Day’s salary for statehood fund, Madan Tamang condemned the attack on reporters in Sikkim

Day’s salary for statehood fund
- Money to be at Morcha disposal OUR CORRESPONDENT - The Telegraph

Darjeeling, July 6: State and central government employees from across the Darjeeling hills have decided to donate a day’s salary — on an average around Rs 500 each — every month to Bimal Gurung’s party to enable it to sustain the movement for a separate state of Gorkhaland.

The two employees’ association in the hills, which have taken the decision, claim to have around 5,000 members each.

“This is our contribution to the movement. We have decided to collect one day’s salary from the employees and hand it over to Bimal Gurung,” said Amar Rai, the president of the Hill Employees’ and Workers’ Trade Union.

The Union has decided to create a “Gorkhaland Relief Fund” for this purpose and every employee will be given a receipt for the donation.

“We will collect the amount by the 10th of every month and at the end of three months, we will hand over the money to Bimal Gurung,” said Rai.

Gurung’s party, the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha, is leading the movement for a new state in the hills.

“The average day’s salary would be about Rs 500 a head every month,” the president of the 13-year-old Union said.

This means the Union can collect around Rs 25 lakh every month.

The decision to create the fund was taken during the Union’s meeting held in Darjeeling yesterday. “Representatives of the Union from Darjeeling, Kalimpong, Kurseong, Mirik, Takdha, Sukhiapokhri and Bijanbari attended the meeting and unanimously passed a resolution on this,” said Rai.

The Hill Employees’ Association has decided to follow suit and collect a day’s salary from every employee under it.
“We also had our meeting in Darjeeling yesterday and unanimously decided to collect a day’s salary. We will hand it over to the Morcha for its movement,” B.P. Chhetri, the vice-president of the Hill Employees’ Association, said.

The Association, too, claims that a day’s salary of its members, on an average, is around Rs 500.

Sources said teachers from across the hills were thinking of doing the same as part of their contribution towards the movement.

The recently formed Janmukti Karmachari Samwaya Manch — an umbrella body comprising the Union, the Association and the Janmukti Karmachari Sangathan — has also unanimously decided to support the Morcha, which includes indefinite closure of state and central government offices from tomorrow.

“The Manch will coordinate all programmes involving the hill employees,” said Chhetri, who is also the convener of the Manch.

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Salary for ‘state’
OUR CORRESPONDENT - The Telegraph

Darjeeling, July 6: Government employees in the Darjeeling hills have decided to donate a day’s salary, around Rs 500 each, every month to the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha-led Gorkhaland movement.

The decision was taken by two employee associations, which claim around 5,000 members each. These include central and state employees.

“This is our contribution to the movement. We have decided to collect a day’s salary and hand it over to (Morcha chief) Bimal Gurung,” said Amar Rai, the president of the Hill Employees’ and Workers’ Trade Union. The union will create a “Gorkhaland relief fund” and the employees will be given receipts.

“We will collect the amount by the 10th of every month and after three months, we will hand over the money to Bimal Gurung. The amount will be around Rs 500 per head,” said Rai, whose union is 13 years old. This means a collection of around Rs 25 lakh every month. The decision to create the fund was taken during the union’s meeting in Darjeeling yesterday.

“Representatives of the union from Darjeeling, Kalimpong, Kurseong, Mirik, Takdha, Sukhiapokhri and Bijanbari passed a resolution in this regard.”

Another union, the Hill Employees’ Association, has decided to follow suit: it will collect a day’s salary from every employee under its fold.

“We also held our meeting in Darjeeling yesterday and decided to collect a day’s salary. We will hand over the money to the Morcha for its movement,” its vice-president, B.P. Chhetri, said. This association, too, claimed that a day’s salary from each employee would be around Rs 500. Sources said hill teachers were also thinking of donations.

The recently formed Janmukti Karmachari Samanwaya Manch — an umbrella body comprising the Union, the Association and the Janmukti Karmachari Sangathan — has decided to support the Morcha. Its plans include indefinite closure of state and central government offices from tomorrow.

“The Manch will coordinate all programmes involving the hill employees,” said Chhetri, who is also the convener of the Manch.

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Parties condemn attack on scribes
Statesman News Service

DARJEELING, July 6: The All India Gorkha League president Mr Madan Tamang condemned the attack on reporters in Sikkim on Friday. "It is unfortunate that the same people who had gone for a candle light demonstration when Mr Nar Bahadur Bhandari was the chief minister of Sikkim, are mum when the Press, also the fourth estate of democracy was attacked”, the leader said.

On Friday, the editor of the daily newspaper Hamro Praja Shakti, Mr Anjan Upadhyay along with other reporters were attacked by some anti-social elements at their office in Sikkim. The AIGL leadership also condemned Sikkim government's act of filing a case with the Supreme Court regarding the blockade at NH-31A when the GJMM staged protests in the Hills. “The Sikkim government should not escalate matters to such a level. We can always talk to arrive at a solution”, Mr Tamang stated.

At the same time the AIGL leader expressed his full support to the Congress for going ahead with the nuclear deal. “It is a big achievement for the country. The CPI-M has a regressive approach and has always come in the way of development. Earlier they had opposed the nuclear tests at Pokhran too”, he said.

In another incident in Darjeeling, the house of Mr Amitava Bannerjee, senior journalist of The Hindustan Times, was attacked by some goons last night. Mr Bannerjee has filed an FIR with the Sadar police station. The Darjeeling Press Guild has severely condemned the attack and demanded the immediate arrest of the culprits.

All Hill parties including AIGL, CPRM, Congress and the GJMM have expressed their disapproval on such an act by anti-social elements. The Gorkha Jana Yuva Morcha (GJYM) too came up with a signature campaign criticising the recent attack.

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Himalayan foothills hold great IT potential - Feature Siliguri and Darjeeling see youngsters migrate south
itEXAMINER

Every month, hundreds of young men and women make their way to Siliguri’s main railway station – NJP, to board trains heading for India’s dream IT stations such as Bangalore, Gurgaon (New Delhi), Hyderabad and Pune.

Strategically located at the foothills of the Himalayas, Siliguri is West Bengal’s second largest city after state capital Kolkata. The city and the surrounding hill areas covering the famous hill resort Darjeeling and the Himalayan state of Sikkim, account for a rich pool of talented of English knowing, computer savvy workers whose best employment opportunities exist in faraway  locations.

With a population of nearly half a million, Siliguri is a prosperous city thriving on the three ‘Ts’ - tea, tourism and trade. Most people here say, the time has come for this fast growing, cosmopolitan city to add its 4th ‘T’ -Technology.

Siliguri’s potential to develop into an IT hub is real. The advantages the city  has include excellent weather conditions (not more than 15 to 20 really hot days in a year), good connectivity – there are a number of flights leaving daily for Kolkata and New Delhi from Siliguri’s Bagdogra airport- and of course the pool of talented, young IT career aspirants mushrooming in the numerous missionary run English schools and professional colleges in Siliguri and Darjeeling, for whom promising IT jobs would wait next door.

Kolkata, with a software hub in Sector V, Salt Lake and another coming up in Rajarhat, remains the prime IT destination in the state. Siliguri is among the four other cities where Software Technology Parks (STPs) have been commissioned by the state government to earmark them as emerging IT destinations for software development and outsourcing companies.

Says Subharthi Roy,  the administrative head of Xploretech Services Pvt. Ltd, a Kolkata-based BPO company which set up Siliguri’s first call centre two years back, “With an abundance of English speaking workers who fit the job profile of BPOs, Siliguri has a clear advantage over other growing cities in West Bengal as far as IT prospects are concerned”.

G. D. Gautama,  the Special Secretary to the West Bengal’s IT department is equally optimistic about Siliguri’s potentialities as an upcoming IT hub. As the gateway to North East India, Sikkim, and Darjeeling, it was only a matter of time before Siliguri develops into a front ranking city in north east India, he feels. The growth of the IT sector would naturally follow, Gautama sums up.

However, while the prospects are bright, there are hurdles too. Dibyendu Saha of Techno Development Group, a leading software firm in the Siliguri providing IT enabled services, cautions against over enthusiasm on Siliguri’s IT prospects.

“The software park was opened two years ago with great fan-fare, followed by expectations that IT giants would set up units here,” he states. “But for the last three years we kept on hearing they would come. The reality is, none has set up shop in Siliguri”.

Infrastructure - or the lack of it - is the biggest problem. "We still lack basic necessities like uninterrupted power supply and a top grade internet service,“ Saha points out. “While the net services are better than many Indian cities, it would have to upgrade significantly to enable the smooth functioning of BPO units.”

Another problem lay in the casual attitude of workers, reflected in poor maintenance of office timings and low productivity levels. However the biggest problem was one of attitude.

“There is a metro fixation in this country, be it in individuals or companies”, Saha remarks, adding his firm more often than not fails to secure software job contracts which smaller, less experienced firms in Kolkata grab at will. Clearly, India Inc lies in the metros. Surit Dey, who runs a placement firm in Siliguri agrees. “Most of the time we have people going out, mainly to the big cities. Very few come in”.

However, officials at the Siliguri-Jalpaiguri Development Authority, the nodal agency overseeing development of Siliguri and its suburbs,  remain positive. The general feeling is overcrowding in India’s five main metro cities would soon reach saturation levels leading to immense space congestion and sky-rocketing office space prices. Companies would have no option but to find alternative destinations like upcoming cities like Siliguri.

If that is to happen sooner or later, Siliguri’s potentialities to develop into a successful IT hub could be actually realized.

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Gasps of steam
ExpressIndia

Darjeeling Himalayan Railway nicknamed Toy Train completed 127 years of service on July 4. City-based photographer Kumar Mangwani takes us to the place where steam engine still thunders the undulating land

Sitting at wooden bench befitting the Circa station in Darjeeling I waited for the locomotive which was about to transport me back in time to an era where trains sweetly whistled, slithering along the tracks, emanating white puffs of smoke from their vents. And as the little mass of the blue steam engine pulled into view maneuvering a bend I wasn't alone to gape at the antiquity of it. Hundreds of eyes accustomed to the look of modern day trains went round in surprise. Jaws dropped and eyes went wide as the tiny blue carriages rolled on the platform bringing to view a completely unusual site.

While the archaic engine kept idling and sneezing out with a whoosh and bursts of white smoke dissipating between its iron wheels the train driver satiated it's hunger shovelling coal into it's furnace. A backgrounder on the history of this particular train equipped me with the knowledge that this was one of the newer engines built around 1920, the 804, ‘Queen of the Hills.' Compact but mighty enough to drag 35 tons along the tracks, whereas the original ones built in 1881 could just boast of 7 tons drag load.

The outlived Colonial Raj left behind their impressions upon this soil not with the purpose of the country's progress but because of their affinity to tea. It made them line up this 83 km track from Siliguri to Darjeeling. Till the late 1800, horse drawn carts transported tea down the tortuous `Hill cart' road to Siliguri, which was the nearest railhead then. Franklin Prestage, of Eastern Bengal Railway Company and Ashley Eden, the Lieutenant-Governor proposed the alignment, and groundwork began in 1879. Completed in stages, the entire line to Darjeeling opened for traffic on July4 1881. The earliest locomotive came swanked with wooden benches and canvas canopies built in Manchester, England.

Running between Siliguri to Darjeeling the line is a remarkable feat of engineering which includes switchbacks and loops. Batasia Loop, at a distance of five kilometer from Darjeeling is a popular spot for picnickers. The technique of constructing the track on hilly terrain was adopted from the ways of an Austrian specialist, Chega who avoided digging through tunnels and lengthened the tracks through loops, wherein the track curved across a bridge over its own line, thus giving the traveler unhindered view of the majestic Himalayas.

Ghum, at 7407 ft, the second highest station in the world is about six kilometers uphill from Darjeeling. The exposed brick masonry and pretty eaves boards, give the station a complete ancient feel.

A brief halt at Ghum and then the train progresses again. Inching at first, breathing out clouds of smoke, it picks up momentum as the carriages gradually roll by. From Ghum it takes at least thirty minutes before the journey gets concluded at Darjeeling. The steam locomotive being a notorious water guzzler takes brief halts for its thirst, 40 gallons to a mile, water dischargers along the line attend to its service.

The ride on the Toy train is a romantic approach to the mysterious Himalayas, a fact summed up on silver screen, with many Bollywood and Hollywood stars endorsing it in an air of romance. Famous personalities have had their joy rides on the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway (DHR). Mark Twain described his ecstatic trip of 1895 as "the most enjoyable day I've spent on earth".