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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Boy wins ‘tourism’ battle for region-Daulat Rahman

Boy wins ‘tourism’ battle for region-Daulat Rahman

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published Published on Jun 26, 2013   modified Modified on Jun 26, 2013
-The Telegraph


Guwahati: Union tourism secretary Pervez Dewan has asked the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) to remove a sentence in a Class X geography textbook that reads tourism has not been encouraged in the Northeast "for strategic reasons".

For Kavya Barnadhya Hazarika, a Class XI student of Maharishi Vidya Mandir Senior Secondary School here, it's a lesson learnt that persistence pays. Kavya had written to both President Pranab Mukherjee and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in the first week of April this year about the line that upset him .

"There is vast potential of tourism development in the northeastern states and the interior parts of Himalayas but due to strategic reasons these have not been encouraged so far," the line reads on page 92 of Chapter 7 of his geography textbook, Lifelines of National Economy, published by NCERT.

Two months later, Kavya thinks it's a job done. "I am happy with the tourism ministry's initiative (to ask the NCERT to delete the line) and hope the sentence, which was an insult to the region, will finally be removed from the textbook," he told this correspondent today.

Earlier this month and after The Telegraph reported Kavya's story on June 6, the issue received its first bit of response from Delhi.

"It is painful to see such a sentence when the Union tourism ministry spends 13 per cent of its budget on the Northeast," Dewan told The Telegraph in Delhi.

He had already sent his response on the issue through a two-page letter to Kavya decrying the NCERT line. "It was a careless statement that makes a sweeping judgement and is totally inaccurate," Dewan had said in his letter that was accompanied by a gift for the 16-year-old.

Kavya wasn't completely impressed. "I wrote to the Prime Minister and twice petitioned the President's secretariat since April first week wanting their opinion on the matter. So, I was expecting a reply from the President or the Prime Minister's office," he wrote back, not willing to settle for anything less. He however did thank Dewan for "having bothered to write to me although I have not approached your ministry".

Kavya's initial attempt to correct the view held by the writers of his textbook had also led to his first brush with the country's bureaucracy. The President's secretariat helpline asked Kavya to contact Amit Kumar Khare, joint secretary at the department of school and literacy at Shastri Bhawan, New Delhi. When Kavya contacted Khare, the latter asked the student to contact the public grievances cell at Shastri Bhawan. The public grievances cell, in turn, expressed its ignorance when asked if it had received a letter from Kavya.

"I am not very happy or satisfied with the mechanism adopted to respond to my queries on an issue which is very important for the Northeast. But I am grateful that Pervez Dewan has taken a very bold initiative. My only wish is the region should not be highlighted in a bad light by anyone," Kavya said.

In his second email to Kavya, Dewan did make an effort to explain officialdom to the young student. "All of us officers work for the President and PM. Normally an under-secretary replies on their behalf. I have also sent you three books on Nagaland, one hardcover, one on birds and one soft cover. Have you received them? What other material have you received from my office? I can always send more."

And finally and most important, Dewan says in his email last evening to Kavya's delight: "Yes, I have asked NCERT to remove that careless sentence."


The Telegraph, 25 June, 2013, http://www.telegraphindia.com/1130626/jsp/frontpage/story_17048688.jsp#.UcqWRtjcjco


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