Monday, May 25, 2009

LUMDING STATION



Lumding Railway Station is a place that always remains closed to my heart. It was the place I had to cross atleast twice daily as I had to cross it to go and return from school. It was the place we used to eat Dosa, I remember. A small town life can be exciting enough if simplicity remains there in heart. I now thinks those were the golden days of my life.



I still remember when me, Kanai, Chandu (Prasenjit Das), Raghu (Biplob Nandy) used to go to wheeler in the station everyday in the evening, to buy a copy of Assam Tribune.



Lumding Station is the first lesson of communication to most of the children of Lumding still now, as train is the only means of communication leaving aside the erratic and painful bus service to nearby areas like Diphu, Lanka, Hojai, Nagaon etc. So, we are the generation who grew up knowing that Indian Railways is the safest, luxurious and the only mode of travelling out of station!
Railway Station is a place where one would find people from different segments, classes of society, having altogether different viewpoints about society! So-called "High Class" (read railway officials and businessmen of the town) to labour class people from Gadhi Nagar to "Coolie Patty", Lumding Station is for everyone.



For many of us it the place where we had got our first lesson of psychology.
I still remember my first journey through "PAHAR LINES" i.e. the NC HILLS section of NFR ( Northeastern Frontier Railways). The scenic route passes through beautiful hill valleys, miles after miles of wild bamboo orchards, wild banana orchards. The beauty of NC Hills is beyond any description. The platform no.1 is alloted for MG Train (Meter Gauze train) towards Silchar through "pahar lines". So many memories are there with Lumding Station that it is impossible to forget it's charm.



REALLY HOME REMAINS ALWAYS A SWEET HOME AND I MISS LUMDING SO MUCH.



"ONCE A LUMDINIAN.....
FOREVER A LUMDINIAN..."


...subhankar karmakar

Friday, May 15, 2009

Lumding Railway H.S. School: from its days of glory to the present gloomy condition......

In the year of 1948 this school was established by the Railway Government.
Since then it has been constantly grooming the talents of Lumding, achieving many milestones in between. Over the years it has produced many talents who are well established both in India and abroad. Many students secured ranks in the merit list in the history of Railway School, yet it could not modernized itself to compete with the other premium schools in this region.....
Lumding Railway Higher Secondary School, the school that have been grooming hundreds of real talents since its inception in 1948 was established by railway government to cater the quality education to the children of railway employees of the Lumding Railway Division. Justifying the cause of its inception the school quickly had established a niche' for itself among the schools of Assam. It is evident from the list of the students who had secured position in HSLC examination (Xth board) conducted by SEBA Secondary Education board of Assam).

The students who secured rank/position in HSLC Examination from Railway School:

Mr. Hemchandra Majumder (6th, 1953);
Mr. Jagadis Kumar Chachra (9th, 1953);
Mr. Sailendra Nath Chakraborty (7th, 1956);
Mr. Prantosh Kumar Bhattacharjee (10th, 1957);
Mr. Prabhash Ranjan bhattacharjee (12th, 1957);
Mr. Ardhendu Bikash Dasgupta (4th, 1958);
Mr. Partha Pratim Bhattacharjee (6th, 1958);
Mr. Pranab Chakraborty (6th, 1959);
Mr. Vidyasagar Bajaj (6th, 1960);
Mr. Sekhar Nath Chakraborty (8th, 1960);
Mr. Bijoy Bose (7th, 1964);
Mr. Nripati Roy (3rd, 1969);
Mr. Ashish Das (3rd, 1974);
Ms. Uttara Dey (19th, 1986);
Mr. Subhankar Karmakar (13th, 1991);
Mr. Sumanta Das (19th, 1991);
Mr. Jyotirmoy Biswas (19th, 1993);
Mr. Arghya Chattarjee (16th, 1998);

Although the school couldn't produce rankers since 1974, but the performances were not so bad from 1974 uptu 1985, but it had successfully churned out bright students who had just missed the merit list narrowly. Among them one was Dr. Atul Krishna Banik, now an Asst. Professor in NIT Durgapur (incidentally it was my Alma Mater too). In 1986 Uttara di got position breaking the jinx of bad spell of luck. Our previous batch also produced a group of multi-dimensional talents like Ajitesh, Debal Majumder, Priyojeet Chakraborty, Snehashish, Tanmoy Som and others.
Our next batch was very good, Anirban Sammaddar (who now works in Bijoya Bank) did very well, there was Rajib Mitra (who is an MBBS now, working in NF Railway). Jyotirmoy Biswas of 1993 batch again had secured rank (he is a software professional now). So the batches up to late '90s were good enough to churn out groups of brilliant students from Lumding and Railway School still was influential, as the legacy was still alive.But the new millennium had at last put the last kill on the coffin, as DBS was continuously out performing Railway School on board examination. This in turn made people to avoid Railway School for their children, as by that time DBS, Lumding had become matured enough to produce very good results with an enviable consistently making railway schools traditional students base as well-to-do families had started to choose DBS for their children. It had created a mess as the total system efficiency had been greatly reduced due to the lack of good students. Although there were few good students still then, but the lack of proper teaching always discouraged them to be innovative.
So exactly what was the principal reason behind these lackluster performance of a school which was once considered as one of the best schools of the state?
As far as my intuition says, I believe that there was no single principal reason behind these quality erosion of the students, but of course there were some major factors behind these continual degradation of academic standard of the school. One of them is the change of the method of studying. As cramming became the most popular trend among the students of present generation without having a proper understanding of the subject topics and this in turn made the theoretical base of the students very weak particularly in the subjects like Mathematics & Physics. The second most important factor was the shortages of quality teachers at the school level. Moreover, the school administration had separated the girl's block into the boarding house and distributed the faculties into two groups, as a result the shortages of quality teacher became more acute forcing the results to degrade. And of course emergence of DBS had a profound impact on Railway School as good students migrated to DBS as well as to Kendriya Vidyalaya, Lumding. During the last couple of years Pranav Vidya Mandir, the English Medium School run by Bharat Sevashram Sangha had scored well in HSLC Examination.
Still we hope that in near future the school administration
would be properly reformed to gain its LOST GLORY.

Monday, September 29, 2008

Economic Activities & Infrastructures in Assam

ASSAM ECONOMY:

|| Economic Activities & Infrstructures in Assam ||

"Economists say that the development of industry would fairly depends upon the easy accessibility of minerals and source of energy." Contrary to this statement,jpeg Assam is a less industrialized state when compared to the other highly industrialized states of India, like Maharastra, Gujrat, Goa, Tamilnadu, and Karnataka although it is rich in minerals as well as in energy sector. At first sight it seems to be an improbable fact as the state produced 40% of the total domestic production of petroleum, as well as the state is enriched by the discovery of large mines of limestone, gypsum, the basic ingredients of cement industry. Other than this it has a vibrant tea industry.

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Assam is one of the less industrialized states of India. Assam being the home of a population of nearly 200 millions people 69% of which are engaged is agriculture. Agriculture dominates the income source of nearly a third of total income of the state. Most probably the biggest contribution of Assam to the world is its tea. It produces some finest and expensive varieties of teas in the world. Indigenous tea belongs to two regions in the world, Assam and China. The two varieties are of distinct qualities regarding their tastes and flavour. Where as the chinese varieties are called as Camellia Sinensis, the variety found in Assam is named Camellia Assamica. The main agricultural products are tea, rice, rapeseed, mustard, jute, sweet potato, banana, papaya, areca nut, coconut and turmeric. It is the home of large varieties of citrus fruits, leaf vegetables, useful grasses, herbs and spices.

Although the state has a tremendous potential to be a great eco-tourism hub,it could not be utilized bringing prosperity to the regions, mainly due to political mismanagement, indiscriminate nepotism and wide scale corruption as well as the insurgency in the state. These factors in fact had crippled the smooth operations of industrial activities in this state.


None the less Assam boasts of three world class refineries in this area. The Refinery in Bongaigaon(BRPL)is one of the best refinery in Asia. Then there is the oldest refinery in ASIA in DIGBOI, as well as in Noonmati.

But the biggest is in Numaligarh, Upper Assam. Plywood Industries have a strong presence in the state.


Couples of years ago food industries were established in the industrial areas adjacent to the capital Guwahati. Many small industries also came up there which mainly work as vender companies manufacturing the products of big companies under their licenses.

But is there any solutions to utilized the natural resources in a way that would bring prosperity to the state in the form of Eco-Tourism? We can hope for a better tomorrow, bringing economic prosperity of a state that ranks low in wealth.Hope that in future we would be able to have a really industrialised and fully developed Assam.
 
"Jai Ai Assam"

Photos
PHOTO-top: A Railway Bridge in Lumding,  Assam.

PHOTO-middle: Tea Plantation in Assam.

PHOTO-bottom: A Bridge carrying Oil Pipes.

Go through the original entry on myopera CLICK HERE

Friday, August 8, 2008

LUMDING : A JOVIAL TOWN

LUMDING: A Vibrant Rail Township

Lumding is the biggest and most important railway junction of the Northeastern Frontier Railway commonly known as NFR. It is also the biggest railway division of NFR as well as the best Railway Township. Like all the other places of North-East, Lumding is a place of multi-Ethnicity. Most of the people are multi-lingual, although majority of the people are migrated Bengali, the main spoken languages are Bengali, Assamese, Hindi & English besides Nepali, Karbi and Nagamese. Its a small railway township, always bustling with new vigour. The economy is based on the service sector and the main contributors are railway employees residing in the several tiny colonies. The main hindrance to the development is the lack of industry, which in turn increases the magnitude of unemployment.But, it is trying hard to cope up with the pace of rapid modernisation of visual media ( mainly TV ). When we were child we had never seen anything whose sole purpose were simply entertainment, but present generations are more smarter than us. Cable TV, mobiles have really transformed Lumding, and made the people of Lumding to be accustomed with the modern life-styles. More schools, a modernized college having a B+ status from NAAC, a pool of talented youngsters, a rich tradition of cultural superiority, Lumding has produced to national level playback singers through SA RE GA MA PA Tv program (talent hunt show).

HEALTH CARE FACILITY:
Although lumding has a fairly large population, still the people of Lumding, did not have any access to modern health-care system, as the dilapidated health unit in Uttar Lumding is basically a first-aid unit, and unable to provide any substantial treatment. Railway Hospital is the standalone guard as the civil one is nothing but a dirty, small basic medical unit. Moreover, few doctors are there to serve, although with these scarce resources and with the help of some experienced nurse, delivery cases are also handled, despite the fact that they haven't any permission to allow complicated cases like delivery cases. So, in the health care segment Lumding has practically nothing as a state infrastructure......... Moreover, every year Assam becomes a victim of severe flood, but nothing has been done to alleviate this perennial problem. Some of the private venture capitalists wanted to established a private super specialty hospital, but since then nothing had been done to get the required clearance from the health ministry.Despite all of its shortcomings,it is an undeniable fact that LUMDING is a living town,growing up slowly but steadily to achieve its goal. It provides a strong school system that contains some good schools. It has the presence of several good banks having core banking facility.





Thursday, July 24, 2008

LUMDING: A GEOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION....
by sarpyl


 




LUMDING: A GEOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION....


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South Asia comprises of the countries of the Indian Sub-continent. In the South Asia, India is one of the major country, with the second best economic growth rate, it is the fourth largest economy of the world.

India is a vast country and it comprises of 28 powerful states. The eastern part of India had been one of the regions those were partitioned when India got her independence from the British Imperial Empire after the end of the Second World War. The partition of Bengal made the Northeastern part of India almost geographically separated from rest of the country as a small strip of narrow corridor remains the only connecting land between Northeastern part and rest of India. The strip is known as 'Siliguri Corridor' or 'Chicken's Neck'.


North-East of India is one of the most beautiful terrain in India. Situated on Lower Himalayan Hilly area, it consists of seven very Beautiful and Natural states, although now a days Sikkim is being made the 8th state of Northeast India. The largest of them is our ASSAM.


In Assam, there is a district called NAGAON, and Lumding is the 2nd most urban population in NAGAON district. It is a Railway township having nearly 50,000 population consists mainly  Bengali Hindu migrants fromlumding platform erstwhile East Pakistan who crosses border during the 1971 Indo-Pak war that ultimately lead to the creation of Bangladesh. There are substantial Assamese population followed by Nepali, Karbi, and Dimasa Populations. It was one of the township founded by British Raj during the colonial rule in Assam. It is an strategically important place as it is sandwiched between the sensitive two parts of the Karbi-Anglong District. Lumding was one of the place where substantial British presence were there to protect their interests in opium cultivation in Assam, its transportation to Ghazipur for refinement and further processing which were finally exported to China through this route once famous as "LEDO ROAD" or Stillwell Road.

Modern Lumding is a bustling township of more than 50,000 strong population.

  (Lumding Market, Thakurbari Road)