www.kalimpong.info

The Telegraph
RAJEEV RAVIDAS

Kalimpong, April 28: Dipak Chhetri and three polling officials bound for Makum village will have to stretch their muscles much more than others who have been assigned election duties.

Having arrived here today after a two-hour drive from Darjeeling, Chhetri, who is the presiding officer of the polling booth at 22/55-Makum Prathamik Pathsala, was busy sorting out papers along with B.B. Sherpa, Nabin Sherpa and Pasang Sherpa before proceeding to Makum, 105km away. (more…)

Nirnay John Chettri
Mankind in Action for Rural Growth
Marg.org

After lot of struggle and difficulties for the past eighteen months the villagers of Dukka, Tanderbong, Pabuk, Changsing, Kagey and Linsey have a reason to smile now as they have almost completed constructing approx 4 km road which they feel would be their lifeline in the days to come.

In our country even today there are villages where there are no roads and electricity. Dukka is one of them. One can visit Dukka a tiny village of 127 houses mostly tribal which is just an hour’s trek from Algarah (Kalimpong) and experience and see how much this village has been neglected. The villagers have been fighting against the rough terrain in their day to day work.

Fr. Paul Sitling (Parish Priest of Maria Basti) has been working very hard for the past eighteen months in motivating villagers not only from his Parish but from other villagers like Dukka, Changsing, Tanderbong, Pabuk, Kagey and Lingsey where villagers from different cast and creed work together for a common goal.

It’s heartening to see villagers trekking for two to three hours to reach Dukka and join the local villagers there in constructing the road. More over one can see and feel their love when they all sit under a shade and share their food with one another when they break for lunch.

The road is nearing for completion and eighteen months have passed by BUT till date there has been no support from the government. It is even more surprising that even after the local newspaper flashing this news several times not even a single government official has visited this village. Where have all the schemes like National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) and Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY) gone?

On behalf of the villagers Mankind in Action for Rural Growth (MARG) has sent a memorandum with photos and video to the Honorable Minister of Rural Development and to the Secretary, New Delhi. An online grievance from NREGA website has also been sent to the concerned person. An official from UNDP, working under NREGA has assured that he will look into this matter. The villagers are still waiting and expects that one day their voices would be heard by the government

How LONG should the villagers wait??

-Nirnay John Chettri (MARG)

The Telegraph

Kalimpong, April 20: The Kalimpong subdivisional administration today started a three-day drive to issue photo identity cards to new voters and those who have lost their cards.

The aim, sub-divisional officer Amyas Tshering said, was to ensure maximum EPIC coverage before the D-Day of April 30 when voters would exercise their franchise.

Seventy-one-year-old Nima Dorji Tamang trekked for about two-and-a-half hours from his village at Lower Makum to Bakrakote and then travelled on a jeep for two more hours to reach here for the EPIC. Tamang had lost his previous card.

However, 10,016 of the 1,59,334 registered voters in the subdivision, are yet to receive their cards. (more…)

www.kuenselonline.com

20 April, 2009 – The administration and police officials of Darjeeling and Kalimpong have agreed to watch over the safety and security of students studying under their jurisdiction, according to the law and order bureau in the home ministry.

Officials from the bureau met with Bhutanese Students Associations in the hills on March 23 and 24, following the separate-state agitation by the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) that unsettled Bhutanese students studying in the two districts. (more…)

www.telegraphindia.com
RAJEEV RAVIDAS

Image from www.telegraphindia.com
The BJP leader wanted a copy of the ‘famous peck’ clicked by The Telegraph.
The photograph, he said, was ‘international news’

Kalimpong, April 17: The BJP’s candidate for Darjeeling Lok Sabha seat, Jaswant Singh, took a day off the hectic campaigning and used the time to have his hair cut and play a round of golf here today.

Shoppers and shop-owners at the Super Market were pleasantly surprised when Singh and his aides walked into a saloon on the first floor to trim his receding grey tresses.

As the barber worked his scissors and comb, a small but exited crowd gathered outside vying for space to snap Singh on their cameras and cell phones.

Haircut over, the BJP veteran thanked the barber, Ravinder, who received a handsome reward for his effort.

“He (Singh) told me that ‘you have done a good job’ and said he would keep coming back,” said a still-in-daze Ravinder.

Once out, one of his aides escorted Singh to a nearby Internet café to see the photographs hung on its wall.

Pointing to a picture of a monk walking down the darkly-lit stairs of the Tongsa gumba at 10th Mile here, Singh evinced interest in visiting the place. He then engaged the café owner, Praful Rao, a keen photographer and president of Save The Hills, and like Singh, a former soldier, in small talk.

When Rao was explaining the need for preventive action to tackle the problem of landslides, an issue his NGO is actively engaged in, Singh agreed and interjected: “This should have been done yesterday.”

By this time, the onlookers had trooped inside the café and jostled with each other to take their photographs with Singh. The former Union minister gamely posed with them. Unfortunately, no women in the group displayed the cheek to peck the cheek of the veteran leader as an young girl did in Sukna some days back.

The Telegraph photograph of the famous peck seems to have caught the fancy of Singh.

On being introduced to this correspondent, the BJP leader made a request to have a copy of the photograph. When told he could speak directly to the paper’s photographer based in Siliguri, he readily agreed.

Singh dialled the number and told the photographer that picture had become “an international news”.

Later in the evening, the BJP leader drove up to the army golf course at Durpin and putted a few balls. A stifling backache prevented him from going the whole hog at the picturesque nine-hole course.

The Telegraph
RAJEEV RAVIDAS

The glider takes off at Deolo hills in Kalimpong. Picture by Chinlop Fudong Lepcha

Kalimpong, April 15: Tourists visiting Kalimpong can now take wings and get, quite literally, a bird’s eye view of the town and the surrounding hills, valleys and criss-crossing rivers.

A Swedish national, Roger Lenngren, and his wife Susan Khati Lenngren — who is a local — have launched a venture called Paragliding Kalimpong to fly a passenger from the Deolo hills to the football field of Dr Graham’s Homes, which is a distance of about one km as the crow flies.

The 20-plus minute flight will cost Rs 2,000 for tourists and Rs1,000 for local people. “There is a demand for adventure sports even among Indians. Many of them nowadays enjoy paragliding when they go to Europe on holidays. Now they can enjoy the same here at a much cheaper price,” said Lenngren.

Since there are no trained gliders here, Lenngren himself will be piloting the tandem flights. The passenger has to simply sit on a harness in front of the pilot, who does all the manoeuvring.

“It will take many years of gliding before one is ready to pilot tandem flights,” said Lenngren, adding that otherwise, it would mean putting other’s life at risk. Admitting that all adventure sports have an element of risk involved, Lenngren, however, said in his eight years of paragliding, he had not encountered any major problem.

“I carry an emergency parachute big enough to accommodate two persons,” said the Swede, who has already flown some foreign tourists here.

Lenngren, who has the experience of flying in different European countries and Nepal, said Kalimpong is an excellent flying place. “I am actually looking for a good landing place. The Homes field and Relli (about 10km from here) are good for landing. But I am looking for more such spots. I can also land on paddy fields, but only during emergencies,” he added.

The adventurer, who also conducts motorbike tours in India, Nepal and Tibet, said he was looking for suitable training slopes as well. “I am yet to come across a slope suitable to train beginners,” he added.

Once such a slope is identified, Lenngren plans to provide training to local enthusiasts. Many youths have already started making enquiries, even though paragliding is an expensive sport not less because of the huge cost of the gliding contraption.

“The cost of the twin glider is above Rs 2 lakh, while the solo one costs a little less than that,” said Lenngren. Asked if had faced a situation where a passenger panicked after being airborne, Lunngren replied in the negative.

A second Rehabilitation Centre has been inaugurated by HANDS in Chibbo Busty, Kalimpong.

Details provided in this article from Darjeelingtimes.com.

Mr Praful Rao’s photographs of Kalimpong’s Chatt Puja has been featured at The Travel Photographer.

Great Job, as always.

Please read this account of the awareness programs conducted by Save the Hills in the past 18 months.

This is quite an incredible feat for an NGO with minimal funds and no governmental or corporate financial support.

Keep it up!!

The Telegraph

Kalimpong, April 8: Gorkha Janmukti Morcha president Bimal Gurung’s remark asking the Tibetans not to indulge in “Free Tibet” campaign in the hills has understandably upset the members of the exiled community here.

The majority of Tibetans The Telegraph spoke to were unanimous in their opinion that the remark was totally uncalled for, but felt it was best to let the matter be, at least for now, in view of the prevailing political situation in the hills.

Addressing the Morcha minority front here on Monday, Gurung while asking the Tibetans not to raise the Tibet issue had called on them to raise their voices for Gorkhaland. He did, however, stress that no one in the hills would be allowed to carry out “anti-minority” campaign even against the Tibetans. Morcha central committee member Harka Bahadur Chhetri, who was present at the meeting, felt Gurung was misunderstood. (more…)

The Telegraph

Kalimpong, April 6: The Gorkha Janmukti Morcha has termed the fight for the Darjeeling parliamentary seat a referendum on Gorkhaland and urged the minority communities to cast their votes keeping in mind the demand for a separate state and ignoring other considerations.

Addressing a meeting organised by the Kalimpong unit of the All Gorkha Minority Front at Town Hall here today, Morcha president Bimal Gurung warned that if the BJP’s Jaswant Singh lost, it would be the Morcha’s defeat. The BJP has decided to field the senior leader in the hills at the invitation of the Morcha.

A Morcha central committee member Amar Lama likened the Lok Sabha election to a referendum on Gorkhaland. “Those in favour (of Gorkhaland) should vote for the Morcha. This election is a referendum on Gorkhaland. Others can vote as they like,” he said. (more…)

(Image snipped from the online article on Planet Earth)

Local personality Wg Cdr (Retd) Praful Rao, president of the Save The Hills NGO, has been featured in the March 2009 issue of the environmental magazine, Planet Earth.

Here is a short excerpt of the profile:

He has dared the mountains, crossed raging rivulets and followed serpentine paths in the woods, at times to feed his passion for photography, but very often to study and capture the treacherous ravines, crevices, cracks and rock structure of the Himalayas in Sikkim. Wing Commander Praful Rao (Retd), who describes himself as a true pahari, is the founder of Save The Hills, an NGO involved in spreading awareness about landslides.

Raised in the hilly terrain of the picturesque Kalimpong, Rao has always been fascinated by the hills and feels one with the air that surrounds them. Much as he loves the mountains, Rao realises that there is constant danger lurking, especially that of disastrous landslides, around the hilly slopes that are so much a part of the area he lives in. Which is why he has taken it upon him to ensure that the government departments turn their focus on this long-neglected geological problem. “The landslides problem is a very serious issue in these areas and I was first exposed to a major landslide when I was still in college. This was in 1968. It had been raining incessantly for almost a week and I still remember that the only noise we could hear was that of water forcing its way downhill through crevices and overflowing rivulets. Then the landslides happened. It was a record of sorts in the entire North East because we had almost 20,000 landslides and entire hills had cracked open. Almost 10-15 per cent of the tea production was destroyed during this period. The road between Darjeeling and Siliguri, which is a 80-km stretch, was shredded at more than 90 places and was totally cut off for two whole months. There was a terrible loss of human life and property,” he recalls.

Adventure is not new to this ex-Air Force officer, who as an air traffic and radar controller and air crash fire expert, was party to several rescue operations to save pilots from fallen aircraft. However, he admits that the images of the 1968 landslides don’t fade from his memory. He nearly relived the memories when in 2007 Kalimpong was again ravaged by landslides following a four-day downpour. The damage would have increased twice as much if it had rained for a day more, he informs. “We were inches away from disaster and very close to becoming victims of the rivers of mud and rocks that slid away. Though I had been working on landslide awareness in the area prior to that, and blogging about it, this incident instilled in me the urgency to take up the issue in a larger way,” he says.

Read the rest of the profile on the website of the publication (which unfortunately has a difficult unlinkable Flash based interface),

or, download a full text and image pdf version of the entire article.

Kudos to Praful Rao for his tireless zeal in raising awareness and fighting for landslide mitigation and control in our hills. We at kalimpong.info are proud of our association with Praful Rao and Save The Hills.

The Telegraph

Kalimpong, April 3: Members of the minority community in the subdivision are far from happy with the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha’s decision to support the candidature of senior BJP leader Jaswant Singh for the Darjeeling parliamentary seat.

For obvious reasons none of them with strong views are willing to go on record.

C.D. Simmick, the president of the Kalimpong Christian Minority Society, said it would not be proper for him to comment without discussing the matter with other members. He, however, admitted that the track record of the BJP vis-à-vis the minority communities was not very inspiring. “We are aware of what happened in Orissa. Hopefully, the BJP will change its attitude towards minorities.”

A member of the local Muslim community here, Aman Chisti, said it would take a while before the people come to terms with the Morcha’s decision. “The party will have to explain its decision to the people,” said Chisti, his tone suggesting disappointment.

He, however, said the minority community’s commitment to the cause of Gorkhaland would not waver because of the Morcha move.

Others, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, were more blunt and said they were not at all happy with the decision. “How can we vote for a party whose leaders openly talk about slitting our throats. If the Morcha was not keen on fielding its own candidate, it should have backed an Independent,” said a businessman.

The moderates were more at ease with the decision. “The BJP is the best bet for Gorkhaland, which is the ultimate goal of the hill people. And by electing a leader of Jaswant Singh’s stature, our cause will find a strong voice at the national level. For once, we should vote as a community and not as a religious group,” said a college student, who is a Christian.