The Mizoram government spends so much on itself, it has little money for the people

Heading towards a cliff: Learnings from three months of reportage from the state.

By M Rajshekhar

Between March and June, Scroll reported its Ear to the  Ground series from Mizoram.

The idea was to create a snapshot of the state and its people at this point in time, to try and understand the major forces shaping the lives of the people in the state. Twelve articles later, what have we learnt?

We learnt, principally, that the state is heading towards a cliff.

As one of our first stories observed, Mizoram has very little industrial activity. As much as 90% of its revenues come from the central government. In such a setup, the state government is the biggest economic engine in the state.

And over the years, state politicians have become adept at using the state's resources to win support by doling out patronage. Voters are doled out cash through the state's principal rural development programme – the New Land Use Policy. As for party workers, they are kept satisfied, as this article described, by slipping road contracts to them.

Over the years, however, the state government's expenditure on itself – paying staff salaries, interest on the loans it has taken, subsidies for the doles it gives – have risen so high that the state is now struggling to provide essential services to its people.

This was starkly evident in the stories that Scroll wrote on the state's faltering HIV and public health programmes. The state government's monthly expenses are so much higher than its monthly incomes that it has to divert money meant for, say, healthcare towards meeting more pressing administrative expenses like salaries and interest payments.

The fallout? Payments to the state health programme are badly delayed. The mandarins in charge end up making hard choices on what to fund – staff salaries or immunisation. These delays are taking a huge toll on the state. Its anti-AIDS programme, for instance, is losing the battle against the disease.

The state's people are suffering too. While reporting from Mizoram, Scroll met numerous teachers, forest guards and others who had not been paid for six or so months. One teacher Scroll met in Lawangtlai town, T Lalremliama, had begun driving an auto to make ends meet.

The paradox

It is a paradoxical situation. The state government spends so much on itself that it has little money for the people of Mizoram.

This pattern shows up even more starkly when you look at the financials of the autonomous tribal councils in southern Mizoram. In the Lai and Mara councils, so much money goes into staff salaries that literally zero rupees is left for actual development work – in these councils, voters are won over by promising them jobs in the district councils. (When the locals protest, the council leaderships blame the state's Mizo population. A fissure that the Bharatiya Janata Party was wondering how to exploit.)

Across Mizoram, with little industry, jobs are hard to come by. Whenever any new economic livelihood opened up, as the story on the Korean wave in Mizoram showed, a lot of people would rush into it. Similarly, one would keep encountering graduates driving cabs.

Staying there, it appeared that one reason discontent was low was the strong role of the Church in daily life.

However, things are now reaching a denouement of sorts. After the 14th Finance Commission, the funds available with the state government will come down steeply. This leaves the state government facing a hard question. Will it cut back on patronage while protecting welfare expenditure? If so, what happens to its support bases?

As things stand, the state population has got used to the idea of government handouts in the form of programmes like the New Land Use Policy. State mandarins, around the time I left, were starting to clamour for the Seventh Pay Commission.

In the months ahead, will the Mizoram government steer a more prudent course?

Source: scroll.in

Tripura Bru Refugees Refuse To Go Back To Mizoram

Agartala, Jul 7 : Only six displaced Brus belonging to two families living in Tripura, have turned out so far in identification process launched by the Mizoram government as part of repatriation initiative, said an official of North Tripura district.

He said a section of refugees that turned out in the identification process, had informed that they would not go back unless inquiry into the conditions of the previously repatriated families were conducted and ensure their security and proper rehabilitation. No turn out in identification process indicates Brus are reluctant to return in Mizoram, the official said, adding that it was carried out by the officials of both Tripura and Mizoram with prior intimation to the refugees.

When the identification process had begun on June 2, the leaders of Bru refugees had asked them not to turn up for identification unless their 10-point demands were met, he said.

According to reports, the process of identification had begun last month and was completed in three of the six camps on July 4.

The next phase of identification is scheduled to start from July 13 next at Ashapara of Kanchanpur.

The preparations came after the Supreme Court instructed both the Centre and the Mizoram government to repatriate all Brus within six months.

According to record, as many as 900 families of Bru have been repatriated from six camps of Tripura between 2005 and 2014. They were allowed to stay scattered in Mizo-dominated villages of Mamit, Kolasib and Lawngtlai district.

So far, government of Mizoram got Rs 44 crore from the Centre for rehabilitation of Bru refugees. It also received Rs six crore for ensuring safe repatriation.

Tripura co plans piped gas supply to 10000 homes

By Biswendu Bhattacharjee

Agartala, Jul 7 : Aiming to ensure smokeless cooking gas to kitchens in Agartala, Tripura Natural Gas Company Ltd (TNGCL) has set a target of supplying piped natural gas (PNG) to 10,000 new households by March 2016.

TNGCL had already connected more than 20,000 households in Agartala with PNG.

"If we replace all Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) cylinders with PNG in the city, the cylinders can be distributed in the villages where women are still cooking with firewood," said Jitendra Choudhury, chairman of Tripura Industrial Development Corporation Ltd (TIDC) and Lok Sabha MP.

He added that TNGCL is a joint venture of TIDC, a government of Tripura undertaking, and AGCL is a government of Assam undertaking. Since 2005, Gas Authority of India Ltd (GAIL) is also a major shareholder to facilitate the implementation of Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) in the transport sector of the state.

Agartala became the first city in eastern India in 2010 when conversion of vehicles to CNG was launched. It was targeted to convert all vehicles to CNG by 2013. But non-expansion of CNG filling stations is the reason why it did not happen yet, said Choudhury. He however, pointed out that besides PNG connection to kitchens, more than 5000 auto-rickshaws and over 1,500 other vehicles, including buses, were being fitted with CNG kits mostly in Agartala and Udaipur. "Due to insufficient flow of gas in northern and southern parts of the state, TNGCL is not being able to expand the network of CNG filling stations. ONGC is exploring new gas fields to enhance performance of the existing wells," added Choudhury.

Besides household connections, TNGCL has already provided PNG connection to 300 commercial business centers and 47 factory units in the Bodhjungnagar industrial area on the outskirts of Agartala. To cater to the increasing number of CNG vehicles, the company has set up a main CNG refilling station at Udaipur in South Tripura.

Work On Telecoms Link Between India and Bangladesh To Begin This Week

New Delhi will start putting into operation this week an agreement on telecommunication links between India and Bangladesh within a month of its signing.

India’s Communications and Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad will commission the work sometime this week to link Agartala in Tripura border with International Gateway for Internet Service (IGIS) at Cox's Bazar.

“This will improve the internet connectivity of the landlocked north-eastern states of India,” said a senior official at the Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL), India’s state-owned telecom service provider.

To improve the internet connectivity in north-eastern region, an agreement between the BSNL and Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company Ltd (BSCCL) was signed last month.

Anupam Shrivastava, CMD BSNL and Md Monwar Hossain, MD BSCCL, had signed the agreement for the provision of International Bandwidth for Internet from Cox’s Bazar to Agartala.

“Connectivity in northeast region of India is currently unstable mainly due to large-scale road widening work resulting in poor internet service quality in the region.

“On the initiative of Government of India, the BSNL explored the possibility of leasing bandwidth from the BSCCL for providing connectivity to the NE region through the territory of Bangladesh to improve internet and telecom services in the region,” the government official said.

The BSCCL will provide the International Port (IP) transit service from Cox's Bazar Cable Landing Station.

The terrestrial route in Bangladesh will be Cox's Bazar-Chittagong-Comilla- Brahmanbarhia-Akhaurha for primary link and Cox's Bazar-Chitagong-Comilla-Dhaka-Narsinghdi-Bhairab-Akhaurha will be the secondary link.

Bangladesh Telecommunications Company Ltd (BTCL) has to lay nearly 30-kilometre Optical Fibre Cable (OFC) from Brahmanbarhia to Akhaurha.

BSNL will set up International Long Distance (ILD) Gateway at Agartala along with equipment.

Initial requirement of the BSNL will be 10GBPS IP transit and IP port at Akhaurha ICP. This endeavour of BSNL will improve the internet connectivity for the people of the region.

The official also said that the Indian government would spend about Rs 190 million to create the infrastructure, including the laying of the OFC to avail the 10G bandwidth from BSCCL.

Classical swine fever, PRRS surface in Mizoram

The outbreak of classical swine fever has been a yearly affair during the pre-monsoon season in Mizoram, according an official. 
 
Aizawl, Jun 25 : Classical swine fever and Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome (PRRS) have surfaced in Mizoram with blood samples of dead pigs testing positive, state veterinary officials said.

Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Director Dr L B Sailo told PTI that blood samples of the pigs which died in Aizawl and surrounding areas were tested at the laboratory in the Veterinary Science College in Selesih near here and it was found that some of the pigs died of classical swine fever and some due to PRRS.

The outbreak of classical swine fever has been a yearly affair during the pre-monsoon season, Sailo said.

"Change of weather usually results in outbreak of swine fever in the state," he said, adding that there was no reason to panic and the situation would soon normalise.

Thousands of swine died during March-April in 2013 in the state, the officials said.

Though the PRRS outbreak was thought to be contained, it continued to be present as many cases of infection in pigs were not reported and the infected pigs not culled, the officials said.

PRISM Accuses Cong for failing to keep its promises in Mizo

Aizawl, Jun 25 : The People's Right to Information and Development Society of Mizoram (PRISM) today said the Congress government led by Chief Minister Lal Thanhawla has not fulfilled any promise made in the manifesto before the 2013 state Assembly elections.

A press statement issued by the PRISM after holding the 17th Mizoram Watch program at Aizawl today said the state government, during the last two years, failed to deliver all its promises.

"Despite continuation of ongoing projects including its flagship program, the New Land Use Policy (NLUP), the government has not initiated any new project as proposed in the election manifesto," the statement said.

A point-wise deliberation on the Congress manifesto were held in the consultation, the statement added.

Aizawl To Be On Railway Map in 3 years

Hilly Mizoram's capital city will be on India's railway map ​in the next three years as line construction between Bairabi, a village on the Assam-Mizoram border and Sairang, a village 27 kms by road west of Aizawl, is set to be completed by then, a senior railway official said Tuesday.

By Adam Halliday


Aizawl, Jun 24 : Hilly Mizoram’s capital city will be on India’s railway map ​in the next three years as line construction between Bairabi, a village on the Assam-Mizoram border and Sairang, a village 27 kms by road west of Aizawl, is set to be completed by then, a senior railway official said Tuesday.

The Bairabi-Sairang broad-gauge line, a 51 km stretch that will include seven bridges and 23 tunnels, is currently under construction with a completion target of March 2018, North-East Frontier Railways General Manager (Construction) R S Virdi said. He is on a visit to Aizawl to oversee the progress of the ongoing work.

Virdi said the NEF Railways is also surveying a possible route between Sairang and Hmawngbuchhuah, a settlement neighbouring Zochachhuah.

Zochachhuah stands at Mizoram’s southern tip bordering Myanmar’s Rakhine state. The under-construction Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit Transport Project (KMMTTP) passes through it.

The KMMTTP is one of India’s largest infrastructure projects within the Look/Act East Policy.

It will join Mizoram with Sittwe port in Myanmar by road and inland waterway, cutting down distance between Mizoram and Kolkata’s Haldia port by almost 1000 kms to become an alternative trade route between the North-East and the rest of the country.

It will also be the NE’s first gateway to the sea since partition, which kept Bangladesh’s Chittagong port out of reach for the region’s population.

The movement of goods between the NE and the rest of India is currently through the Chicken’s Neck corridor in northern West Bengal, a narrow strip of land (just 23 kms wide in some places) that connects the North-East to the rest of the country.

The Bairabi-Sairang-Hmangbuchhuah railway line will cut through the north-south length of Mizoram and bring Indian Railways at Myanmar’s doorstep, meaning it will likely supplement the upcoming trade route on the Kaladan river.

Trust Thy Neighbour: An Indigenous Marketing Technique in Mizoram is About Honesty and Goodwill

It is a unique way to buy and sell, a novel kind of grassroots commerce, an indigenously developed small-scale agricultural marketing technique even.

Vegetables and fruit on display at a shop without a shopkeeper between Keifang and Kawlkulh towns in eastern Mizoram

By Adam Halliday

New Delhi, Jun 22 : Along Mizoram’s narrrow, winding hillside roads to the east, south and north of capital Aizawl, stand strange sights — thatch huts that double up as shops displaying an array of vegetables, fruits and the occasional bottle of fruit juice, small dried fish, even freshwater snails, a local delicacy in many Asian (particularly southeast Asian) cuisines.

Nothing too out of the ordinary at first sight, except, there are no shopkeepers.

Instead, small cardboard sheets erected or hung on one of the bamboo beams act as rate cards where the names and prices of the wares on display are marked using, in most cases, a piece of charcoal.

The wares are hung nearby in small bundles inside transparent polythene bags or wrapped neatly with plantain leaves that sit on ledges under the beams.

Sometimes, numbers are also written on the plastic bags, or on the plaintain leaves, or in case of juice, on plastic bottles, to designate the price of each.

And always, just near the cardboard sheet hangs a small plastic container with the words “Pawisa Bawm” or “Pawisa Dahna” where customers (mostly, travellers passing through) deposit money for the things they have bought and, if need be, from which they retrieve whatever change is due to them.
It is a unique way to buy and sell, a novel kind of grassroots commerce, an indigenously developed small-scale agricultural marketing technique even. But more than anything else, it is an enduring symbol of honesty and trust.

“People are good,” says Pi Khumi. “Nothing has ever been lost from our shop.”

The 55-year-old had just climbed up a small dirt path from her family’s small jhum farm down by the Tuivawl river, which flows between the ridges where the towns of Keifang and Kawlkulh are perched upon.

She had climbed up the hillside with a cane-basket full of sweet corn to display at her shopkeeper-less shop and prepare and eat a lunch of boiled rice and lentils with chilly and salt, a simple meal.

Her husband Rothuama and two adult sons were also on the way up, she said, and would arrive with some freshwater snails they would have with the food, but most of which they would display for sale at Rs 100 for half a polythene bag, the most expensive of all their wares.

The family from Dulte village, which is located about seven km down the road and up the other side of the river, have had their hut-cum-shop here for more than two years.

With farmhands few and expensive, they can’t afford to spare any member to stay at the hut and mind the wares, and any money that trickles into the plastic bag of a cash register is a big bonus.

Weekdays are usually spent at their small farm and nights sleeping in the roadside hut. After waking up at dawn and a quick meal later, they climb down to their sloping field by 6 am, only to return well past 10 am for lunch, and then again at the farm from 1 pm till darkness falls on the land, which in this eastern corner of the country, is around 6 pm even during the summer.

All the while they are at the farm, they leave the hut and whatever vegetables and fruits they have harvested there for passing travellers to buy — absent traders entrusting their business to the honesty of their faceless customers.

Although cases of theft are not rare in the state and urbanity has brought with it certain vices, it is not all that uncommon to entrust luggage and other things with shopkeepers, even in the capital, Aizawl.
For example, shops near bus terminals or maxicab stands often host several bags that arriving or departing travellers leave there because it is not convenient to lug them around. They simply return to take it at the end of their journey.

This has been a longstanding tradition from the time chiefs ruled over individual villages in the region; and what is now known as Mizoram was unexplored by the rest of the world, as recent as just a century-and-a-half ago. In those days, anyone who stole even something as small as an egg from a neighbour’s houses would

be ostracised to the extent that the person and their relatives would find it unpleasant to continue living in the village and would simply migrate elsewhere. The same spirit seems to live on in Rothuama’s hut.

Further down the road stands another shopkeeper-less shop. It’s almost midday and Chawngthanzama, 47, sits on his haunches, eating his lunch from a steel plate in the darkened coolness the thatch-roofed bamboo-hut offers on a warm, humid day.

The resident of Ruallung village, which lies about a three km (as the crow flies) climb up the forested hillside, where he has a small farm, has the same story as Rothuama’s family.

None of his wares have ever gone missing. Neither has the handful of Rs 10 or Rs 20 notes he tends to keep in the plastic container-cum-cash register in case customers might not have change.

“Usually, I pack the lemons and other things that do not get stale easily before I sleep. I start for my farm early, most days by 4 am, and I come back to quickly put some freshly picked leafy vegetables and then head back to the farm. That way they are still fresh when the maxicabs and buses pass by,” he says.

For many travellers, the trust that is involved in the transactions with shopkeeper-less shops such as these is enough to make them want to buy from them.

“Whenever I pass such shops, I make it a point to buy at least one item. But when I buy something, it makes me happy, like I’ve contributed something to something beautiful,” says Vanlalmuanpuii, a school teacher in Aizawl.