people,” he said. The five years in Mon still remains the most memorable stint for the officer, not to mention the friendly Konyaks of the area.
At the end of the farewell dinner at the chief minister’s banquet hall, no one’s eyes were dry. Pandey has been one of the few chief secretaries who had commanded equal respect, irrespective of changes in the governments in Nagaland.
You can smile in sadness and drink on any occasion, as the adage goes. Young Pochury tribe leader and former minister for law and justice in Nagaland, Yitachu, exemplified it. Sources said days before downsizing and reconciling, the minister hosted a “break-up” party for his friends. Yitachu has been dropped in the downsized council by chief minister Neiphiu Rio. A lawyer by profession, the legislator from Meluri in Phek district was the first Pochury tribe minister in 40 years of Nagaland’s statehood. When he came for the first batch of swearing-in last year, the young man was spotted standing in the last row in the Raj Bhavan in Kohima. He did enjoy a stint as a minister for a year-and-a-half. Of course, now he has the distinction of being out of the council along with many others who are his seniors in politics by decades. Yitachu has an upsized attitude, anyway.
Residents of Golapti in Imphal East district last week planted vegetables, not on the beds of their kitchen gardens, but along a stretch of the local road. The move was not prompted by scarcity of land for growing vegetables. In fact, the residents were protesting against the prolonged neglect by the authorities on the deplorable condition of the road, which becomes a “mud river” during the monsoon. After planting vegetables along the road, the residents erected bamboo fencing to keep away humans as well as cattle.
The residents accused the local MLA of not utilising his local area development fund properly to improve the area. They also accused the chief minister of making hollow promises. “Ibobi Singh promised to improve the road when he came here to campaign for the party candidate before the Lok Sabha elections. But the chief minister seems to have forgotten the promise,” an angry resident said. “We are planting the vegetables to draw the attention of the authorities,” another chirped in. Hope the authorities notice the vegetables.
It is a reversal of roles. Earlier it was schoolteachers who took errant students to task for staying away from classes or not paying attention. Now the whip is in the hands of the students. Several student organisations in the region have started inspecting schools to scrutinise facilities offered by those. After making the rounds, the student bodies warned that teachers who were found neglecting their classes would be punished. Reports said instead of school inspectors from the directorate of school education, representatives of student bodies are inspecting the government schools. For its part, the school education directorate seems to have ignored the development. It is heard that the school inspectors are not complaining either.
It’s not only humans who are being affected by the devastating floods in Assam. Some of the worst sufferers are the animals, mostly domestic ones reared by farmers. Coming to the rescue of these animals were members of the Guwahati-based People for Animals (PFA). Their members visited some of the worst-affected towns of lower Assam and distributed fodder, bran and jaggery in huge quantities. The animal rights activists were accompanied by officers of the Animal Welfare Board of India. The spirit of lending a helping hand is indeed commendable.
The Nepali community in Assam paid glowing tributes to the doyen of Nepali literature, Bhanu Bhakta Acharya, better known as Aadi Kavi, recently.
Bhanu Bhakta is known as a litterateur who spoke the language of the masses and touched the right emotional chord among the common people.
He is also known for translation of the Ramayan into Nepali.
The translated version is not a literal restatement, but an interpretation with stress on local elements of the culture prevailing then.
It promises to illuminate the streets of Jorhat as well as the minds of the people.
Project Jyoti, a community-based street-lighting project, has been initiated by the Jorhat district administration to light up various dark lanes and bylanes in the town.
Under the project, residents of the town will be directly involved in the implementation and maintenance of streetlights.
To ensure sustainability of the scheme, the district administration will enter into an agreement with a local committee.
The committee will comprise a minimum of five residents who will be responsible for a particular stretch.
Now, that’s enlightening!
