There are two interesting tales wafting across Sikkim.
One revolves around Archer Gyaltsen Lachungpa, who has shocked everyone in next door Bhutan with a superlative performance. He hit a total of 20 karays breaking his own record of 19 during the first match played on June 3. His team, Lachungpa Sikkim, was obviously on a high. Lachungpa is now considered among the finest in India, he could soon set out to conquer global events. Still, archery is not cricket, neither is it soccer. Lachungpa remains much of a domestic name. He is a hero, only the locals know of him.
The second revolves around Kabuliwala, a short story of Rabindranath Tagore. It revolves around a money-lender and dry fruit seller who routinely interacted with a kid but once went to jail for stabbing a borrower. Freed, he wanted to meet the kid who had, by then, turned into a young woman and was getting married. The trader walked into her home on the day of the wedding. The girl’s father, touched by the emotions of the trader, gave him some cash to return home. Some plans for the wedding had to be scrapped, including performance of a top British band.
Now, Danny Denzongpa, Sikkim’s answer to Bollywood and an industrialist – he has a successful brewery – is getting ready for the release of Bioscopewala where he plays the title role of the trader from Kabul. The movie, Danny is confident, will turn India’s focus on Sikkim, a magical place full of hills, forest and meadows. It does not bother him that he is not the trader from Kabul in the film, he is – actually – a Bioscopewala, men who carry pre-recorded songs and films in a jukebox for children in remote village. “People need to open up to Sikkim, and understand and love the state,” Denzongpa said in a telephonic interview. Denzongpa knows Sikkim better than those living in the state, nestled in the mighty Himalayas under the shadow of the pious Kanchenjunga.
Let’s talk business. The recent address of Prime Minister Narendra Modi focussing on startups has been taken very seriously by young people in Sikkim. They have proved that such dreams are no longer confined to larger cities and smaller towns and villages. Thanks to their moves, Sikkim – unaware to many in India – has been witnessing an upsurge of startups. Experts call it a definitive shift in the mindset of younger generation, owing to the conducive environment created by the state government.
The idea is to create the spirit of entrepreneurship amongst the local youth, encouraging them to seek assistance from the Chief Minister’s Start-up Scheme – introduced last year – that offers financial assistance of one fourth cost of the project and goes up to even 35 per cent in case of conditional non-manufacturing sector projects for financially viable/ bankable projects for the ventures entailing total investment up to Rs 20 lakhs.
The locals are excited, charged up. Devika Gurung, a social entrepreneur, started Fidgety Fingers, an exemplary fabric venture. Gurung has been working tirelessly to empower underprivileged and rural women with free training in knitting, crochet and craft. She is happy that the current schemes designed for aspiring entrepreneurs has been crucial in her thriving business. Gurung remembers the words of the state CM Pawan Chamling, “Be your own employer”. She does not seek jobs, she offers them.
There is the State Institute of Capacity Building which is helping unemployed youth put their plans in place and then seek the cash from the government. Consider the case of Smita Rai, owner of Namchi designer candles, who wants to turn Namchi as the candle making town of Sikkim and to involve more women from the hinterland. There’s a huge potential of the business owing to the large tourist influx, everyone loves to take back a candle as a memento. The state government, very few remember, had conceived the plan way back in 2007. And now, the programme’s success has pushed the Arunachal Pradesh government replicating the model.
Sikkim is changing, transforming. There are not just two examples but hundreds of them, for that, a visit to this picturesque state is a must.
Courtesy : The Times of India.
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