Even I am a bit surprised by the NE's exclusion from this 'summit', mainly because I thought people like Suresh Prabhu and his masters would have become a tad bit more sensitized to the NE's concerns by now. I was ready to trust Prabhu's public assurances that nothing would be done about diverting Assam waters without the approval of its people.
It merely underscores Delhi's imperial attitudes. The other explanation could be, that like I explained earlier, the Brahmaputra and /or Manas damming and linking with the Kosi in Bihar is such a harebrained propsal, that finally it is beginning to sink in, and therefore the non-invitation of the NE to the 'summit'. That could actually be a good sign. cm River-linking meet sans NE representative By A Staff Reporter GUWAHATI, Oct 14 - A high-level daylong seminar on inter-linking of rivers billed as "First National Media Summit on Interlinking of Rivers: Prospects and Challenges" was held at New Delhi today where not a single representative from this land of the mighty Brahmaputra river was invited. The Union Ministry of Water Resources sponsored the seminar at HUDCO Bhawan at Habitat Centre in the national capital, which was organised by Association of Integrated Social Transformation and Chronicle Society of India for Education and Academic Research, amongst others. The All Assam Students Union (AASU) which has taken a strong stand against the proposed river-linking project of the Government of India as the project aims at exploiting the huge pool of water resources of Brahmaputra at the expense of Assam, has alleged that it was seminar organised by the Government of India engaging some NGOs. The AASU Adviser Samujjal Bhattacharyya told this newspaper that as the organisers failed to invite a single representative from Assam or the entire North East to this high-level seminar, it once again exposed the indifferent attitude of the BJP-led Government at the Centre towards North East. He said as 50 per cent of the total pool of water resources in the country was from the Brahmaputra and the Ganges, it was outrageous to learn that not a single person was invited to the seminar from Assam or the North East. "It once again exposed the design of the Centre to exploit the water resources of Brahmaputra river without caring to consider the views of the people of the State or the region. For the Centre the eastern boundary of the country still ends at Kolkata and the North-east is continued to be treated as a colony for the purpose of exploiting its natural resources. The AASU leader who is now in New Delhi to attend the next round of discussion of the tripartite sub-committee on Assam Accord, informed that the seminar was attended by a battery of prominent personalities and experts including several BJP leaders and the Chairman of the Government of India task force on the rivers interlinking project, Suresh Prabhu. _______________________________________________ Assam mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://pikespeak.uccs.edu/mailman/listinfo/assam To unsubscribe or change options: http://pikespeak.uccs.edu/mailman/options/assam
