Friday, June 12, 2009

Is India racist?? Prejudice faced by people of northeast

The recent wave of racial attacks on Indian students in Australia is the top story that is doing the rounds on all electronic and print Medias. Sequence of events that followed thereafter in a nutshell…….

• Indian government holds talk with the Australian prime minister in the spate of this mounting racial mugging on Indian students.
• Thousands of Indian students in Australia take it out to the streets.
• Animosity grips the entire nation of India as well.
• The icon of tinsel town Amitabh Bachan snub’s an Aussie honour because of these string of attacks on Indians.


This incident brings to the public domain the concord of the Indian masses in the rise of any kind of prejudice meted out to their people. But what if that someone is from the northeast, would the approach of the people still be the same?
I wager the answer would sadly be in the negative. There are myriad northeast students studying in mainland India who are subjected to discrimination in one form or the other. So is our mongoloid origin to be held accountable for the turn of adversities? A good number of mainland Indians literally presumes that northeast people are still primitive and “JUNGLE” is their haven.

Well incalculable number of people actually had the impudence to ask me, I heard people in Nagaland eat snakes? Not only snakes I retort infuriatingly we eat everything that has life even humans…we are hardcore cannibals. Well, that reply certainly keeps them raking their brains. Some actually take the bait.

All these outlooks are formed on baseless hearsays from people who have never stepped foot on the northeast soil. The state of northeast hardly recovers any media coverage at all and the only time when the issue of northeast receives the spotlight is when there is a factional clash in Nagaland, Manipur or a bomb blast in Assam. That explains why most of the people are still ignorant about the real northeast.

Northeast girls are especially the vulnerable victims of discrimination with a series of molestation and rape cases which transpire almost on a daily basis. The annoying fact is that the police usually treat such matters with levity when that person concerned is from the northeast.

They refuse to file an FIR even after repeated appeal by the victim. As a result the perpetrators often get off the hook. Racial discrimination in any way is an offence which ought to be dealt with an iron hand. If bulk of the Indians can unite and fight against discrimination to one of their kind then why not for the cause of the minority as well. If northeast is a part of India then why are its people alienated from the rest of India? That’s the question that needs to be debated.

Source: http://www.morungexpress.com/write_wing/25642.html

Thursday, June 11, 2009

4,000 Manipur villagers facing food crisis

SOBHAPATI SAMOM | IMPHAL, June 10 – Nearly 4,000 villagers of eight Ukhrul villages are reported to be facing acute shortage of food owing to failure of paddy crop in the last season. Information regarding the food scarcity being faced by the villagers located at the western side of the Phungyar sub-division of Ukhrul district was conveyed to a visiting team of reporters and volunteers of the Information for Hills Areas, Manipur (ICHAM).

The eight villages facing scarcity of food owing to failure of crops include Kumram village having a population of 475, Patbung has 250, Nongmen 450, Sorbun 700, Sorden 145, Sorde 430, Aleng 220 and Phungyar around 1,300. Villagers gave the reasons behind the failure of the paddy crop as mass destruction of the paddy crop by grasshoppers at the fruit-bearing stage.

In the last season also, they sowed paddy seeds in their fields in the traditional way. But a large part of the seeds failed to grow up. Some plants that sprouted were also attacked by the grasshoppers.

Concerned over the failure of the crops, village authorities approached the Deputy Commissioner, Ukhrul district to help them by providing relief materials. But it was in vain, they said. The villagers have finished up all the rice stocks. The villagers are now earning their livelihood by working as labourer. With the money they got from 100 days work under the NREGS, villagers are somehow feeding their families.

Village women are earning their daily bread by selling fruits and other editable items available in the villages.

Many children have left school and are helping their parents to earn livelihoods. The reporters held interactions with the village headmen and authorities.

The president of the Tangkhul Youth Council said that villagers are facing the woes for a long time and alleged that the government has neglected them. He appealed the government to provide relief to the villagers.

Source: The Assam Tribune