N Biren flags off students’ exposure tour

Manipur Chief Minister, N Biren Singh on Monday flagged off Manipur students’ 5-day exposure tour to Maharashtra from the Chief Minister’s Secretariat, Imphal.
Talking during the event, the CM said that the lack of communication and interaction was behind the discrimination being received by the people of the northeast region in major cities of India.
“We are facing racial discrimination due to lack of communication and interaction,” he said in a speech before flagging off a group of 30 students of the state along with three faculties who will be on a five-day exposure tour to Maharashtra under the Ek Bharat Shreshtha Bharat –Yuva Sangam programme.
“To achieve the goal of our Prime Minister Narendra Modi ‘One India united India and strong India’, we need to know each other. That is the main objective of the exposer tour,” he said.
The chief minister asked the participating students to be decent while visiting the places while asserting their decency will reflect the Manipuri society.
Terming the programme as a unique initiative of the government of India, the chief minister hoped that it will provide an immersive experience of various facets of life, development landmarks, recent achievements, and connect the youths of the northeast states and other states.
He stressed on the importance of such an exposure tour so that people from other regions would know and understand the people of northeast and vice versa.
Taking part in the flagging off function, Union minister of state for education Dr RK Ranjan told the students taking part in the tour “Show your best and expose the best of Manipur to your destination state while learning the best from them.”
He said, “The whole India is one India. We have a lot of diversity throughout the country, many languages, many cultures and many ethnicities. The Prime Minister is using this diversity as a great powerful force to make a strong India.”
A total of 30 students of the state selected from various districts and institutions and three faculty members from IIIT Manipur are travelling to Nagpur, Maharashtra as a first batch of the tour to Maharashtra.
Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) Manipur is coordinating the program in association with IIIT-Nagpur.
It’s a youth exchange program where 70 students with five faculties will also be visiting Imphal on February 27 and will tour in Manipur from till March 3.