[Assam] DAWN.COM | Op-Ed Contributor | Confronting hypocrisy
http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/op-ed-contributor/confronting-hypocrisy-090 Friends, Here you can read a secular voice in Pakistan. It is published in the leading daily DAWN. Sushanta Kar -- Sushanta Kar সুশান্ত কর তিনসুকিয়া, আসাম আমার ব্লগগুলি: http://sushantakar40.blogspot.com http://ishankonerkahini.blogspot.com http://ishankonerkotha.blogspot.com আমার সম্পাদিত 'প্রজ্ঞান' http://pragyan06now.blogspot.com http://sites.google.com/site/pragyan06now স্বাজাত্যের অহমিকার থেকে মুক্তি দানের শিক্ষাই, আজকের দিনের প্রধান শিক্ষা রবীন্দ্রনাথ ___ assam mailing list assam@assamnet.org http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
[Assam] Historical BOOK on NEFA, now Arunachal Pradesh published by AXOM XAHITYA XOBHA way back in the 50s
Check out this historical BOOK on NEFA link below, now Arunachal Pradesh published by AXOM XAHITYA XOBHA way back in the 50s ! http://outlook-on-nefa.webnode.com/ thanx regards Muktikam Phukan Deputy Director (FA) Petroleum Conservation Research Association Sanrakshan Bhawan,10, Bhikaiji Cama Place,New Delhi 110066 Ph: +91 11 26198856 Ext 355, Mob: +91 9818598565 email: phuk...@pcra.org , muktik...@yahoo.co.in ___ assam mailing list assam@assamnet.org http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
Re: [Assam] (no subject)
Thanks a lot Mukti. Simanta From: Muktikam Phukan muktik...@yahoo.co.in To: assam@assamnet.org Sent: Mon, September 13, 2010 1:18:32 AM Subject: [Assam] (no subject) A website to download old Axomiya melodies: http://rimitamelody.wordpress.com/ Muktikam Phukan Deputy Director (FA) Petroleum Conservation Research Association Sanrakshan Bhawan,10, Bhikaiji Cama Place,New Delhi 110066 Ph: +91 11 26198856 Ext 355, Mob: +91 9818598565 email: phuk...@pcra.org , muktik...@yahoo.co.in ___ assam mailing list assam@assamnet.org http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org ___ assam mailing list assam@assamnet.org http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
[Assam] Website repository.
Website repository: A compilation of few Assam related websites . Please add the websites which are not included in the list. http://xomidhan.wordpress.com/website-repository/ ___ assam mailing list assam@assamnet.org http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
[Assam] Testing
testing, please ignore. ___ assam mailing list assam@assamnet.org http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
[Assam] Major lacuna in Millennium Development Goals-- Some Truths Told!
*** A friend forwarded this to me. While I do not understand the statistical jargon, the overall picture painted is all too familiar . It also busts the popular myth among Delhi-defenders about how Delhi is not responsible - the states are -- for managing the disbursement of development funds, like some of us always knew. cm UNITED NATIONS MILLENNIUM CAMPAIGN (India) INAUGURAL ADDRESS Millennium Development Goals: THE MAJOR LACUNA Mani Shankar Aiyar, MP (Rajya Sabha) Former Union Minister of Panchayati Raj, 2004-06 British Council, Kasturba Gandhi Marg, New Delhi – 110 001 1730 hours Sunday, 12 September 2010 I am truly grateful to the United Nations Millennium Campaign (India) for giving a notorious sceptic like me the indubitable honour of inaugurating this series of nation-wide presentations on the eight component elements of the Millennium Development Goals adopted by Heads of Government at the United Nations at the commencement of this millennium and dedicated to the overarching aim of substantially ridding our planet of the scourge of poverty within the first fifteen years of this new century. We are now into ten years of the 15-year programme and the UN General Assembly is scheduled to review, at its forthcoming annual session commencing later this month, the progress made towards achieving the noble objectives of the MDG. The Government of India, responsible for harbouring the largest number in the world of the desperately poor, the poor, the marginally poor, the vulnerable and the hungry, has, of course, been in the forefront of informing the international community of our performance. Our MDG Country Report was released by the Hon’ble Vice-President on 29 June 2010. Goal no. 1 is the “eradication of extreme poverty and hunger”. The other seven goals address other supporting dimensions of multi-dimensional poverty such as universalising primary education; promoting gender equality; drastically reducing child mortality; promoting maternal health; combating deadly diseases like HIV/AIDS and malaria; ensuring environmental sustainability; and forging a global partnership for development. This series of lectures will range across the entire spectrum of MDGs. I propose in this inaugural Address to concentrate on the major systemic lacuna which, I believe, unless addressed with great urgency, will cripple all our endeavours to even vaguely approximate to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. To set the stage for a discussion on this major systemic lacuna, let me explore first the Indian performance and prospects in regard to the key target prescribed by the MDG: the reduction by half of those living on less than a dollar a day calculated at purchasing power price and also reducing by half the proportion of people suffering from hunger. The India Country Report says it is not “plausible” to estimate the number of people surviving on under a dollar a day. This is because we are perhaps the only country in the world to calculate poverty ratios in terms of reported consumption expenditure rather than income earned. We also do not favour categorising the poor into different brackets of consumption expenditure but resort to a cut-off figure of Rs.12 per day in rural and Rs.17 per day in urban areas, to then establish that in the thirty years from 1973-74 to 2004-05 poverty has indeed diminished by half, from 55 to 27 per cent of our population. What proportion of those sprung from the poverty trap have gone just across the Rs.12 threshold from a consumption expenditure of Rs. 11 a day thirty years ago to Rs. 13 a day thirty years later is, alas, not revealed. Since we do not categorise consumption beyond the singular National Poverty Line, everyone is either BPL (Below Poverty Line) or APL (Above Poverty Line). In consequence, the darwan standing outside the Reliance office is APL; so also are the Ambanis within. Similarly, several hundred million households that are vulnerable because the least illness or ill-fortune will plunge them back below the official poverty line within weeks are classified as APL and only the utterly destitute are classified as BPL. The figures are stark: over 47% of our children under five years of age are from severely to moderately malnourished, the tragic consequence of about 9 out 10 pregnant Indian women suffering from moderate to severe anaemia. The severely malnourished and anaemic are BPL; the moderately malnourished and anaemic are APL. Except in the Arjun Sengupta Committee Report (August, 2007), official India does not regard the vulnerable as poor. Hence, so long as there is a reduction of those below an arbitrarily defined National Poverty Line, we claim to be overcoming poverty. How arbitrary is
[Assam] 5 Assamese out of India's 35 youth icons.(India Today, Issue:October 4, 2010)
Please visit the link below http://amarasom.glpublications.in/Details.aspx?id=2188boxid=112136578 to know more about their accomplishments. Cheers, Ankur --- On Sat, 9/25/10, Buljit Buragohain buluas...@yahoo.co.in wrote: From: Buljit Buragohain buluas...@yahoo.co.in Subject: [Assam Society] 5 Assamese out of India's 35 youth icons.(India Today,Issue:October 4,2010) To: Assam Society of America assamsoci...@yahoogroups.com Cc: Suresh Ranjan Goduka sureshranjangod...@yahoo.com, Uttam Teron uttam_pa2...@yahoo.co.in Date: Saturday, September 25, 2010, 1:54 AM Dear All, Here is a good news for all of us. 5 Assamese in India Today list of India's 35 youth icons. They are- 1.Indrani Medhi, 2.Suresh Ranjan Goduka, 3. Bhabananda Borbayan, 4.Uttan Teron and 5.Sattyaki d'com Bhuyan. Congratulation to all of them. Thanks Buljit Buragohain __._,_.___ Reply to sender | Reply to group | Reply via web post | Start a New Topic Messages in this topic (1) Recent Activity: Visit Your Group We appreciate your contribution to Assam Society of America! Switch to: Text-Only, Daily Digest • Unsubscribe • Terms of Use . __,_._,___ ___ assam mailing list assam@assamnet.org http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
[Assam] From ToI -- A word on the Brown Man's Burden
Not to pile on desi-despondenvy here, but I think Surendran has it right! :-) cm http://author.toiblogs.com/India-Circus/entry/brown-man-s-burdenBrown man's burdenCP Surendran 25 September 2010, 04:23 AM IST CGF chief Michael Fennell likes his toilet clean. The Organising Committee spokesperson Lalit Bhanot doesn't mind a dirty one. Fennel is British and white. Bhanot is Indian and brown. Their toilets reflect their skin colours. The Delhi Games is probably one of the most racist ever: it's two civilizations looking at shit. Their visions differ drastically. Hygiene, Bhanot said, Is a matter of perception in cleanliness. And the context was Fennel finding the Delhi Games Village apartments and toilets unusable for international athletes. No one specifically asked the participating black countries like the Caribbean states or Lesotho the complexion of their toilet preference. The chances are that they would have smiled at Bhanot in understanding. The poor across the world know well what it takes to keep a toilet bowl white and clean, provided of course that they have one. More than half the Indian population doesn't. According to a recent UN survey, roughly 366 million people had access to improved sanitation. That's less than our mobile penetration: more than 545 million cell phones are now connected to service in India's emerging economy. Clearly, we prefer telephones to toilets, perhaps because we are a garrulous people. Bhanot is right. As a race, Indians don't mind co-existing with crap. Our tolerance level for rubbish is high compared to the West. As a child in Trivandrum, this writer used to pick his way to school and back through a stretch of road which was used as an open toilet by hundreds of Dravidians, who might still be at it with slightly altered physiognomies, and with the singular difference that they might be now talking into a cell. These are after all days of multitasking. It's no different in the North or West. In Delhi city, you just need to step out into an area like Okhla to find hourly testimonies to Bhanot's law. In Bombay, where this writer used to work for long, thousands, line the roads and railway tracks morning and evening to relieve themselves, chin up and eyes defiant. Indeed, when was the last time an Indian protested against the lack of toilets in a country that can find Rs 27,000 crores—so, material resources are not the problem—for collapsible stadiums and marmoreal sidewalks? Clearly, we no longer care. We have been so sanitized that we are no longer troubled by how close we are to garbage and waste in public spaces. Or consider the 9000 passenger trains of the Indian Railways –Lead partner of Delhi Games--carrying over 2 million passengers a day. What are these but holes on wheels into which people crap at over 100 km per hour across the length and breadth of the country, manically distributing the suspect largess? Hygiene is not always a question of scatology. It could be about dead bodies as well. The Vedic Indian considers the Ganges holy, and allows half burnt corpses to drift in the river, in transit to heaven. Our idea of the sublime itself is ridiculous. Or consider the ubiquitous office tea-boy who brings you and your friends chai, three of his snot-laced fingers dipping deep into the glasses. Or the open sewers. Or the dhobi sneezing into the laundered linen and bringing it back, all neatly folded? The list is endless. Bhanot is right about the cultural relativity of cleanliness. The fact is that the whites are a cleaner race, and their idea of sanitation as a system institutionally superior. We may resort to the argument that it is the pressure of urbanisation that is at the heart of the matter. But nothing quite explains why we have more mobiles than toilets. Clearly, it's not so much a question of resources as wrong prioritization both at the institutional and individual levels. The Delhi Games is a lesson in basics. The dirty rooms of the Games Village, the stained beds, and the filthy toilets could be partly explained by rogue dogs; or by vandal construction workers. The first is a security breach. The other raises the question: why were the workers not given adequate toilets or shower rooms on site? The Games authorities, like the middleclass that now finds itself aggrieved at the national shame, never spared a moment to think: where do workers crap? Why, they will manage! There's always the Yamuna! And there was at one point more than 400,000 labourers on CWG sites. Neither the Organisation Committee nor Sheila Dikshit gave a shit to the workers' dignity. And look what they got in return: the brown man's toilet. ___ assam mailing list assam@assamnet.org http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
[Assam] The Sound of Silence
Dear Netters You may go through my article (The Sound of Silence) published in Sunday Supplement of Assam Tribune today. Kindly click on the link below and read..(link would be valid up to 01 October) http://www.assamtribune.com/scripts/showpage.asp?id=Sunday_Reading,2,351,192,1065,645 regards... mayur bora agm, nabard jorhat ___ assam mailing list assam@assamnet.org http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
