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Chapter Five. Present and Future |
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development projects in Wanchu area in 1962 ; air-drop |
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When I visited the Tirap district in 1962, the beneficial results of this policy were obvious. Complete peace reigned among the tribesmen, and there seemed to be no repercussions of the disturbances in neighboring Nagaland. As in the rest of the North East Frontier Agency, outsiders were not permitted to settle among the tribesmen or even to carry on trade and shopkeeping. Proselytizing activities, whether Christian or Hindu, were also banned, and the members of the administration went out of their way to respect tribal sensibilities. A program of road building had improved communications, and the establishment of trading depots under government control enabled the tribesmen to obtain in their own country many basic commodities which previously they had had to barter in the plains of Assam. As during the monsoon, communications by road were still precarious, airdrops were used to supply the governmental staff stationed in remoter areas, and to stock the trading depots. While I was in the Wanchu village of Niaunu such an airdrop took place, and Wanchus, who a few years before had never seen either an airplane or a wheeled vehicle, took it for granted that bags of salt and parcels of cloth would be dropped from Dakotas, and these they collected and delivered to the trading depot in a businesslike manner. |
