AIZAWL, April 29 – Campaigning for the 2nd Village Council Elections and the 2nd Local Council Elections, to be held on April 30 from 7:00 am to 5:00 pm, concluded today.
The State Election Commission today, in exercise of the Representation of the People’s Act, 1951, Section 126 and Model Code of Conduct Para II (f), has notified that the campaign time has ended 5:00 pm today.
The State Election Commission also notified certain restrictions so as to ensure free-and-fair elections. The restrictions include election-related public meetings and rallies and delivery of speeches. Poll-related materials in cinema halls, TV and on any such medium and organsizing music concert and any entertainment programme as a means of campaigning has also been restricted.
Aizawl: All Mizos living in Nepal, many of them missionaries and evangelist teachers, were reportedly safe, reports from Nepal said.
Major Sangliana of the Salvation Army, working with his wife in Kathmandu told PTI over phone that there were around 50 Mizo families in Nepal all of whom were safe.
Sources in the Presbyterian Church said that there were around 30 missionaries working under the church in Nepal while the Baptist Church of Mizoram sent one Pastor and a teacher who were living there with their family members.
AIZAWL, Apr 27 : Aizawl District Disaster Management Authority leaders said they are well-equipped to do restoration work after occurrence of natural disasters. Responding leading Sunday newspaper Zalen, DDMA leaders said that in the event of their equipment becoming short, they borrow it from some other departments. In case of shortage of manpower, they used to State Disaster Response Force (SDRF), they said.
DDMA leaders said that as per DC order, duty is being put on at Emergency Centre, saying, in the recent event of damages caused by heavy rains and storm, there was 24x7 duty at Emergency Centre.
DDMA leaders also said that they used to borrow equipment from DMR besides their regular purchase of new equipment. Aizawl District Disaster Management Authority acknowledged the role played by Community Disaster Committee in the event of natural disasters. While Department of Disaster Management & Rehabilitation is mainly repsonsible District Disaster Management Authority do the actual work.
The Centre has given September 30, 2015 deadline to the Mizoram government for implementing the Food Security Act, an official of the state Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs department said today.
John Tanpuia, Deputy Director of the Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs, however, said that there has been no replies from the Centre on many queries and explanations sought by the state government including profit margin for the retailers, cost of transportation and other modalities in implementing the scheme.
The Food Security Act, if implemented in the state would cover 64.30 per cent of the population of Mizoram as per the 2011 census, Tanpuia said, adding that only 7,06,296 people would be benefited by the new scheme.
The Centre had given several deadlines for implementation of the Food Security Act by the states, but this would be the last deadline, according to the instruction from the Government of India.
Earlier, state Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs minister John Rotluangliana informed the state assembly that implementation of the Food Security Scheme would lift the burden of the state government to provide rice for all the people of the state.
The heavy burden of subsidy to the state exchequer would also be lifted while many people in the state would suffer due to the implementation of the state, Rotluangliana said.
One person died and other five others were injured when a pre-monsoon storm accompanied by squall hit Mizoram last night, Aizawl district additional Deputy Commissioner Lalchungnunga today said.
Lalchungnunga said Tej Bahadur(65) of Vaivakawn locality died when a landslide buried him and another worker in Vaivakawn area this morning, the injured person was reported to be out of danger.
In another incident a flying sheet hit a car during the squall where four passengers were injured and were taken to the Aizawl Civil Hospital. They were discharged after being administered first aid by the doctors.
The squall and heavy rains damaged 181 houses in Aizawl city and surrounding villages of which eight houses were completely damaged and 76 houses classified as severely damaged.
The pre-monsoon storm caused severe power disruption in the whole of Mizoram, except Mizoram-Assam border Kolasib district as Aizawl city remained powerless last night and today with telecommunication also disrupted in many places.
State Directorate of Science and Technology officials said they did not receive any prior warning on the massive strong winds hitting Mizoram.
Funds may not be the problem. How they are used is more important.
A solitary
doctor mans the only public health centre for 81 villages scattered
along a 12-kilometre-wide and 140-kilometre-long ribbon of hilly terrain
that makes up the Chakma Autonomous District Council. Trained in Ayush,
the non-allopathic stream of medicine, Lauva Chakma, the young doctor,
can administer only basic drugs and first aid. There is no electricity
at the centre – it is yet to be connected to the power grid. “We are
only running an OPD [out-patient department]," said Chakma. "We cannot
keep patients overnight.”In his thirties, Chakma
studied medicine in Bangalore before taking up a job in Mizoram. He
said he had not received his salary for three months.
In the
capital, Chwangte, the community health centre, which provides hospital
care to about 50,000 people, things are not much better. The hospital
has 20 beds, four nurses and two doctors, one of whom is a homeopath. In
contrast, said Vanlallawma Khiangte, the medical officer at the
hospital, an equivalent centre in Khazawl, a similar-sized town in
Mizoram's Champhai district, has 30 beds, 11 nurses, four doctors, a
dentist, in addition to an Ayush practitioner.
High hopes, poor outcomes
The
Chakma Autonomous District Council was formed in 1972 to address the
development needs of the Buddhist tribal community, which is one of the
ethnic minorities in the state. But on parameter after parameter, the
council fares worse than other parts of Mizoram.
This isn't unique to the Chakma council. As a previous story
reported, even the Lai and Mara councils are faring poorly. There is
little development spending. Villages here, reached only on rutted
roads that are all but impassable once the rains come, have little
electricity, ramshackle schools and distant healthcare.
This
shows up starkly in human development indices like the maternal
mortality rate. In Mizoram, for every 100,000 live births, 76 women die.
In Lawngtlai, which houses the Chakma and Lai councils, the maternal
mortality rate is three times higher at 248.
Such poor outcomes
are surprising given the councils were created to give the tribal
minorities in Mizoram – small groups with distinct cultures – greater
control over the management of their region.
Blame game
The
council leaders blame the Mizoram government. “The MLAs and the Chief
Minister, they are all Mizos, and so they are not liberal in giving us
money," said Hmunhre Chinzah, vice-chairman of the Lai Council's
Planning Board.
In Aizawl, the state capital, the Mizo leaders
blame the councils. “The councils misuse the money they get,” said JV
Hluna, the head of the history department in Aizawl's Pachhunga
University and the chairman of the Bharatiya Janata Party's Mizoram
unit.
The council leaders want greater autonomy. They are
pressing the Centre to either make them Union Territories or to fund
them directly. “A state has to generate its own resources,"
said Hmunhre. "But to make money, you need money. As an Union Territory,
we can share money of the central government.”
The lobbying has
gained strength after the Bharatiya Janata Party came to power. The
party is considering their requests. Ranjit Majumdar, the party official
in charge of the North East, confirmed that a draft amendment has been
prepared to the sixth schedule of the Constitution, which relates to the
tribal areas of four states in the region. While the party is yet to
take a final call on the amendment, he said, the draft enables direct
funding.
In all this lobbying, a fundamental question has not
received much attention: Will direct funding improve the lives of people
living in these councils?
The importance of this question goes
beyond these three councils. India's North East has 17 autonomous
councils. If direct funding is granted to one, the rest will want it as
well. For that reason, the Centre needs to be sure that direct funding
will address the developmental deficit in these areas.
But to start with, do the problems really stem from low funding?
The contention over funds
In Saiha, the capital of the eponymous district, which became the Mara Autonomous District Council in 1972, Scroll
met LC Chakhai, the chairman of the council. “The three councils
account for 10% of the state's population," he said. "But between the
Lais, Chakmas and the Maras, we get just 4.5% of the state budget.”
However,
such claims don't reveal the whole picture. While the council
implements welfare programmes, so does the state administration. This
means more development money is spent in the council areas than the
budget separately allocated to the council administration.
For
instance, while the Mara council earmarked Rs 202 lakhs for rural
development in 2014-'15, documents from the state administration's rural
development department showed Rs 768 lakh were spent in Saiha on just
one scheme – the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee
Scheme.
But the councils aren't pleased with this spending. The
leaders claim that the pacts signed at the time of the councils'
creation envisioned the state's withdrawal from governance in the
council areas. “The DC [district collector] and the SP [superintendent
of police] are only supposed to look after law and order,” said Hmunhre.
As
a 2006 report of the erstwhile Planning Commission on the sixth
schedule areas said, “Though the Council has been vested with wide
powers, the State Government continues to undertake works in respect of
the same devolved function, without consulting the Council.”
And
so, the councils have been demanding that the state's implementation
mechanism be dismantled and its funds rerouted to them. The draft
amendment prepared by the BJP, said Majumdar, permits the councils to
have an administrative structure similar to the state, which suggests
they would be fully in charge of all development works in their areas.
But is it a good thing to give the councils complete financial and administrative autonomy?
Expense analysis
The answer to that question perhaps lies in how the councils use the money they get right now. Scroll
leafed through the annual plans of the Mara council and the budget of
the Lai council. In both, an overwhelming proportion of the council
budget went into salaries, as the chart shows.
In
Maraland, the total disbursement for 2014-'15 stood at Rs 114.50 crore.
Of this, Rs 80.91 crore went into salaries. Apart from salaries, there
is also administrative expenses. Add that and the amount allotted to
actual developmental work falls some more. Take the Animal Husbandry and
Veterinary department in the Mara council. Of its Rs 41.62 lakh
allocation, it spent Rs 34.25 on salaries and wages and another Rs 3
lakh on administrative expenses, which left it with about Rs 4 lakh. Of
this, just Rs 50,000 was spent on medicines – in a department meant for
animal care and veterinary science.
The 2015-'16 budget of the Lai Autonomous District Council reveals similar trends.
Here
too, so much gets spent on salaries that there is little left for
actual developmental work. Even plan funds –marked for development work
– are being used for salaries. The education department, for instance,
should use plan funds to buy books or build schools. But in the Lai
council, of Rs 808 lakh plan allocation for education, Rs 793 lakh was
spent on salaries.
High salary bills, incidentally, is a
longstanding critique of the councils. Describing them over-staffed, the
2006 Planning Commission report said: “There has been a tendency for
the Council to set up multi-tiered secretariats, imitating State
Governments in this regard.”
Why is the expenditure on salaries
so high? To come to power, local politicians “promise jobs and contracts
to supporters", claimed a local businessman, who requested anonymity.
Welfare
programmes also appear to run along distinctly political lines, with
the money used to reward supporters and weaken the ranks of rival
political parties. “The poor get money only if they become Congress
supporters," said A Chatua, the president of the BJP in Saiha. "In two
years, if nothing is done, the BJP will be finished here. We cannot take
care of our members. They will all join the Congress.”
The
reason why people change their political affiliations so easily is
because getting a party membership is often the only way to access
government benefits. In the Chakma council, returns from the old
occupations like jhum farming are falling. “Thirty years ago, if people
planted one tin [about 16 kilos] of paddy, they would get 100 tins as
harvest," said Jyotirmoy Chakma, the president of the Central Young
Chakma Association. "This is now down to five-six tins. That is enough
for just one or two months."
The rest of the time, said Shanti
Jiban Chakma, the BJP's president in Chawngte, people use payments from
government programmes – like Rashtriya Kisan Vikas Yojana or the state
government's New Land Use Policy – for subsistence. “There are no other
sources of income," he said. "And so, when the council denies access to
these programmes, there is a problem.”
Shanti Jiban Chakma is the BJP's president in the Chakma council area.
It
isn't difficult to see how the political system operates in the
councils. These are backward areas with little economic activity. For
the local elite, the easiest way to power and affluence is to get into
the council. “The leaders speak on behalf of the people but these
demands are ultimately in the interests of only the ruling elite,”
said N William Singh, a professor of Sociology at Pachhunga University
College.
“In this area, there is the Mizo National Front, the
Mara Democratic Front and the Congress," said a businessman, who did not
want to be identified. "All their leaders want direct funding. And they
will move to whichever party that is in power. They are like a bat.
Sometimes they are a bird, sometimes they are an animal.”
This
competitive politics undermines the benefits of those living in the
councils. But the leaders are able to escape scrutiny by shifting the
blame to the state government and telling the locals that the Mizos are
not giving enough money.
What makes it possible for them to get
away with such characterisations is that the state administration,
dominated by Mizos, does indeed neglect the councils. But the neglect
does not show up in the distribution of funds. It takes other forms.
How bias shows
The
state administration continues to exercise some control over the
recruitment, appointments and postings in the council areas. In the
Chakma council area, the hospital at Chawngte is supposed to have a
senior medical officer working along with Khiangte, the sole MBBS at the
centre. While a doctor has been appointed, he rarely reports for
duty. People said the state administration doesn't penalise doctors who
do not want to serve in the Chakma areas.
A similar pattern is
visible in educational institutions. Beyond higher secondary, the local
school and college in the Chakma council area only have teachers for
arts. Students wanting to study science and commerce have to move to
Aizawl, Silchar or Lunglei. But studying outside is expensive. So most
students drop out after class 10, said Shanti Chakma, the BJP's local
president.
“If we get a college for science here, then the
Chakmas will overtake the Mizos,” said Deepak Larma, a resident of
Boranpansury, the village with the sole primary health centre in the
Chakma council area. "As it is, we are Buddhists, not Christians, and so
they want to keep us backward." Larma and his friends were playing
cards under a tree. A heavy-set man wearing shorts and a black
undershirt, Larma used to work for the Border Security Force. After
leaving the force, Larma, a Chakma, has settled in Boranpansury, and
like many young people, believes the Mizos are limiting the
opportunities available to the state's ethnic minorities.
This
perception got a boost in April, when another instance of bias surfaced.
The state government amended the rules for its technical entrance exams
that determine the selection of candidates for courses like
engineering, medicine, nursing and veterinary science. Mizoram
categorises applicants into three categories: local permanent residents
get 85% of the seats, migrants from elsewhere who have settled in
Mizoram get 10%, and those working in the central or state
administration and residing in the state get 5%. Through the amendment,
Mizoram has restricted the definition of “local permanent residents” to
only “Zo-ethnic people who are native inhabitants... and have been
residing permanently in the state”.
Noting that Zo-ethnic refers
only to the Mizos, Chakma organisations protested this would exclude
them from the bulk of seats. A statement from the Mizoram Chakma
Students’ Union described the amendment as discrimination against the
minority communities of Mizoram, including the Chakmas. Such steps keep
the identity issue boiling and distract attention from the mismanagement
and corruption in the council areas.
The conventional wisdom
that the state administration is hostile to minorities might have
considerable truth, but it has allowed local administrations, comprising
the elite of these minority groups, to become predators on its own
people.
For instance, though the Mara council is cash strapped,
that has not stopped it from building a sprawling bungalow in Saiha as
the residence of the Chief Executive Member.
The under-construction bungalow towers above the homes in Saiha.
Aizawl, Apr 10 : President Pranab Mukherjee arrived here on Thursday afternoon on a two-day tour to the northeastern state of Mizoram. He will be chief guest at the 10th annual convocation of Mizoram University on Friday.
Governor K.N. Tripathi, Chief Minister Lal Thanhawla, his cabinet colleagues, Chief Secretary Lalmalsawma, state police chief Dharmendra Kumar and senior civil and security officials received the president at Lengpui airport.
Later, Mizoram security forces accorded a guard of honour to Mukherjee, who is visiting the border state for the first time after he took over as president in July, 2012.
AIZAWL, Apr 10 – About 750 houses were damaged by a pre-monsoon storm in Mizoram last week, Disaster Management and Rehabilitation Department officials today said.
Serchhip district is the worst hit as 270 houses were damaged followed by 107 houses collapsed in Mamit district in the storm on April 2 and 5. Other affected districts included Champai and Kolasib, they said. Besides, 25 fishing boats were swept away by a flood in the river Tlawng near Aizawl during the thunderstorm, they said.
The under-construction bungalow towers above the homes in Saiha.