This Week The northeast: Uniqueness in simultaneity

Bare-sahariya bhaona,a unique festival of traditional plays,has returned after five years to Jamugurihat,a semi-urban township in northern Assam

Uniqueness in simultaneity

Bare-sahariya bhaona,a unique festival of traditional plays,has returned after five years to Jamugurihat,a semi-urban township in northern Assam. Held since 1797 in a huge temporary bamboo-and-thatch auditorium set up with donations from neighouring villages,this years festival was inaugurated by the chief minister on Saturday,with teams from 21 villages performing 21 different bhaonas plays in as many kholas or arenas simultaneously. This offers the audience a rare aesthetic experience. The plays,mostly written by the saint-reformers Sankaradeva and Madhavadeva who had pivoted a neo-Vaishnavite renaissance in the 16th century,revolve around stories from the epics and are in the middle-Assamese language.

New fish species

An amateur naturalist of Arunachal Pradesh has discovered a new catfish species from the Sille,a tributary of the Siang as the Brahmaputra is known there. Lakpa Tamang has been credited with the discovery of this miniature catfish,and scientists at the Rajiv Gandhi University in Itanagar said this species Pseudolaguvia viriosa is new to science. Tamang had collected the fish from the Sille river in October 2011 but it was only this week that an official announcement was made. The Brahmaputra drainage system,comprising over 100 tributaries and hundreds of smaller streams,is home to numerous species of fish,and scientists say many of these are yet to be discovered.

Tourists in Mizoram

The number of foreign tourists in Mizoram has gone up in the past two years,from 658 in 2011 to 745 during 2012. Of these,138 were from the US,104 from Britain and 78 from Australia,the rest coming from various European as well as Southeast Asian countries. The number may be small,but for a small state which was for long known only for insurgency,the increase in number of foreign tourists is very significant,said an official in Aizawl,giving out the figures. With various restrictions such as the Protected Area Permit PAP for foreigners and Inner Line Permit ILP for Indian citizens now being gradually eased,the state is looking at more visitors.

More border outposts

Tripura,like Assam and Meghalaya,has a huge problem of infiltration from Bangladesh,and this has been happening despite the construction of a barbed-wire fence along the boundary. Given this situation,and especially because the fence is far from complete,the Border Security Force has set up more border outposts to check influx,trans-border smuggling and other crimes. The states 856-km boundary with Bangladesh is currently fenced along only 730 km. BSF director-general Subhash Joshi said in Agartala on Saturday that the number of BoPs would soon go up from the existing 181 to 245.