Editor,
I’m part of a small group that has been travelling and trekking (not in a ‘touristy’ way) for over a week, through parts of Meghalaya – some well known, others less known. We find the culture interesting, particularly the ways in which it has maintained a rich natural environment, such as sacred forests and in living with nature in an unexploitative way, more or less. However, in quite a few places we were shocked and disheartened to see sites of aggressive mining. Particularly in the area around the Mawsmai cave in Cherrapunji, we saw women and children in neat little neighbourhoods, so admirably characteristic of this land, going about their daily lives trapped in air that was thick with acrid smoke. We could only sadly surmise what would be the state of their food and water, and their health in the long term. We feel that Meghalaya, with its strong cultural resources can present the world with an alternative model of people plus nature-centred living and planned development, rather than fall easy prey to the ruthless greed of mines and industry that has left a trail of irreparable damage to nature and cultures across the rest of India.
Yours etc.,
Javed Imthiaz,
Lecturer, Dept of Sociology,
Jyoti Nivas College, Bangalore
Pathetic Broadband Services of BSNL.
Editor,
I availed a broadband connection from BSNL for the last 3 years because of their promise of high speed broadband connectivity. Initially, the services were very good but over the years, the connectivity has become woefully slow. At present, I am paying for a broadband connection of 2 Mbps but I am only getting around 480-500 Kbps which I feel is BSNL’s way of cheating and exploiting the people as we are paying for services which we do not receive. Many complaints have been made to the Complaint number 2502100 but the standard reply is “Media down”, whatever that means. Sometimes, the calls are not attended to at all. My question to the BSNL authorities is how can you simply sit back and allow your office to exploit and cheat the people by offering them sub-standard services? Isn’t this a crime?
I wonder if the Consumer Redressal Forum can look into this matter as we can only turn to this Forum to avoid being fleeced by such Government agencies who do not give two hoots about fleecing and cheating its own paying consumers.
Yours etc., ,
Aaron Warjri,
Shillong-6.