Grain of benevolence

Aizawl, Jun 26 : When the rat army devours acre after acre of crops in Mizoram, one granary overflows with philanthropy.

Lalbiakdiki, wife of state chief secretary Haukhum Hauzel, has set up a granary with her own funds to help starving villagers during mautam or the dreaded famine following rats devouring and destroying crops and grains.

Once in every 50 years, when the bamboo plants flower, hordes of rodents feast on the fruit, which experts say increases their fertility. They multiply at an alarming rate and attack farmlands for food.

Though the catastrophe strikes once in five decades, its is impossible for the government to pre-empt the disaster even with meticulous planning.

Since you can’t stop the rats, Lalbiakdlki decided that stocking up for the calamity would be the next best thing to do.

So Joseph Buzum (buzum meaning granary) was born out of one woman’s foresight and generosity.

Lalbiakdiki said she named the granary after the biblical figure of Joseph, the confidante of a Pharaoh, who built a granary for Israelis who suffered miserably during a famine in ancient Egypt.

Around 300 villages spread across three most affected districts of the state have benefited from Lalbiakdiki’s project. “The idea struck me after seeing the poor villagers who used to come to my husband seeking help. Initially, I started it with my own contribution. Soon, other friends and relatives chipped in with donations,” Lalbiakdiki said.

In the fifties, Laldenga’s “famine front” helped hundreds of impoverished souls in Mizo villages.

More than 50 years later, Lalbiakdiki is trying to single-handedly manage what a whole “front” struggled to do.

Telegraph India

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Racial profiling at club, North-East girl denied entry

New Delhi, Jun 26 : In a disturbing incident of alleged racism at a popular club in South Delhi a girl from the North-East was barred entry on the basis of where she is from.

Dolma (name changed) says she feels humiliated but is speaking up for the rest of her community.

“It may be my voice, but I’m representing all the people of my community who have had similar experiences,” she says.She claims bitter discrimination is what many people from the North-East often face in the Capital. Last week, at Urban Pind a popular South Delhi club, the bouncer allegedly barred her entry, even while letting her two friends in, a German and a South Indian.

“The manager asked my friend about my nationality and when she replied that I belong to the North-East of India he said she doesn’t have the right profile to enter. I was embarrassed and humiliated,” explains Dolma.

“I had no choice but to send the club a legal notice which said that they have violated someone’s fundamental and human rights,” says High Court advocate Enatoli Sema.

However Urban Pind maintains that not only do they employ people from the North-East, but also have salsa nights on Tuesdays that is led by North-Easterners. They maintain that the allegations of racial profiling against them are completely false.

The management says that they were just abiding by regular club rules and have no discriminatory policy against any caste or race.

But this is not the first time or the only club where such an incident has occurred, people from the North-East say discrimination against them is on the rise in the Capital.

“I think just because one owns a property doesn’t make you above the law, one still needs to abide by the laws of the country and I think it’s high time people realise that this is discrimination,” says writer Amrit Sharma.

“If tomorrow they turn around and tell us that people from the North-East cannot enter a mall or a family restaurant, then what are we supposed to do and where are we supposed to go, how are we supposed to feel and react to that,” demands Dolma.

These questions do not have to be answered to just Dolma but also to all those people from the North-East who have faced discrimination in the Capital who want answers on weather these baseless rules out do an individual’s fundamental rights.

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Oxygen for dying scripts

Tinsukia, Jun 26 : About a year ago, an Australian foundation startled linguists by revealing that somewhere in the world one language dies about every two weeks.

A fervent research began to unearth the dying dialects and three of the most endangered languages were found in Assam’s backyard.

Tangsa and Singpho and Tai are now spoken by less than 40 people in Tinsukia’s Margherita subdivision.Even if the scripts survive, the songs and poetry will be extinct in less than a decade, linguists feel.

To save these language communities from extinction, a German foundation has come forward to provide the essential logistics to record the grammar, poetry and songs for posterity.

The Volkswagen Stiftung Foundation will also help in documenting Tai traditional manuscripts.

“There are fewer than 40 individuals across the three communities who have the knowledge of the traditional culture, language and poetics to be able compose and sing traditional songs/poetry. In these societies, no clear distinction can be drawn between song and poetry,” said Palash Nath of the department of linguistics, Gauhati University, who is part of the project.

According to linguists, nearly half the 7,000 languages spoken in the world today are likely to disappear in the next 100 years.

“The rate of language extinction far exceeds that of birds, mammals, fish or plants,” said David Harrison, professor of linguistics at Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania.

Work on the three language groups has already begun.

“We have visited a number of villages inhabited by members of these communities. We have spent a lot of time there and have interacted with villagers, both old and young, enquiring about their old songs. We have also recorded a number of such songs sung by people who the community thinks can sing them,” Nath said.

The scholar has also found ways to preserve some old traditional instruments.

“We look for people within the community who can make such instruments and request them keep the tradition alive,” he said.

Stephen Morey of the Research Center for Linguistic Typology, Australia, who is the principal investigator in the project, said the aim was to record as much of these languages as one can and then archiving those recordings, which will also be available for members of those communities. All these recordings will be sent to the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics at Neimegen in the Netherlands for digital archiving.

“The fact that scholars are taking an interest in the languages may encourage speakers to make more efforts to preserve their script,” Morey said.

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