Assam and Meghalaya have locked horns over which state should get the country’s seventh Indian Institute of Management (IIM) that the Centre wants to establish in the Northeast. Even as a high-power delegation dispatched by the HRD ministry visited Shillong and Guwahati to make its own assessment, both Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi and Meghalaya chief minister DD Lapang announced that their respective governments would provide land free of cost for setting up the prestigious institute in their respective capital cities. The Meghalaya capital meanwhile has already clinched the new National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) that the Centre wants to set up in the region.Tripura skeletonsThe recovery of a human skeleton from a septic tank inside the official residence campus of Tripura chief minister Manik Sarkar two weeks ago continues to provide much-needed political masala to the opposition Congress party in the state which was running short of issues to run a campaign against the Left Front government. While Sarkar tried to take the wind out of the Congress’ sail by immediately announcing that he would hand over the investigation to the CBI, the investigating agency has already started studying the feasibility of the probe. Mizoram bamboozled After the tsunami, Mizoram Chief Minister Zoramthanga immediately decided to rush huge quantities of bamboo to disaster-affected areas in order to enable the people to rebuild their houses. But, even as the Mizoram government was looking at how to transport such huge quantities of bamboo to the Andamans, the response that came was that the island was looking for tsunami-resistant materials and not just quake-proof ones. Mizoram had sent several train-loads of bamboo to Latur and Bhuj after those areas were devastated by major earthquakes in the past few years.Mother of marketsThe Manipuris call it Ima Keithel, meaning ‘‘mothers’ market.’’ It is in fact one of world’s oldest and biggest traditional market-place where every vendor is a woman, preferably a married woman. But concern for urban development getting priority status, the traditional Ima Keithel is now all set to be demolished and replaced by a multi-storeyed complex, much to the disappointment of Meitei society, which is sensitive about tradition Calling all NagasEfforts by top NSCN(IM) leaders to unify all the warring Naga groups under one umbrella has hit fresh hurdles. The first to react to the Naga-inhabited areas unification were the student bodies from the neighbouring states of Assam, Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur, which was followed by protests from the respective state chief ministers.
