Indian hospital to help child with swollen head

Indian daily labourer, Abdul Rahman, 26, fans his 18 month old daughter, Roona Begum, suffering from Hydrocephalus. AFP PHOTO/ STR Source: AFP

A TOP private Indian hospital offered Monday to examine an 18-month-old girl suffering from a rare but treatable illness that has caused her head to swell to more than double its normal size.

The decision raises hope that eighteen-month-old Roona Begum, who suffers from hydrocephalus, a disorder which causes cerebrospinal fluid to build up on the brain, will get the life-saving surgery she urgently requires.
She was discovered last week living with her impoverished parents who are too poor to pay for treatment for the condition, which has resulted in her head swelling to a circumference of 91-centimetres (36-inches).
The publication of pictures taken by an AFP photographer in remote Tripura state in northeast India last Friday led numerous well-wishers to step forward offering donations, while a website has been set up to collect money for her.
Leading Indian neurosurgeon Sandeep Vaishya, who is the head of neurosurgery at a flagship hospital for the Fortis group near the capital, said that he would examine the girl and see if surgery was possible.

Fatima Khatun 25, kisses the head of her eighteen month old daughter, Roona Begum, suffering from Hydrocephalus. AFP PHOTO/ STR

"Fortis will fly her down and while we will have to do an MRI to check the condition of her brain, I am hopeful that we will be able to carry out a surgery and relieve the pressure on the poor child's brain," Vaishya told AFP.
The group has a charitable foundation which carries out surgery free of charge.
Her 18-year-old father, Abdul Rahman, who lives in a mud hut with his family in the village of Jirania Khola, told AFP earlier that only a "miracle" could save his daughter's life.
The swelling is putting pressure on her brain and has made it impossible for her to sit upright or crawl on the ground.
Local doctors had told the family to take the newborn to a private hospital in a big Indian city but the costs were too high for Rahman, an illiterate labourer who earns 150 rupees ($2.75) a day working in a brick plant.
The US government's National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke estimates about one in every 500 children suffers from hydrocephalus.
The most common treatment involves the surgical insertion of a mechanism to drain cerebrospinal fluid away from the brain and towards another part of the body where it can be easily absorbed into the bloodstream.
Extreme cases like Roona's are very rare, according to Vaishya, who said he had been deluged with calls about the child after he spoke to AFP on Saturday.
"The child must be in a lot of pain because her head is so heavy. Still, in the images I could see that she was smiling sometimes, which makes me think that her cognitive functions might still be intact," Vaishya said.
Surgery to treat hydrocephalus is not particularly risky, Vaishya said.

Frog weddings in Northeast India to Appease Rain God

Agartala/Guwahati, Apr 18 : In a ritual to appease the rain god, villagers in Tripura and Assam married off frogs hoping that it would end their sufferings arising out of a protracted dry spell in India's northeastern region.

Frog weddings are traditionally performed in northeastern India during drought-like situations before the onset of monsoon.

"It is believed that the rain god is pleased when a frog wedding is performed. Since there has been no rain for the past couple of months, we have conducted a frog wedding to appease 'Barun Devata' (rain god)," said Sandhya Chakraborty, a resident of Fatikroy village, 115 km north of here.

"We are confident that it would rain very soon to end our distress," she added.

Hundreds of people at Fatikroy and Indira Colony villages in northern Tripura attended the unusual wedding ceremony of two frogs Monday night.

Two groups of women separately bathed the frogs, a male and a female, and then they were dressed in new clothes for the wedding. The female frog was even made to wear a handmade necklace. The ritual was conducted by a Hindu priest according to tradition.

"After the marriage, people walked in a procession singing traditional songs. The frogs were then freed into the Manu river," said Sikha Sarkar, who arranged the wedding.

"We have learnt the ritual from our forefathers," Sarkar said.

Although the frog wedding took place in the night, the preparations for it began since the morning. A mass feast was organised and people enjoyed local folk dances and music like Dhamail the entire night.

Frog weddings were also reported from northern and eastern parts of Assam and various parts of Tripura.

"Our region is mostly parched. We do not know what else to do. We hope that now the rains would start and people would be able to start farming," said Somesh Bhattacharjee, a priest who performed a frog wedding at Chipoha village in eastern Assam.

Cultivation of tea, rubber, paddy and other crops has been severely affected due to the dry spell in the northeastern India.

Besides farming, generation of electricity at the hydro-electric power plants has also been affected as water levels have come down considerably in the reservoirs of all major projects in the region.

"The power-starved northeastern region has been hit by a severe electricity crisis since the beginning of March due to the dry spell," Tripura's Power Minister Manik Dey said.

"Most of the hydel power plants in the region have either stopped or reduced generation due to severe shortage of water in their reservoirs. Gas and coal-based power projects have also sharply reduced electricity generation due to various reasons," he added.

The weather department said the ongoing dry spell during the pre-monsoon period (March-May) is an unusual phenomenon. There has been 60-70 percent deficit in rainfall in the northeastern region so far. However, rainfall is almost normal in Arunachal Pradesh.

"Rains are likely in the next couple of days. The shortfall is expected to be compensated before the onset of monsoon in June," Dilip Saha, director of the Meteorological Department here, said.

Empty streets greet President in Imphal

Mukherjee accepted the charge that the Centre had neglected the northeast, saying that the northeast states do not get any benefits since the first-year-plan in 1951.

Imphal, Apr 16 : President Pranab Mukherjee landed in Imphal on Monday on a two-day visit to strife-torn Manipur and was greeted by empty streets due to bandh called by several militant outfits.

The coordinating committee (CorCom) of six rebel groups of the state called a 26-hour general strike to protest Mukherjee's visit from 6am on Monday which paralyzed Imphal. The United Revolutionary Front called for a bandh as well separately against Mukherjee's visit.

The CorCom said that the President's visit is another ploy of New Delhi to continue its domination of the erstwhile independent Manipur.

Mukherjee accepted the charge that the Centre had neglected the northeast, saying that the northeast states do not get any benefits since the first-year-plan in 1951.

A collective effort of all these states is needed, he said, while emphasizing the need to enhance the right to education, information and jobs for a bright future.

The outfits said the President should be held responsible for the murder of innocent Manipuris by the Indian security forces and the 'narcotics warfare' by New Delhi to suppress the youth of Manipur.

Mukherjee landed at the Imphal airport under heavy security and spent the day inaugurating the jubilee plaque of Adimjati Shiksha Ashram in the city. Besides inaugurating the Ashram's girls' hostel and an amity hall, Mukherjee also laid the foundation stone of a tribal working women's hostel and a tribal boys' hostel.

The bandh paralyzed in life in the Imphal valley with all business establishments and institutions were closed. Except for emergency and ceremonial services, a few people came out to greet Mukherjee and Imphal city wore a deserted look.

On Sunday, rebels triggered a powerful IED in Thoubal district, 7 km south of Imphal. Another similar bomb found nearby. The President is scheduled to leave Imphal on Tuesday morning.

A Golden Gecko recovered from traders in Assam

Guwahati, Apr 15: Guwahati police arrested two people and recovered a Golden Gecko lizard from them, police said Sunday.

Geckos are an endangered species, and under the Wildlife (Protection) Act 1972, trading or killing them is a punishable crime.

"We received a tip-off that some people were trading in wildlife parts in Guwahati. We sent a team to search a hotel in Paltan Bazar area of the city today. A Golden Gecko was recovered from their possession," Senior Superintendent of Police A.P. Tiwary told IANS.

The lizard was alive and was handed over to authorities of the Assam State Zoo at Guwahati, Tiwary said.

He said the two arrested are as Thingom C. Singh and Thangliansum Paite from Manipur.

"They came from Manipur to Guwahati to sell the endangered species," Tiwary said the SSP.

Guwahati police had recovered another Golden Gecko from Dispur area in the city from another trader a few months ago.

Some communities in countries like China, Malaysia, Indonesia, Japan believe that the Geckos can heal deadly diseases like cancer and HIV.

Wildlife experts, however, say that there is no truth in that belief and that Golden Geckos are needed to maintain the ecosystem.

Joint Monitoring Group to Discuss Resumption of Talks With HPC-D

Aizawl, Apr 15 : The Joint Monitoring Group to monitor the implementation of the Suspension of Operations signed between the Mizoram government and the Manipur-based Hmar People's Convention (Democrats) would hold a meeting on Friday next, officials said.

The meeting would be held at the Mizoram-Manipur border village of Sakawrdai.

It would be presided over by the chairman of the JMG H Ramthlengliana, SP CID (SB) and would be attended by two officials and three members representing the HPC (D), they said.

The meeting would deliberate on the date and place for resumption of talks between the Mizoram government and the Hmar outfit and also discuss the observance of the bilateral SoO signed between the two parties on January 31 last in Aizawl.

The Mizoram government and the HPC (D) had earlier signed SoO for six months on November 11, 2010 but the proposed resumption of talks could not take off due to differences between the two sides which resulted in a massive crackdown on the Hmar outfit.

Top leaders of the outfit, H Zosangbera, Lalropuia and Lalbiaknunga were arrested by the police during 2012.

Zosangbera was arrested from the Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi on July 17 while Lalropuia and Lalbiaknunga were arrested from the Silchar Airport in Cachar district of Assam on June 10 last.

All the arrested HPC (D) leaders were released on bail and the talks were initiated again during the first part of this year.

The HPC (D) has been demanding a separate autonomous district council for the north eastern part of the state adjoining Manipur under the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution.

North-East exodus: Time for Mainland India to embrace diversities

(Northeast students who…)
By Harish Nambiar

me: aah...did you like it?

Friend: yes makes me proud of Kima and his sensitivity and the Mumbai police becharey unko kya maloom ki North Eastern and Nepali mein phark hota hai

me: Yes...
precisely my point...
It is great sport...to charge people with being racist...without taking into account that racism's Indian equivalent is casteism ...

Friend: hmmm..

me: THIS word itself has been brought out by folks who have ONLY western terms to describe Indian situations...often converting Indians' love of fair skin also into a racist preference...
IMHO the cop was NOT being racist... or even abusing... definitely...

Friend: but??
me: he is guilty of using a fairly regular slur for a regional sect of people...
Friend: yes
me: BUT....
HIS critics tend to be far more educated than him... and USE language and derision WAY too far above...the standards of living/feeling/sensing/responding... than the constable can or does!
Friend: hmm and therefore?

me: the constable becomes a small element that represents... police, Mumbai police.... and then the Indian government...
AND...

Kima...if he was less wise...becomes... another poor, North Eastern victim of racial prejudice..."
That was an online friend; a 66-year-old retired Kumaoni schoolteacher, responding to a heart-warming incident that happened in Mumbai in March and which I had posted on my Facebook page.

Scary Exodus

A Mizo game developer, Kima, had been called kancha, an abusive street name for Nepali waiters and other hotel employees; few know it is considered derisive.

However, the incident had Kima posting on his blog that he would gladly educate the Mumbai police over coffee. As it turned out, some brass invited Kima over, and apologised.

Kima, on his part, accepted that the constable did not know that kancha was derogatorily used for Nepalis or that there were several states in India's Northeast whose people tend to resemble Nepalis more than other Indian ethnicities.

Kima's post cartwheeled across more social media orbits than merely those they directly impact -- the citizens of Northeastern ethnicities in other parts of India and lovers of Mumbai, the city and all that is symbolises in popular imagination.

This traction was aided by the scary social upheaval of August 2012, when 30,000 panic-stricken people of Northeastern ethnicity had scrambled out of Bangalore and several other smaller cities on the back of rumours that they would be attacked in revenge for the attack on Muslims in Assam earlier, in July 2012.

The violence unleashed by Bodos, a largely Hindu tribe, had displaced nearly 40,000 Muslims in Assam and killed 80. But of course, between the events, falls the deadly metro-sized shadow.

Strafing & Treaties
The late-release trigger to light the August 2012 Bangalore tinder was the vandalisation of a memorial for war heroes by several Muslims who were part of a peaceful protest in Azad Maidan in Mumbai.

The vandals, among the protestors who were purportedly protesting the Bodo violence on Muslims in Assam as well as Burmese killings of Muslim Rohingyas, also molested some women constables of the Mumbai police and snatched arms from cops.

This was on August 11. Three days after that, the Bangalore exodus forced the railways to add two special trains to accommodate spiralling bookings past the chicken neck that connects the Northeast region that is home to about 4% of Indian nationals in an area few in the mainland know about and have exposure to.

The panicky situation generated similar, though smaller waves of people, heading back to Guwahati from Chennai, Mysore and Coorg. Since things eased, we have had a fair amount of pious commentary about the alienation of migrants from India's Northeastern states in mainland India, emphasising the old route of greater compassion and understanding.

A lot of these derive their justification from New Delhi's unarguably callous treatment of the subcontinent's primarily tribal Northeast. The Indian army, mostly under the identifiable Assam Rifles, was used as a colonial instrument to subjugate the outburst of idealistic, if geo-politically naive, resistance movements fuelled by identity politics and regional passions considered insurgencies by India when armed, and unheard when unarmed.

Indira Gandhi's aerial strafing of Mizoram in 1966 and her son Rajiv Gandhi's 1986 pact with the Mizo National Front's Laldenga bookended a kind of uneasy peace that descended on the region.
Several other insurgencies bled on, especially in Nagaland where a patchy but lasting 1964 ceasefire held, despite no clear political resolution, but the scenic Northeast was still a fairly more secure geography than it had ever been, when, in 1991, the economic reforms began in mainland India, and initiated an exodus of another, happier sort. More and more educated youngsters moved around the country to places where they were better paid for their skills.

Tripura To Be Declared Fully Literate

Agartala, Apr 15 : Tripura will be declared fully literate in September this year, state finance minister Badal Choudhury said here on Friday.

"On the occasion of World Literacy Day (Sep 8), Tripura will be declared a totally literate state. All our efforts to attain this goal have now borne fruit," Tripura Finance Minister Badal Choudhury told IANS, after a meeting of the State Literacy Mission Authority (SLMA).

"The SLMA meeting, chaired by chief minister Manik Sarkar also decided that the final evaluation of the remaining illiterate people in the state would be complete by August this year," Choudhury said.

According to a government survey conducted by the eight district magistrates in August last year, there are only 1,47,261 people of the state's 3.7 million people, including those aged 50 and above, who are illiterate.

As per the adult literacy guidelines of the union ministry of human resource development, people aged between 15 to 45 years would be targeted under the literacy mission.

"The Tripura government has taken efforts to make people in the 15-50 age group literate, instead of the upper age of 45. Over 8,250 voluntary literacy workers (VLW) are working through 8,152 adult literacy centres to make the leftover unlettered people literate," the finance minister said.

Over 85 master trainers are supervising the work of the VLWs, who are at work at the village and habitation levels. Anganwadi Workers under the social welfare department are also assisting the VLWs in their endeavour.

"Tripura jumped to third position among the states of the country in literacy in the 2011 census, from the 12th position in the 2001 census. Our all out efforts are on to achieve 100 per cent literacy in Tripura," Choudhury added.

He said Tripura would have attained 100 per cent literacy long back had there been no terrorism and their (militants') violent activities.

"The work on literacy programmes had slowed down also due to the recent Feb 14 assembly polls," the minister said.

"Education, developmental activities and agricultural expansion have been affected due to terrorism in the state until 2009," he pointed out.

According to the 2001 census, Tripura was the 12th most literate state in India with 73.19 per cent literacy and the second most literate state in the northeast region after Mizoram, where the literacy rate was 88.80 per cent.

As per the provisional data for the 2011 census, literacy level is 91.58 per cent in Mizoram and 87.75 per cent in Tripura.

The two northeastern states are only behind Kerala (93.91 percent), which continues to occupy the top position in the literacy chart.

The national literacy rate is 74.04 percent.

The Tripura success story is attributed to the involvement of local government bodies, including gram panchayats, NGOs and clubs.

Former census director and incumbent school education department secretary Dilip Acherjee said: "In Tripura, increase of female literacy is better than their male counterparts."

"The literacy rate of females during the period of 2001 and 2011 census rose from 64.91 to 83.15 per cent with an increase of 18.24 per cent, while in the case of men the increase was just 11.18 per cent -- from 81 to 92.18 per cent," Acherjee said.

While Mizoram and Tripura are among the toppers in literacy in India, another northeastern state, Arunachal Pradesh (66.95 per cent), is placed second-lowest in literacy in the country, just above Bihar (63.82 per cent).

Holy Water Of Haflong

Miracle of Maboram village

The ‘Holy Water’ trickling out of a pipe

Maboram Village 10 kilometres from Haflong, the headquarter town of Dima Hasao district of Assam is where a Biblical prophecy seems to have come true. “Jesus predicted in Jerusalem that a source of holy water will spring out from the height of a mountain and we believe that this is the Holy Water.

We think that God has his own way to shower His blessings up on the believers, we have come to collect this water which has a healing effect” said Reverend R.D. Haichang president of the Northeast Baptist churchafter offering a silent prayer near the blessed pool, after coming all the way from Jaluki of Nagaland to collect the blessed water from Maboram village.

The village has become the centre of attraction for thousands of Christians  who come here every day to collect this water for its miraculous affect, thronging to the village from nearby villages and from distant places like the Karbi Anglong district of Assam, Nagaland, Mizoram and Manipur. From quite a distance one can see people rushing to the village to collect water in containers of every shape and size, a long queue of men and women coiling the high ridge of the steep hill inching forward near the source has become a common sight in Maboram village now.

“We heard that Bodoruddin Azmal of Hojai gives blessed water to the needy and the water of Garampani geyser located in Karbi Anglong Golaghat border has therapeutic effect but this is completely different from all this, I have never seen people from Karbi Anglong rushing to a village of Dima Hasao with a container to collect water, this is incredible” Sanju Bora eminent an journalist said.

A signboard has been put up near the source where it simply written ‘HOLY WATER’. “If one has a bath with this water surely he will be cured from any skin infection or any other untreatable disease” Sema Zemi the village headman claims.

“The whole matter came to light during a meeting of the village women on 13th February this year. During the meeting a village woman revealed that after bathing with the water from the pool she was cured of a very old infirmity. Since then lots of people have been cured from incurable illnesses, even the blind have got their sight back,” Sema Zemi informed.

Whether one believes it or not, thousands of people including the clergy from Nagaland and simple village dwellers like Nune Rankhel have walked great distances to collect the holy water with great expectation and a strong faith in God’s mercy which can also flow from a pool of water.

Source: easternpanorama.in