Sikkim’s literate dreamSIKKIM chief minister Pawan K Chamling dreams of making the tiny state the best in the country. Topping his agenda is a programme to make the state 100 per cent literate by 2015—a dream, he says, is not impossible. It was Sikkim that had designed the now famous Balika Samriddhi Yojana, a scheme that has been very successful in motivating people to send their daughters to school and then to college. Sikkim has also simultaneously chalked out a programme to set up a number of technical schools to generate more employment. No safety, no taxTRIPURA’S trading community has threatened not to pay any tax to the government if it failed to prevent local criminals as well as militant groups from extorting money from them. Traders in the state have been subjected to extortions for quite a while now, and there has been a spate of abductions and assaults on traders who refused to pay up in recent weeks. Twenty-four traders abducted by militants from north Tripura last month have remained untraced. Shillong’s friendly turnLAST week it was Meghalaya chief minister D D Lapang who ordered strong action against taxi drivers in Shillong who overcharge tourists and were rude to visitors. This week, Deborah Marak, the lone woman minister of the state, has initiated a drive to make Shillong a cleaner city so that tourists carried home a better impression of the state. Residents and restaurant owners found dumping garbage on undesignated spots would be penalised and the use of plastic bags would be restricted, she said. Arunachal’s herbal cureARUNACHAL Pradesh has drawn up an ambitious scheme to motivate the tribal people of Lohit district to cultivate medicinal plants that are in great demand in the pharmaceutical sector. This would also help the authorities wean away people from cultivating opium. A state medicinal plants board has already been set up to implement the scheme with the Regional Research Laboratory (RRL) at Jorhat providing technical support. Assam’s out of space experienceASSAM may not have produced any famous astronaut, but it has reason to rejoice. Mike Fincke, an American astronaut, who has been in the International Space Station in outer space on a six-month assignment since April 19, is the son-in-law of an Assamese family in the US. Last week Mike interacted with the US-based Assamese community from space and the media in Guwahati gave the event a lot of space.
