Day: February 10, 2013

The post BJP sub-committee formed appeared first on  KanglaOnline.com.

IMPHAL, Feb 10:  In a press release, the Bharatya Janata Party, Manipur Pradesh said that BJP state President Thounaojam Chaoba Singh has formed a sub- committee with Moirangthem Prafullo as Chairman to work out a road map for bringing a better change in the life of the youths while adding that the first meeting of the sub-committee will call on intellectuals and the general public to give valuable ideas and send the valuable opinions and ideas in English or Manipuri to the office of BJP Manipur Pradesh or at it party e-mail:  bjpManipur80@yahoo.com within 30 march.

The roadmap will focus on socio-political, economy, culture and sports issues.

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The post Grenade placed appeared first on  KanglaOnline.com.

IMPHAL, Feb 10: Some unidentified persons placed a grenade in the courtyard of the residence of Thockchom Indrasing , Deputy Inspector of Schools, Bishnupur of Utlou Makha Leikai at 6 a.m. The grenade was picked up by police and exploded safely in the fields around 10. 10 a.m.

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The post Maoist Bandh postponed appeared first on  KanglaOnline.com.

IMPHAL, Feb 10: The Maoist Communist Party, Manipur has said in a press release that it has postponed its February 11 midnight to February 12 midnight general strike until the outfit sends out another statement on the issue.

The statement said that the general strike was imposed considering against the malpractices of corruption inside the RIMS, since RIMS is frequented by the poorer section of the society as they cannot afford the private clinics which are. expensive.

However considering the plight of the general public due to the bandh called by the Village Defence Force during the past few days, the outfit has decided to postpone the general strike, it said.

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The post Book released appeared first on  KanglaOnline.com.

IMPHAL, February 10: A Journal entitled “Naklou” to be published in English, Manipuri and Meitei Mayek and a book entitled “Nungshi Saktam” were released today at the Patriotic Writers Forum Manipur office.

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The post Prize Distribution appeared first on  KanglaOnline.com.

IMPHAL, February 10: The prize distribution ceremony in connection with the 1st meritorious Competitive examination-2013  organized by SAINTS, a branch of Pandit Loisang toady at Yairipok Universal college, Wangkhem. The function was attended by Adhyaksha (I/E), Konthoujam Tombi Singh, Pradhan, Top Chingtha, Khoirom Tondon Singh, Zilla Parishad Member, Wangkhem, Ningombam Sunil Meitie, Keisam Ningthemjao Singh as the Chief Guest, President and Guest of honour respectively.

The competitive examination was held on 21 and 23 January. Students of class X of Yairipok and Thoubal areas appeared in the examination. Prizes were distributed to the topper students along with consolation prizes to some selected students. 

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The post The curious case of State Bank of India in Manipur appeared first on  KanglaOnline.com.

By Sanjit Laishram
SBI a regional banking giant and is one of the largest financial institutions in the world. The State Bank of India is the largest of the Big Four banks of India, along with ICICI Bank, Punjab National Bank and HDFC Bank-its main competitors. The State Bank of India is also the 29th most reputed company in the world according to Forbes. In addition, SBI is the only bank featured in the coveted “top 10 brands of India” list in an annual survey conducted by Brand Finance and The

Economic Times in 2010 and boast of having the highest number of customers among all the commercial banks in India is something to be proud of for the banking giant.

Being the largest bank, State Bank of India Services offers products through its well-managed, efficient and deep-rooted networks like Domestic Treasury, Broking Services, Revised Service Charge, ATM Services, Internet Banking, E-Pay, E-Rail, Safe Deposit Lockers, and Gift Cheques. As a premier banking institute every customers expect quick and efficient service form the bank. On the contrary, SBI branches across the Imphal valley i.e. Imphal Secretariat Branch, Paona Bazaar Branch, MG Avenue Branch, Porompat Branch and MU Campus Branch is marred with technical and staffing problem on a regular basic. This is not expected from an institution like SBI. Wondering, what the condition of the banks would be in far-flung areas?

Daily server problem, issuing of limited number of token for early birds, late opening of branch office from the stipulated schedule time is against Banking Guidelines, Arrogant Staffs greets you when you visit a State Bank of India branch in Imphal. These problems are not a mere one off incident for any customers visiting SBI branches in imphal. To feel and see how the customers are unnecessarily harassed by all this issues, one can visit in any of the mention branches on any working day. Right form depositing a few amount of money or withdrawing it is a Herculean task for any ordinary customer. Making a Demand Draft or making a challan in any of the mention branches, one need to have a nerve of steel and the perseverance of the saint in order to get the job done.

Not to forget the ever idle ATM’s or you can abbreviate the name of the ATM’s in Imphal as All Time Moneyless. In addition, 27×7 banking is a distant dream for the customers except for those internet banking and mobile banking users. The ever-growing number of unsatisfied customers is not a welcome sign for SBI as people can always shift to other better service provider in near future. Wonder how the banking ombudsman would react with the entire shortcoming from a banking institute like SBI. In addition, never had I heard of a banking ombudsman giving justice to all this related issues in our state. Indeed, it is time to forward the grievance directly to Appellate Authority of RBI.

The immediate solution is to open more SBI branches in the neighborhoods with skilled and efficient staff that can cater the demand of the ever-increasing number of customers who want to avail its services. The RBI guidelines to open more bank branches for area whose population is about 25,000 needs to be implemented ASAP. Only more number of bank branches will ease the work pressure that is being piled up at the limited branches, which are available now. Whatever be the matter, it is for the management in SBI to look after the public grievances and create an atmosphere to the customers who now hate going to Bank our state to avoid the madness and chaos seen everyday in banking offices across the city. After all this is just a reminder to SBI that the customer is still the king and always will be.

(The views expressed are the personal view of the contributor)

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The post Quality of Life and Environment: Where are we? appeared first on  KanglaOnline.com.

By Amar Yumnam
Quality of life one encounters in everyday living and continued living is one the most important determinants of wellbeing of an individual and a group. In recent years, this has entered so much into the decision-making process of an individual and consequently economists today attach a major importance to the quality of life and its potentials assessments of any place. We should also be attaching importance to this in Manipur to sustain as a society and as a diverse community.

Quality of life is a product of a multidimensional characteristic of qualities respecting to political, economic, social, environment, cultural, education, employment and other important factors in an individual’s response to living in a context. Well, when it comes to the political quality of life in Manipur the better it is for us if we talk least of that. In other words, the political quality of life in Manipur and the neighbouring provinces is such that it is sickening and devoid of any quality of civilizational character. In a recent lecture at Stanford University in honour of Kenneth Arrow, Dani Rodrik questions the increasing relevance of the concept of ‘nation state’ in today’s world. Rodrik has raised this question with the rising heterogeneity of consumers in the world. The civilised world has reaped the benefits of diversity and increasingly appreciates the value of it in terms of development potential, realised civilizational level and widening the perspective for a wider world. In the case of Manipur, the opposite is just the reality. The diversity of community has become a weakness and a problem rather than a strength for onward social advancement. It has become an excuse to indulge in articulations devoid of any civilizational character and increasingly jeopardising our potential for enhancement of quality of life. Indeed, the quality of life has worsened deeper in Manipur in so far as the political component is concerned.

But in the preoccupation with the political issues, articulations and race for sacrificing the civilizational aura in it, we have completely missed one very important aspect of the quality of life components. The global concern today is with climate change and the changes towards undesirable directions of the environment. In the context of Manipur, the race in political arms race has completely made the people forget and conveniently behave unconcerned with what is happening in the environment in Manipur. We need not tax our mind to understand as to how we define environment in the context of Manipur. We can easily define it as the forests and the tree-cover in the land. We may move to any direction from Imphal, we can very easily appreciate with our eyes the disappearing forests, thinning mountains and deteriorating land quality in Manipur. In fact, the phenomenon is such that only the mountains where army camps are located would be the places where forests would be saved. If this turns out to be the case, we have only one option to save our environment.  This is complete militarisation of the land and thereby convert every mountain top into an army camp. But we know for sure that this is neither feasible nor democratic.

The world is moving towards a direction of thinking on environment different from the one still prevalent in Manipur. We are still in the world where the landscape functions are segregated. The thinking world has left this mind-set behind and now perceives the landscape functions in an inclusive multidimensional way. In addition to the fast depletion of forests in the mountains of Manipur and the public non-concern with it, we also have a thinking in the valley where environment is concerned to be only related to the forests in the mountains of the land.  We work as if the urban planning and development has nothing to do with the environment component of the quality of life. All the developmental interventions relating to construction and improving land quality in the valley have invariably compromised the continuance of the mountains in Manipur as mountains and the richness of the forests therein. To put in another way, the segregation of landscape functions in the mentality of the people and the policy making for development is leading to the double-degradation of the environment in Manipur. The degradation of the environment in the mountains is coupled by another in the valley.  Even the value attached by our kings in history to street trees no longer prevails.

This is something we cannot afford to continue further. For instance, we must remember that we have an airport with rising flight density, and our rising developmental needs demand this. However, aircrafts are the biggest pollutants anywhere in the world. We have to be very conscious of this while thinking of the environment in the valley. The urban planning process definitely has to necessarily incorporate the environmental component of the quality of life. Unlike elsewhere, we do not see the emergence of the roof-top gardening as an aesthetic value either. While the urbanisation process is deepening with rising negative aspects of it, there is no emergence of quality of urban landscape as important component in designing and policy making.

While there is no perceptible component in planning connecting people with nature, the unfolding picture has nothing to encourage us. The deteriorating forests in the mountains would tell on the water system and overall quality of life for the entire province within less than two decades in difficult to reverse terms if the present trend continues. The recent experiences with the weather – the daily manifestations of climate- in Manipur have not been what the past lived experiences of the people tell us. The deteriorating environment would start impacting negatively on the health and behaviour of the people. We have to act before these happen. The sooner we listen and respond to this natural requirement the better for the society. The sickening political environment would sicken all of us if we allow it to extend to the environmental component of quality of life.   

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The post When One Billion Rises appeared first on  KanglaOnline.com.

When One Billion Rises
It is hard to escape three words strung together: “One Billion Rising”. Fast being known simply as OBR, the word and the abbreviation keep on popping up as a common theme across social networking sites and in conversation and serious discussions across towns, cities and countries. Just as there are young and old people getting together to talk and plan out the day, which will be observed worldwide on February 14, there are a lot others who believe that the observation is something to do with Valentines’ Day. The history of the V-day, on which the One Billion Rising campaign is pegged; is much more than the raw consumerism of Valentine’s Day. It all started in 1998 as reactions to a politically and sexually charged play called The Vagina Monologues written by Eve Ensler, an American playwright, performer, feminist and activist. Made up of a number of monologues read by a number of women, dealing with feminine experiences touching on sex, love, rape, menstruation, female genital mutilation, masturbation, birth, orgasm, the various common names for the vagina, or simply as a physical aspect of the body, The Vagina Monologues became more than just a play but slowly took on the shades of a movement with its central theme on preventing sexual violence. Every year a new monologue is added to highlight a current issue that affects women around the world. The V-day as the movement became to be known started from discussions post the play and spread to countries on a global scale.

This time, given the context and the public and social debate over areas of safety for women, it is only apt that the One Billion Rising movement gets into the spotlight in India as well. While the theme may be making itself heard around us, partly because of the rage and events that has unfolded in the country after the brutal rape and subsequent death of a 23 year old in New Delhi, it is a fact that issues around women’s safety are hardly addressed with the seriousness that it deserves. It is common for most people to lay blame on women for sexual crimes committed against them. If it is a case of domestic violence, the accepted norm is that the wife must not have tried enough to keep the husband happy. If a woman gets raped, it is her fault for various reasons: the time she was going somewhere, the dress she was wearing, the company she was keeping, the community she is from. There will never be any mention of responsibilities towards women being safe from abuse, ultimately leading to figures that shock: one in three women on the planet will be raped or beaten in her lifetime!

India or even Manipur are not the only places where the onus for women to stay safe rests on how they dress and how they look, where they go and whom they go with. In fact the V-day movement also came about as a response to a statement made by Republican U.S. Representative Todd Akin of Missouri who said pregnancy rarely occurs as a result of what he called “legitimate rape”. This is no different to various leaders on the national level and at the state level who have given their pearls of wisdom on women’s sexual rights and freedom. Some years ago, an MLA always prone to be in the Opposition party famously went about distributing knives and scissors to women ‘to protect themselves from rape’ and struck by that same helpful gesture, a political party in Maharashtra advised that women should carry knives for protection. Missing in the area of discussion of course, was that sexual violence on women are committed by men and that they are the ones who need to be brought to book.

And while the country’s leaders set about getting the ordinance on preventing violence against women and their sexual abuse into legal implementation mode in the backdrop of calls to also look into existing gaps that have been left out and more so in the context of the safety of women in militarized zones in the country, the rallying point of the One Billion Rising Campaign should hopefully keep the talk going on till it hits home.

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The post Lui Ngai Ni appeared first on  KanglaOnline.com.

By TS.Warngam
Every Naga tribe has its own festival which are celebrated at the village and tribe level.Of late,Nagas have organized themselves and jointly celebrated festivals at the regional level.Nagas in Nagaland State celebrate  the Hornbill festival every year.In the same manner,Nagas in Manipur celebrate Lui Ngai Ni every year.

A seminar was held on the 10th may 1986 at GM hall Imphal which was attended by the then Hon`ble minister of state Mr.Gaikhangam and Hon`ble MLA Mr.Benjamin Banee as the chief guest and functional president respectively.It was recommended then, that a common festival of the Nagas in Manipur be celebrated every year on the 15th of February under the name of “Naga seed sowing festival”.This festival after much discussion was named “Lui Ngai Ni” in indigenous dialect putting together the best appropriate and relevant words of the tribes.The collective efforts of the Nagas enabled them to shape and celebrate the first such observance on 15th Feb.1987. In recognition of this zealous efforts,the Govt.of Manipur further declared a state holiday for the festival and in 1997,the Ministry of tourism,Govt.of India also listed the festival as one of the tourist festivals in India.

On this day of the festival, seeds of different crops are brought together and prayers are invoked to the almighty God to shower blessings on the seeds so that they grow to bear fruits for bumper harvest in order to ensure the well-being of the people.The blessings of the supreme deity is sought with expressions through dances, songs, games, sports, rituals, etc performed by the various tribes.This cultural continuity is a way of showing our unique identity. It is this continuity which we see in some of the most delightful dances,songs and other customary rituals presented during Lui Ngai Ni every year.

Out of many  festivals that different Naga tribes celebrate,there are those which are uncommon in design,purpose and time.But the Lui Ngai Ni  is celebrated by all Naga Tribes almost simultaneously during the spring season.

In fact,the phenomenal diversity with the Naga community itself add colors to the collective diversity of the world.In all,there are about 40 odd tribes that constitute the Naga society,and out of these about 16 tribes are found in Manipur alone. They are Anal, Maring, Lamkang, Moyon, Monsang, Chothe, Tarao, Tangkhul, Mao, Poumei, Maram, Thangal, Chiru, Kharam, Inpui and Zeliangrong (Zemei, Liangmei & Rongmei).

Like many indigenous tribes of South East Asia,the Nagas have a rich and colorful culture. Every Naga tribe celebrate various festivals signifying important events in their life . Though the Nagas have no well documented customs, traditions, legends, beliefs and values, many of them are relayed/passed through oral and visual traditions in the forms of song,dance,story-telling,rites and rituals, wood carvings, festivals, megaliths, etc.The written history of today does not adequately reflect the pristine wisdom of our ancestors.

Lui Ngai Ni is celebrated under the aegis of the UNC by default being the apex body every year in the district head quarters of Chandel,Ukhrul,Senapati and Tamenglong by turn in rotation.UNC usually innitiates the formation of organizing committees with all the sub-committees who in turn shoulders the responsibilities to make the event a grand success.It is celebrated with the support and contributions from the tribes,well wishers, officers, politicians, leaders, contractors, businessmen,etc.

Lui Ngai Ni 2013 is being celebrated in Chamdil (Chandel) under the leadership of Mr.Somipam Lungleng as the Chairman of COC and guidance from the UNC headed by Mr.L.Adani as its President with the theme “Weaving peace through culture” .

In celebrating the festival,the Nagas rekindle their past glorious traditions and values for their posterity,perhaps,re-enact and promote our dances,songs,customary values and rituals. May the celebration of Lui-ngai-ni usher in peace and better understanding among us all.
K U K N A L I M
(TS.Warngamis the Vice President of the United Naga Council.)

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