Delhi, Dhaka On Trade Train

By Sidhartha & Surojit Gupta

Kotak Mahindra Bank is the latest Indian firm to line up to be part of the growing India-Bangladesh trade and investment story. The private sector lender has sought permission from the authorities across the border to set up a joint venture with Abdul Mehtab Ahmed, a local businessman.

A Kotak Mahindra spokesperson told ToI that the move is in line with the bank's growth strategy. But any banking analyst would tell you that banks typically follow companies to meet their funding requirements. What they leverage is their existing ties.

With over 100 Indian companies already in Bangladesh, it is not surprising that the country is on the banking radar. From Bharti Airtel, which has invested close to $1 billion, to the AV Birla Group, Arvind Mills and Sun Pharma and even smaller players who make fans, plastic products and garments, several Indian players are sensing an opportunity across the border.

After all, trade ties have improved, which is evident in better trade numbers. In the first six months of the current financial year trade has increased to around $1.7 billion from $1.56 billion in April-September 2011. Although exports from India have increased marginally to $1.4 billion, imports have gone up 85% to $290 million from around $160 million a year ago. The target is to increase trade to $1 billion this year.

"The terms of trade are still tilted in India's favour but we expect this to improve significantly in the coming years," says an official.

Within this it is textiles and raw jute imports that have seen a steep rise. Raw jute imports from Bangladesh rose over 500% to $54 million, while readymade garment imports rose nearly three-fold from $8 million in the first half of 2010-11 to $22 million during April-September 2011. Import of made-ups of textiles also increased to $27 million.

India had offered tariff concessions as well as dutyfree import quotas to Bangladesh to boost trade ties. Numbers indicate that cotton fabric and yarn exports from India rose around 22% to $350 million, indicating that ties with garment makers across the border were improving.

The concessions given on export of textiles are beginning to have an impact and there is already a clamour for protection from Bangladesh, which is now among the largest textiles exporters. Indian officials, however, dismissed suggestions that import of textiles from Bangladesh were affecting the local industry, saying the local market was worth nearly $35 billion (Rs 1.82 lakh crore).

But officials from both sides recognize that there are several bottlenecks, starting with the pile-up of trucks at the border.

Anyone who has visited the Petrapole or the Akhaura border with Bangladesh would tell you that a long queue of trucks on either side of the border is a common sight.

"India has worked on improving the border but we need to upgrade the customs facility. There are very few officers to clear the consignments," says a Bangladesh government official. There are other irritants too such as the absence of money changers at the border.

"On both sides, infrastructure is a big issue," adds another official.

While work at Petrapole is underway for an integrated check post, they say often the attitude of the customs officials at the border posts impacts trade. "There are not enough senior officers and often one can find that the officers who are there are not well versed in the latest notifications. This delays trade enormously," said one official. Adding to the problem is the lack of quarantine officers to take care of farm exports and imports. But some progress is visible as ties between the two countries improve.

New posts are scheduled to come up Agartala, Dawki, Hili, Chandrabangha, Sutarkhandi and Kawarpuchiah. Simultaneously, eight land customs stations are also coming up with the two projects together expected to cost over Rs 600 crore.

There are border haats too which permit weekly trade in select local goods. This is a move aimed at building confidence on both sides of the border and increasing peopleto-people contact.

While the bonhomie is visible, there are several decisions that can help bolster ties. For instance, Bangladesh is sitting on proposals to permit Indian companies to get goods and raw material delivered at the Chittagong and Mongla ports and then transport then through the North East. That's linked to the deal on Teesta.

Politics apart, there are trade irritants too, which Bangladesh terms as non-tariff barriers. For instance, both countries have productwise restrictions on entry of consignments at various entry points.

Bangladesh is also willing to open up more to Indian companies. They have said they are willing to offer one or two special economic zones to Indian companies. So far there has been no takers but expectations are that the plan will soon take off.

Bangladesh officials say the potential for raising bilateral trade is immense. Both sides have recognized the potential and it is upto the policymakers to seize the initiative to nurture the relationship which analysts say can accelerate the pace of regional integration in South Asia and transform the lives of people living along the India-Bangladesh border.

Digitizing Endangered Historical Documents in Mizoram

SFU alumnus Kyle Jackson, who graduated in 2007 with a BA in history/political science, submitted this fascinating article about his participation in a global rescue mission to India to digitize some of the world’s most endangered historical documents. While SFU News traditionally publishes articles only about current students, we couldn’t resist sharing Jackson’s story.


By Kyle Jackson

A big bowl of boiled baby bees was being pushed towards me.

It was the generous honour afforded to us dinner guests in a village home in Mizoram, the remote tribal state at the southernmost tip of India's easternmost frontier. 

I wished then that my hosts were less generous. I wished then that the honour was less larvae-related. I cursed the British Library under my breath. And grabbed a grub.

I was in Mizoram as a part of a four-member pilot-project under the Endangered Archives Programme (EAP), a global rescue mission for the world's most endangered historical documents. Administered by the UK's British Library and funded by Arcadia, EAP researchers have in the past seven years fanned out across the globe, armed with little more than high-resolution digital cameras and strong stomachs.

From the crispy Sahara to soggy Amazonia, the Programme selects from a world of possibilities:  twentieth-century Bengali street literature, nineteenth-century Siberian glass-plate photographic negatives, eighteenth-century Tamil palm-leaf manuscripts. Digitization projects operate literally all the way to Timbuktu.

The stakes are high. The princess to rescue is the world's most endangered written heritage; the dragons that threaten her are called climate, conflict, critters and carelessness.

Our own adventure begins in Mizoram's monsoon-soaked capital of Aizawl—a city perched perilously on the cliffs of the towering north-south running mountains that lay like parallel spines across India's northeast.
The Tibeto-Burman language of the Mizo people that live there demands mental gymnastics for any foreigner to navigate. The Mizo word lei can mean “tongue”, “bridge”, “sand”, “unlevel”, or “buy”, depending on the precise tone you say it with. I could only pray that my tongue would never get sand on it as I was trying to buy an unlevel bridge in Mizoram: an impossible story to recount. Plus, I would have sand on my tongue.

I thus stick to the basics:  i dam em? (how are you?), ka dam e (I'm fine), and a nak ah a zuang chungin a pet (flying kick to the ribs). The latter is what I feel like I have experienced after each of our journeys across the rivers and jungles separating Mizoram's rural villages. The winding roads are some of the worst on the planet. It takes nearly eight hours by 4x4 to cover a mere 150 kilometres, like driving for eight hours from Vancouver to reach Hope. 

We arrive battered. Sometimes the historical documents are already long gone. We find a corpus of old diaries shredded into rats’ nests in Saikao village.

We find a 1928 book of hand-drawn maps pockmarked and perforated by little silverfish.

We find books of the Old Testament (works among the earliest ever printed in the Mizo language), chewed through by a rodent. The rat no doubt especially enjoyed Jeremiah 15:16.

Other times we strike pay dirt.

We find the first letter ever written by a Mizo—a chief writing to none other than Queen Victoria, proudly informing her of his patriotic lighting of bonfires all around his village on her birthday.

We find the diary of a lone-ranger British missionary who worked amongst the secluded Mara tribe—a document that could shine new light onto the shadowy history of a sequestered society.

We find an old record of village rainfall—a testament to a staggering 12,491 inches of precipitation (nearly the same height as Burnaby Mountain's prominence) across the last hundred years.

Such documents capture the exceptionally rapid transition of a society uniquely and fundamentally transformed. Mizo historians are fond of reminding each other that in 1901, nearly no one in the Mizo tribe was literate or Christian; in 1961, nearly everyone in the Mizo tribe was literate and Christian; and in 2012, Mizos command the second-most literate state in all of India.

Much digitization work remains. However, across three months our little team preserved hundreds of rare books, diaries, missionary treatises, church and government records, photographs, and personal letters, all totaling some five hundred gigabytes worth of digital images. As the only foreigner, I feel I did well culturally, too, politely eating all my bees in a total of five mega bites.

The documents that have been digitized will soon have the power to revolutionize not only how Mizo history is understood, but also how the craft of history writing in Mizoram is pursued.  Now in the process of being cataloged, they will soon be deposited for easy access for all at universities, libraries and archives across Mizoram state, as well as online through the British Library.

The evil twin hydras of neglect and humidity daily rob the globe of its history. It is time we took a running leap to give them both a serious a nak ah a zuang chungin a pet.

Source: sfu.ca

Election To Village And Local Councils in Mizoram

Aizawl, Feb 23 : Campaign for elections to the 509 village councils in six districts and 52 local councils within the Aizawl Municipal Council area, to be held tomorrow, ended on Wedesday.

An electorate of 4,06,003 would elect 2,115 village council members from 5,364 candidates in the village council polls while 1,74,868 voters would seal the fate of 1,341 in the local councils which has a total of 522 members.

While the ruling Congress and the opposition Mizo National Front (MNF) would be the main contenders in the village council as well as local council polls, other parties like Mizoram People's Conference (MPC), Zoram Nationalist Party (ZNP), People's Conference (a breakaway group of the MPC) and the BJP also fielded candidates.

The state election commission, which conducted the polls, announced that polling would begin from 7 AM on Thursday and counting of votes would begin after the polling is completed on the same day.

‘AFSPA Violates Rights Given By The Indian Constitution’

 Binalakshmi Nepram

Cambridge, Massachusetts: Armed Forces Special Powers Act known by its acronym AFSPA violates rights enshrined in the Indian Constitution, said Binalakshmi Nepram, founder of Manipur Women Gun Survivors Network.

Ms. Nepram was participating in a panel discussion on Irom Sharmila Chanu of Manipur and her 11-year hunger strike in judicial custody demanding the repeal of the controversial Armed Forces Special Powers Act (1958) in India.

Ms. Nepram who was recently honored with the CNN-IBN Indian of the Year award said that more than 20,000 people have been killed in Manipur since AFSPA first came into force here in 1958. “There is no security in our lives,” she declared.

Babloo Lotongbam, Executive Director of Human Rights Alert, Manipur highlighted the problem in using army for policing. “Police uses power to maintain order while army use of power is to overpower the adversary,” he said. The whole of North East is declared a “disturbed area” to deploy the army. Mr. Lotongbam argues that army is not used in mainland India even though level of violence in Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand is much higher.

Irom Sharmila started her career working as an intern for a Public Commission on AFSPA that Mr. Loitongbam organized in 2000. Just a few days later, after ten civilians were killed by members of Assam Rifles, she started her fast that has continued for more than 11 years.

She was arrested for three days after beginning her fast and is re-arrested every year for “attempting to commit suicide.” She is being force-fed through a nasal tube. She has been kept as the highest security prisoner and no one is allowed to meet her without permission from the government.

Declaring that AFSPA has failed, Pradyot Deb Barma, Chairman and Editor of The Northeast Today magazine said, “AFSPA is our 9/11,” referring to not only the date when it was first imposed in 1958 but also the terror that residents of North Eastern states continue to face due to this law.
Dr. Angana Chatterji, Co-convener of the International People's Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice in Kashmir talked about AFSPA use in Kashmir and its effect on the civilian population.

The story of Irom Sharmila Chanu of Manipur, and her 11-year hunger strike in judicial custody, demanding the repeal of AFSPA, frames the first US symposium on the Act and its use in Jammu & Kashmir and in Manipur, Tripura, and other states in India’s remote North Eastern region. Aspects of the deployment of the Act, the special powers it gives to India’s security forces in handling the country’s border regions, and its impact on India’s democratic, constitutional, and judicial practice, were discussed by a panel moderated by Charlie Clements, Executive Director, Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. Film and media curator L. Somi Roy of New York, and Hun-tré! International Manipur Projects, New York/Imphal, made an introductory cultural background presentation on Manipur.

The event was co-sponsored by the Harvard India Caucus, Kashmir Initiative at the Carr Center, North American Manipur Association (NAMA), European Manipuri Association (EMA), and Manipuri Diaspora Association.

Salaried Doctor Donations, Bogus Manufacturers Claim Subsidy

By Rahul Karmakar

Guwahati, Feb 23 : The Northeast accounts for less than 1% of India’s income tax revenue. But it appears to have taken the lead in tax frauds by salaried employees through fake donations, bogus manufacturing by industrial units enjoying a slew of subsidies and misuse of exemption rules for scheduled tribes.

Officials at the regional income tax headquarters here said they have zeroed in on at least 100 government employees in Manipur who made false claims under section 80GGA (donation for scientific research and rural development) and 80G (donation to charitable institutions) under Income Tax Act of 1961. More cases in Manipur, Assam and other states in the region are under investigation.

“An increasing number of tax return related scams of salaried employees have come to light. Certain employees have been found to claim as much as 60% of their take-home salary as deduction by way of donations,” chief commissioner of income tax RK Gupta said. “Some claims implied they did not have any day-to-day expenditure.”

Manufacturing units established under a new industrial policy entailing subsidies have also come under the scanner for ‘bogus production’. According to Gupta, most of these units inflate production figures by 70% to claim capital, transport, power and other subsidies. Even TDS deducted by local agencies are not paid to the Central coffers.

The industrial policy entails transport subsidy for raw materials procured from outside the Northeast. But most units source their raw material locally. Some flour mills, officials said, have even claimed transport subsidy for procuring tons of wheat on scooters.

If that were not enough, many scheduled tribes have claimed tax exemptions under section 10(26) – applicable for scheduled tribes in special category areas such as Nagaland, Mizoram and Bodoland Autonomous Council of Assam – running into millions of rupees. “There are deposits in banks in crores in the name of members of ST community who claim legal immunity under this section,” Gupta said.

The probe of accounts of tax-exempt communities was facilitated by a recent Gauhati high court directive that said income tax department could probe and issue summons to those falling in the ST category and residing in special areas. This followed a petition by a retired Nagaland officer who cited provisions under section 10(26) after crores of money was found deposited in his bank account on specific dates.

India's Wild East Unprepared For New Myanmar

By Satarupa Bhattacharjya and Frank Jack Daniel

MOREH, India - As dusk falls on a lonely police station in the eastern tip of India, a young policeman nervously keeps an eye on the Arakan hills above him, dotted with poppy fields.

Just 22 bumpy miles from the capital of Manipur, he and his colleagues are outnumbered by gunmen from a faction of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland, one of half a dozen insurgent groups operating near India's border with Myanmar.

Last year, six policemen were killed a few miles away in an ambush authorities blamed on them.
Small groups of men with machetes on their belts can be seen in the winter twilight, openly climbing steep paths through the poppy fields, where valuable seed heads will later be harvested and taken to Myanmar for processing into heroin.

"There are many poppy fields in the hills here," the policeman said in a hushed voice, refusing to give his name to Reuters for fear of reprisals from the men he said were armed rebels patrolling the fields above his office. Growers will either sell the seed heads to agents or openly in the local market , he said.

Opium and insurgency can make for a profitable if exotic business model, but it is not what India had in mind when it launched its "Look East" policy 20 years ago to link its markets to those of booming Southeast Asia.
Now as resource-rich Myanmar emerges from decades of isolation under military rule, India should be a natural partner, with ties stretching back to 3rd Century BC Buddhist emperor Ashoka and, more recently, a shared experience of British colonialism and World War Two.

BRIDGE TO SOUTHEAST ASIA
"Myanmar is India's only bridge to Southeast Asia," Myo Myint, Myanmar's deputy foreign minister, told Reuters last week at a meeting of Southeast Asian diplomats in New Delhi to look at ways to speed up road, rail and telecoms connections with India. "India needs to come forward with assistance."

Myanmar sits at Asia's crossroads, sharing a western border with India, and a northern one with China. Thailand is its neighbour to the east and the Malacca Strait is on its southern flank.

The country of nearly 60 million people has emerged from a half-century of military rule and is courting the West while trying to wean itself from dependency on China for trade and investment. But despite a recent flurry of high-level visits between the two countries, India appears ill-placed on the ground to exploit Myanmar's opening.

Reuters journalists on a recent trip to the Myanmar-India border in Manipur found a region where rebel groups deeply influence politics and business. Opium poppies are grown openly. Cross-border gun-running remains big business.

Manipur and the three other Indian states sharing the 1,640- km (1,020-mile) border with Myanmar were supposed to be India's "Gateway to the East". Instead, the area has become India's Wild East.

Legal trade on the border has dwindled in the last five years to just 0.15 percent of total commerce between Myanmar and India. Checkpoints by security forces and rebel group supporters make the 120 km (75 mile) journey along rutted Highway 102 through the hills from Manipur's capital Imphal to Moreh on the border a painstakingly slow -- and expensive, too, from the "taxes" they impose on traffic.


NO CRIME HERE
The sleepy border town of Moreh had dreams of being a major international trading centre, a key station on the ambitious Trans-Asia Railway that will enable containers from East and Southeast Asia to travel overland across India to Europe.

But work on the $900 million, 125 km (77 mile) stretch of the railway is already two years behind schedule and has only progressed a short distance. Costs are soaring.

At first glance, Moreh seems to be a quiet bazaar of traditional wooden stilt houses, frontier hotels and stores where Myanmarese Buddhist monks and tribespeople in traditional dress and sandal-paste painted faces mingle with traders from across India.

The town of 15,000 people has one bank.

"There is no crime here," acting police chief Akbar Hussein said, chewing on a lump of betel nut at his outdoor desk. "There was only one case registered this month, and that was a road accident."

Opened in 1995 to great fanfare, the Moreh crossing was supposed to be a major trading post by now. Only some small-scale merchants conduct legal trade. Much of that is on a barter system, exchanging flour and soy products for betel, a mild stimulant popular in India.

Despite the police chief's boast, Moreh is a major smuggling centre where outlaws move around freely. Heroin from the Golden Triangle, guns and gem stones go westward; raw opium, tiger bones and rhino horn move east.

"Since 1995, nothing substantial has taken place. The border area is like a 17th-century tribal village," said N. Mohindro, an expert on trade in the state. "It's all about drugs and guns. People can make money so easily."

Some of this business is in the hands of Indian insurgents who run their operations from the Myanmar side of the border. Several of Myanmar's own rebel groups are also based in the area.

A U.S. diplomatic cable from 2006 released by Wikileaks described local politicians either in league with the rebels or supporting them for financial reasons.

Local residents say security forces are also deeply involved in trafficking but a senior officer of the police intelligence branch in Imphal denies that.

"The dense forest cover in this open border region is a nightmare for us," the officer said," the officer said of an unfenced 63 mile stretch running from Moreh, adding that "the easy availability of weapons inside Myanmar has worsened the situation".

IMAGINARY ROAD
It wasn't always this way. Until the early 1990s, Myanmarese flocked across the border to buy Indian-made consumer goods. But as China's workshops cranked up and offered cheaper, more durable products, the market shifted to the other side of the fence.

Now, traders from Imphal endure the serpentine journey along bumpy Highway 102 and its checkpoint shakedowns to visit the Namphalong bazaar on the Myanmar side of the Moreh border gate.

Their pick-up trucks are piled high with Chinese mattresses, refrigerators and TVs to sell back in India, returning along the same road that brought Japanese troops in World War Two through then Burma in an attempt to invade India. The trip from the border to Imphal carrying such contraband can involve payoffs along the way amounting to several hundred dollars.

Highway 102 was supposed to be part of a road network linking up with Mandalay, Myanmar's main city in the North, and on into Thailand. But the only notable improvement on the Indian side is a short patch running through the Manipur chief minister's home town.

"People had plans to open eateries, motels and shops along the Asian highway. Now, the trans-national road is imaginary. It does not exist here," said Lunminthang Haokip, a senior state government official for Moreh's Chandel district. "The Look East policy is no more than power-point presentations in Delhi."

The complaint is voiced often here by residents in Manipur who have suffered decades of rights abuses under draconian emergency powers including "shoot-to-kill" orders aimed at curtailing the insurgencies.

Residents say New Delhi acts like a colonial power, with much of its mistrust of the region stemming from its relative proximity to China.

"The overwhelming presence of military, paramilitary and police officers contributed to the impression that Imphal was under military occupation," the U.S. embassy cable said. "The Indian civil servants were also clearly frustrated with their inability to stem the growing violence and anarchy in the state, feeling their efforts to effectively control the insurgencies was hamstrung by local politicians either in league with or at least through corruption, helping to finance the insurgents."

India, which fought a border war in 1962 with China, has watched with mounting concern as Beijing steadily increases its influence around the rim of the Indian Ocean.

"You can't leave the whole region under an iron curtain just because they look Chinese," said rights activist Babloo Loitongbam, in a restaurant left dark by one of the chronic power cuts in Imphal. "You have to constantly prove you are not anti-national.

Ten years ago India's foreign minister proposed reopening a World War Two highway to the north of Manipur called the Stilwell Road, which connects India's far eastern region, known as the Northeast, with Myanmar and China.

Worried that the road risked strengthening China's influence and the flow of militants and arms to the region, India dragged its feet and Myanmar turned to China's Yunnan Construction Engineering Group instead. India also missed out on the natural gas from two fields in Myanmar it has a stake in, when the government chose to pipe it to China.

During long years of self-imposed isolation, Myanmar's only major economic partner was China. India realised in the 1990s that Chinese investment in Myanmar's military and infrastructure was giving Beijing a strategic advantage in a nation that borders five countries, straddles busy Bay of Bengal shipping lanes and has large oil and gas reserves.

New Delhi quietly dropped its backing for the opposition party of Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who went to school and university in India.

Ties have strengthened since then, with President Thein Sein just the latest of Myanmar's leaders to call on New Delhi on a visit to India last year.

Rajiv Bhatia, who was India's ambassador to Myanmar until 2005. says India is still more concerned with its South Asian neighbours, including Bangladesh and Pakistan, and could miss the moment.

"In pure geopolitical terms, Myanmar is hugely important to India. We are now getting a historic opportunity to recover our relationship," he said. " But it is still not a priority for our politicians."

(Editing by John Chalmers and Bill Tarrant)

Rare Snake Species 'Rediscovered' By Zoologist in Mizoram

Aizawl, Feb 22 : A zoologist teacher in Mizoram University said that he has 'rediscovered' a snake species called Liopeltis Stoliczkae, believed to have become extinct from the earth.

H T Lalremsanga said this non-venomous snake was found at two places in Aizawl. He said one of the snakes was sighted at McDonald Hill while three of them were sighted and photographed on the Mizoram University campus.

Earlier found in South Asia and parts of Asia, especially in Sikkim, Darjeeling, Naga Hills (then Assam) and Karen Hills of Myanmar, the noted British scientist W L Sclater discovered the Liopeltis Stoliczkae in Sikkim and Naga Hills in 1891.

After the discovery, Indian zoologists were engaged in a search for the snake species, but failed in their endeavour till it was found by a young zoologist in Mizoram. Lalremsanga said, "This endangered species has been rediscovered after more than a century."

The snake belongs to the family of Colubridae, and the total length of a male Liopeltis Stoliczkae can be up to 600mm. The body of the snake is greyish on top and lighter below, with a broad black stripe on the side of the head, extending and gradually fading, on the front portion of the body; a grey stripe on the outer margins of the ventrals and a less distinct and thinner median one may be present or absent.

The rediscovery was announced after Lalremsanga and his colleagues conducted a detailed study on the snake.

Sumo Wrestling in Guwahati

Guwahati, Feb 22 : People of Guwahati got a chance to witness five champion sumo wrestlers in action during the 19th International Guwahati Trade Fair 2012 held here recently.

The organizers invited five champion sumo wrestlers at Maniram Dewan Trade Centre to popularize the sport in India, especially in the northeastern region.

At the Japanese-style ring installed at the venue, the wrestlers not only took part in exhibition matches but also invited the audiences to join them.

"I can see lot of potential among the youth for this sport. So I thought of promoting Sumo wrestling in the Northeast. Sumo wrestling has been seen many times during trade fairs but this is the first time we are organizing it here," said Rajesh Das, one of the organisers.

Many of the visitors who came to the match had till now only heard and seen these wrestlers on television.

"It's a very nice experience to see Sumo Wrestlers because I have been hearing and watching on TV this sport but I never get to see performing in front of me. So it's a great experience," said Nilakhi Kakati, a spectator.

The wrestling exhibition was organized to celebrate 60 years of diplomatic relationships between India and Japan.