In the 423-km-long State's international border with Bangladesh, the NBCC was entrusted to erect fresh fencing in 200 km and in 130 km, old fencing has to be replaced.

Of the 200 km in Nongjri-Jalaikhola sector, around 65 km border has been fenced and 15 km stretch from Jalaikhola to Ratacherra has also been completed.

Elsewhere in the State, fencing work was undertaken in Bahgmara in Garo Hills and Balat and Shella in Khasi Hills.

Mr Mehra said in other states of the North-East, the NBCC was facing no hurdles in the fencing work. The length of fencing completed in Asom is 35 km, Tripura 260 km and Mizoram 35 km.

When contacted member of CCIB and KSU general secretary Hamlet Dohling said the CCIB would meet on Saturday to discuss the need to withdraw the agitations after the positive response from the government to their demands.

"The church leaders also asked us to withdraw the agitations on account of KJP Synod Assembly to be held from next week at Polo Ground," Mr Dohling said.

Mr Raju said the Centre was also optimistic about the outcome of bilateral talks on defence issues with the interim government.

On the activities of ULFA, he said the despite a lot of time being given by the Central government to the outfit to lay down arms, they are yet to respond positively.

"The ULFA will once realise the futility of their demands and will negotiate with the government," he said.

However, the Union minister said his visit this time to the north-eastern region was as the Chairman of Border Roads.

He will review the implementation of various road projects especially those under the Prime Minister Gram Sadak Yojana.

Mr Raju also visited Eastern Air Command, 101 Area and met Governor MM Jacob during the day.

During special Good Friday services the Christians meditated on Jesus suffering and death on the cross with readings from the Gospel giving accounts of the events leading up to the crucifixion.

Young and old observed fast and abstinence and flocked to the churches all over the State to participate in the mass. They sang hymns and heard sermons from various church leaders.

It is believed that Jesus rose from his grave on the following Sunday, which is celebrated as Easter.

The rituals for Good Friday, which normally falls between March 20 and April 23 every year, began on the immediately preceding Thursday. A feast symbolising the "last supper" of Christ was held on Thursday night. The end of this meal marked the beginning of the fast for Easter.

All sects among the Christians - Roman Catholic, Presbyterian et al-- participated in the soulful Good Friday services.

Thousands of Christians throughout the length and breadth of Garo Hills observed Good Friday by attending church service and seeking penance.

In a statement issued here on Friday, Chief Engineer of Project Setuk Mr Anil Kumar said that there was a proposal to construct a 85-metre-long permanent bridge at Sonapur to ensure uninterrupted flow of traffic.

The over-reaction to the Indian cricket team's early elimination from the World Cup after its defeat by Sri Lanka has been so gross that one must worry about the future of that sport in India, with all its identifications with national self-esteem, honour, or "humiliation", and its numerous connections with media exposure, advertising, corporate sponsorship, and not least, gambling. The Indian players, once elevated to the status of gods and demi-gods, have suddenly become demons, devils, villains, and worse, traitors. They are the prime targets of vilification, mock funerals, and vulgar sexist abuse.

Millions of otherwise-sensible Indians can be heard publicly bemoaning that "a nation of one billion can't even produce a half-way decent cricket team". Such self-flagellation is based on making performance in cricket a touchstone of patriotism and professionalism. It's a pity that the self-esteem of a billion people has come to rest on one game.

Yet, excellence in sports, in particular cricket, has never been a function of population. That's why Australia, West Indies and Sri Lanka have done well at cricket. It's not just individual excellence that counts in the game. Teamwork, planning and strategising also matter, at which India has traditionally been weak. Besides, uncertainty is built into the very nature of cricket, including the weather, state of the pitch, order of batting, audience response, etc.

To look at the issue soberly, India was ranked Number Six in the world, and wasn't widely expected to win the Cup. It hasn't won a limited-overs tournament played abroad since 1985! It passes comprehension why many people cannot accept that another team may be better than ours, and must instead impute the vilest of causes and motives to our defeat, including lack of "the killer instinct", loss of will, or absence of national pride. The Sri Lankans played well. The Indians didn't. So that should be the end of the story.

However, we have elevated cricket into a perverse yet powerful passion and denuded it of its content as a sport and source of joy. A cricket victory is seen as affirmation of Indian nationalism -- a sports version of "Mera Bharat Mahan". Nothing excites Indians as much as cricket -- to the exclusion of all other sports. Perhaps cricket turns on Indians even more than politics, leave alone social issues, which periodically divide this country bitterly.

Cricket is more than our national pastime. It claims a higher loss of social time than strikes and lockouts do in industry. Someone has just calculated that if India were to reach the World Cup finals, the sport's fans in our 81 million television homes would have "lost" (spent) 106.5 million man-days in front of the Idiot Box. This is more than 3.5 times the number of man-days lost to strikes and lockouts (30 million) in a year!

This cricket obsession isn't natural or spontaneous. It has been systematically cultivated or manufactured through multi-billion dollar marketing, sales promotion and advertising. Our cricket stars aren't visible on the playground alone. They are omnipresent-in advertising for colas, processed foods, shampoos, cars, ayurvedic remedies, and eggs-, on Page 3, and in lifestyle and glamour stories churned out daily by hundreds of channels and thousands of newspapers.

This is part of the corporatisation of cricket and its apex organising bodies. The Board of Control for Cricket in India has annual revenues of Rs 500 crores. Last year, it sold telecasting rights for a humongous Rs 2,750 crores! The International Cricket Council sold broadcasting rights for the current and the next World Cup for an even higher $1.1 billion (Rs 4,950 crores). Sony Entertainment Television sold advertising at Rs 5 lakhs for each 10-second spot, raking in an estimated Rs 350-400 crores. Doordarshan made another Rs 160 crores. Dwarfing this is the money invested in betting, estimated at Rs 4,000 crores.

Now take the star players. Sachin Tendulkar, Saurav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid make Rs 12 to 20 crores a year for endorsing products ranging from shoes and cosmetics to life insurance. Ganguly charges an annual fee of close to Rs 1.5 crore per endorsement. Even newcomers like Dhoni have become multimillionaires overnight.

Corporates now invest in everything, from cricket-related ground events, trophy tours, consumer promotion and glamour shows. The all-pervasive, predatory and manipulative influence of corporations in cricket wouldn't have become possible without ICC, BCCI and even city- and state-level boards being turned into commercialised and mercenary entities.

Cricket now has a uniquely ugly and grotesque side: an international match-fixing mafia. Its scale of operation far exceeds the magnitude of the South African, Pakistani and Indian scandals of the past, itself staggering. Nothing highlights this more starkly than the murder of Bob Woolmer-cricket's most sordid crisis ever. As more details emerge of this shameful episode, it becomes clear that international cricket is acquiring the same gangster-dominated character as Mumbai's real estate business, where deals are struck or annulled through blackmailing, extortion and outright murder. The shadow of "D Company" and other mafiosi hangs as ominously over cricket as it does over Mumbai's mill-lands.

We are witnessing the transformation of a sport into an organised, criminalised business through its corporate takeover. Whatever corporates touch turns into dust, often bloody dust. Corruption is integral to it. The influence of corporate sponsorship is baneful.

Such influence is now visible in other fields too, especially culture, even "high culture". Culture was long monopolised by the state, which would patronise classical music, dance and other performing arts (or rather, performing artistes), and the fine arts. Now, culture is becoming dependent on corporate sponsorship. Sponsorship comes at a high price. Corporates, working through event management companies, typically only want to support "star" events which generate huge billings or attract high-profile audiences.

Thus, in Hindustani classical music, only a handful of performers-like Amjad Ali Khan, Pandit Jasraj, Kishori Amonkar, Hariprasad Chaurasia, Shivkumar Shama and Vishwa Mohan Bhat-get top-level sponsors, irrespective of quality or integrity. Others get left out-not because they are less virtuous, but largely because they don't know how to play the sponsorship-publicity game, or lack a glittering Big Star profile. The only exceptions are long-established sabhas and 3-to-5-day sammelans, with multiple performances each day.

The "Star system" is equally dominant in dance, and to a lesser extent, theatre. One reason for this is the paucity of good auditoria and theatres, and their exorbitant rents, going up to Rs 20,000 to 50,000 for an evening. Unless performers somehow find such huge funding, they cannot stage events. And unless their art conforms to the parochial tastes and preferences of corporations and event managers, they won't get funding. "Big" names count. Quality doesn't. Serious experimental forms and "non-mainstream" performing arts don't figure in corporate calculations.

The sponsors are omnipotent. They can cancel scheduled performances at the last minute because the audience may not generate enough billings. Often, they nominate their invitees to flood the audience. Recently, two big jazz stars, Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter, performed in three Indian cities. In Mumbai, only 10 percent of the seats were sold through tickets, the rest were allotted to sponsors. Their philistine nominees ensured the concert was a dud. Thousands of genuine jazz-lovers couldn't get entry into the hall.

In the past, government- or AIR-sponsored sammelans would see great artistes performing to empty front-rows reserved for Ministers and bureaucrats who wouldn't turn up. Now, the artistes play to equally empty front-rows or pander to dark-suited businessmen more concerned to answer their mobile phone calls than to enjoy the music.

Perhaps the most corrupting influence of corporatisation is to be seen in painting. This art form has become big as a source of investment, not appreciation. The art market turnover has ballooned from Rs 5 crores in 1997 to over Rs 1,000 crores. So huge is this boom that artists have started employing imitation specialists to produce "their" work, which they sign. Art auction-houses and commercial ventures have sprouted in city after city to cater to the business investor-typically, without taste or understanding of quality-who is looking for an appreciating asset.

As especially grotesque form of such art-commerce amalgamation was a recent venture under which 100 artists and 110 "eminent citizens", including Ministers and CEOs, collaboratively produced 120 paintings. So you had Finance Minister P. Chidambaram sharing brush-strokes with Anjolie Ela Menon, Ratan Tata and Laxman Shrestha producing a painting over three sittings, and Tina Ambani and Jogen Chowdhury creating extraordinarily shoddy canvas. The artists were all known names, none of them hurting for money. It's shocking that they agreed to destroy the integrity of their discipline by allowing "eminent citizens" to mess with their paintings.

Corporate sponsorship corrupts. It always will. We must rescue art, culture and sports from it before it's too late. (IPA Service)

Sir,

The local taxis are a major cause of traffic congestion in the town. They first do not move, inspite of being on the main road and second, they stop anywhere on the road. With this problem in mind, I, as a concerned citizen of the State, would like to suggest some steps in the recent traffic changes that have been made in MG Road.

According to me the divider that has started from ICICI Bank should be only for the taxis going to Keating Road and therefore the divider can be opened in front of Raps Manison where all the vehicles merge to go towards Police Bazar, Motphran, etc. The reason being, the taxis halt at the turning to Keating road for passengers and this causes unnecessary traffic congestion. I believe that the movement of normal traffic will not be disrupted if this system is implemented.

Yours etc.,
Albert Lyngdoh.
Via e-mail.

Sir,

Apropos the letter, "BPL scam", (ST, March 5), I wish to bring to the knowledge of the Deputy Commissioners of all districts of Meghalaya as to the rampant existence of ghost ration cards created by the greedy fair price shop owners with the help of staff of the offices concerned. It may be even be brought to the information of the respective DCs that the supply of rations (including kerosene oil) hardly reach the poor beneficiaries.

Though in the official record there could be right names of the beneficiaries, but more than 80 percent of the rations issued by the Supply department to the Fair Price Shop are openly sold to wholesale traders in the market at higher prices. This unethical practice is so rampant because the beneficiaries being illiterate do not know how to lodge the complaint against the unscrupulous Fair Price shop owners and the officers concerned further never bother to conduct proper checks to stop this age-old and deep-rooted racket.

I sincerely hope that this letter will certainly wake up all the Deputy Commissioners of Meghalaya to take the right steps to cleanse the increasing corruptions in PDS and punish the culprits rightfully.

Yours etc.,
R Lyngdoh,
Shillong-3
Via e-mail

Guwahati: The Indian Chamber of Commerce (ICC) in association with the Department of Development of Northeastern Region (DONER) of Government of India is organising a North East Business Summit in New Delhi on April 10 and 11 next to market the region as a destination for investment.

The summit which is third in a row after the earlier conclaves at Mumbai and New Delhi in previous years, assumes significance in view of announcement of the exclusive North East Industrial Investment Promotion Policy (NEIIPP) by the Centre last week. The NEIIPP aims at giving an edge to the N-E region in luring investment.

The Chairman of the ICC’s NE regional advisory council, M K Saharia on Friday informed that the focus of the business summit, that would be attended by a host of Union ministers and chief ministers of all the N-E states, would be to attract investments in the important sectors of agro-food processing, tourism, healthcare, information Technology, International Trade in the context of Look East policy of the Central government.

Union Minister for DONER and Panchayatiraj, Mani Shankar Aiyar will be present through most of the proceedings on both days of the summit. Union Tourism minister Ambika Soni, Food Processing Industries minister Subodhkant Sahay, union minister of state for external affairs Anand Sharma and Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel will address sessions on tourism, agro food processing, Look East Policy and infrastructure respectively. A conclave of Chief Ministers of all the eight NE states will be held as part of the summit to enable the Chief Ministers to highlight investment opportunities in their respective States before top-line industrialists from the country and leaders and business delegates from Thailand, Nepal , Bangladesh and other countries. According to the CII official, the Unique Selling Point of tourism sector in the region will be: "It is a virgin zone rich in diversity in culture, ethnicity, geography besides unmatched scenic locations."

Revealing this to media, Chief Electoral Officer GSG Aayyanger on Friday said that all the EVMs are equipped with latest technology. Even blind voters can cast their votes through these EVMs as special arrangement has been made for them.

The Electronic Corporation of India Limited and Bharat Electronic Limited have manufactured new EVMs and every EVM has separate balloting unit and processing unit, he said.

He also further said that all the EVMs are now stored in a strong room at Umakanta Academy here with amid tight security, he said, adding that the manufacturers of these new EVMs will conduct demonstration cum training for polling staff.

Official sources said Tripura needs 2400 EVMs to conduct Assembly or Lok Sabha polls and rest EVMs will be kept ready for emergency use.

In the meantime, the Election Commission has directed the state poll panel to complete the summary revision of the electoral rolls by April 19 next.

Booth Level Officers (BLOs) were asked to take all possible measures to rectify errors appeared in the Photo Electoral Rolls for all 60 Assembly segments.

In a recent communiqué, the commission has also requested the state poll panel to enroll student voters, who have been study outside the state in the electoral rolls.

With this decision, about 10,000 student-voters would find place in the electoral rolls.

However, the student-voters can enroll their name either at native places or centres of their study. For this they will have to submit sufficient documents to the concerned authorities.

Here, it may be recalled that the state poll panel had sought clarification from the commission on how to enrol student-voters’ names in the electoral rolls.

Official sources said 22 militants of various ranks of the banned outfit began the relay hunger-strike of 12 hour duration for each of the protestors in the jail premises under the leadership of ULFA vice-president Pradip Gogoi.

Other top militant leaders, who joined in were, ULFA ideologue Bhimkanta Buragohain (Mama), its central publicity secretary Mithinga Daimary and cultural secretary Pranati Phukan.

These persons were among its leaders whose release was being demanded by the ULFA, saying their presence was required for taking decisions on the peace talks as they are members of its decision-taking central committee.

A fast-unto-death was also launched during the day by Peoples Committee for Peace Initiatives in Assam (PCPIA), an umbrella body of 27 organisations sympathetic to the ULFA, to put pressure on the government to find out the missing ULFA militants since the 2003 Bhutan 'Operation All Clear'.

The wives of the missing ULFA ultras have been observing a fast-unto-death since March 20 demanding information about their husbands.

They were arrested on March 31 after their health deteriorated and are now in the Gauhati Medical College Hospital where they are being fed intravenously as they are refusing food. (PTI)

In its annual report for the year ending March 31, 2007, the CAG criticised that the evaluation of the internal controls and internal audit system in the Mizoram Police department revealed weaknesses and non-compliance with rules in areas of cash management, expenditure control and organisational controls.

The CAG was clearly unhappy with the department for its lapses in financial control in all types of expenditure. For instance, the department had made withdrawals through AC bills an amount of Rs 18.61 crore during a period of four years from 2002 to 2006 of which Rs 14.55 crore, 78 percent of the total withdrawals, was drawn in the last quarter at the financial fag ends.

Out of the total funds withdrawn, the department had deposited Rs 7.86 crore in civil deposits during the same period.

The report also lashed out at the department for failing to regularise these AC bills through DCC (detailed contingent bills) which the department took four to 11 months to furnish for the Rs 18.61 crore it had drawn through AC bills.

Stating that the police department lacked proper planning while executing works, the report pointed out an instance where the Lunglei SPs office had been constructed at a total cost of Rs 55.42 lakh under the Modernisation of Police Force (MPF) scheme.

The report stated that the building, after completion, remained unoccupied because of its isolated location and steep incline of the approach road.

The building was exchanged with the MPRO for a plot of land and the SP at present still occupies a rented building at a cost of Rs 8740 per month. (UNI)