Lapang, the Meghalaya chief minister is unhappy with Delhi. On Various Counts. He is cut off with the oft heard remark that the North-east is a liability to the country because of under development and insurgency. How can any body say North east is India’s liability, he asks in anger. We are indeed an asset to the country, he says. “I wish New Delhi to announce that nation building is coming up from the North-East”, Lapang told a gathering in Shillong  after accepting a ‘melody fountain’ gifted by the Assam Rifles. He used the occasion to speak on Meghalaya’s tourist potential and how the new green field industry should be promoted as a part of opening up to rest of the country.

“If a tourist was ‘cheated, beaten and fooled’ here, who would come to Shillong? So let’s be ‘positive, hospitable and accommodative’ to welcome the visitors”, Lapang said adding ‘if peaceful atmosphere doesn’t exist here, tourism would bid good-bye to the State’. The ‘melody fountain,’ has been built at a cost of over Rs 10 lakh in the heart of Shillong’s famous Wards Lake.

Dedicating the Fountain to the ‘charming’ people of Shillong, Assam Rifles Director General Lt Gen H. S. Kanwar said it was a part of the military-civic programme aimed at creating a ‘humane face’ of the force engaged mainly in counter-insurgency operations. ‘War Memorial’ in Kohima and “Rain Sheds’ for the tourists in Cherrapunjee were taken up as a part of military-civic interface, he said.

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