LAMKA, March 24: The 9th Council Sitting of the Autonomous District Council of Ccpur (ADCC) was held today at the Council's Assembly hall located at Tuibuang where the member discussed two major agendas, namely, recognition of villages and change of district and town's name from Ccpur to Lamka.

The Sitting was chair by the chairman ADCC Langkhanpau Guite with full 26 members in attendance.

Out of the 15 new cases of village recognition on the agenda the sitting approved 14 villages after deliberating the reality of the village sites on a case by case study. Recognition of one village remained pending for further discussion. They also approved seven pending case of village recognition.

During the deliberation on village recognition, the member voiced their opinions that a village should be recognized only if it has no less than 20 households.

Lone female MDC Ms Grace Zamnu argued that the village recognition should be taken seriously as some claims on paper are widely different from what is on the ground.

The input of the concerned MDC was heard before the villages were given recognition.

In the most important agenda regarding the district identity, many members deliberated and latter anonymously agreed to pass the resolution in favour of changing the name from Churachandpur to Lamka.

ADCC member.Nehthang Mate, who was the oldest, recalled that the name change was made in the year 1978 but was vetoed by the State Assembly.

Some of the members present were not very hopeful of the decision going through certain stages but they were of the opinion that this is but the beginning and not the last and that ultimately the wish of the district people will prevail over all opposition.

On the question of cancellation of the Center-funded BRGF, which engaged many beneficiaries, the chairman said that it will be studied as they are as of now, not against possession of orders or related documents.

By Alex Guite, IFP
Source: http://www.zogam.com/news/news-in-english/3014-ccpur-adc-wants-churachandpur-changed-to-lamka.html

By  Rodger-baker and John-minnich

Last week, China's anti-corruption campaign took a significant turn, though a largely overlooked one. The Supreme People's Court released a statement accusing former Politburo Standing Committee member Zhou Yongkang, the highest-ranked official thus far implicated in China's ongoing anti-corruption campaign, of having "trampled the law, damaged unity within the Communist Party, and conducted non-organizational political activities." In Chinese bureaucratic speak, this was only a few steps shy of confirming earlier rumors that Zhou and his former political ally and one-time rising star from Chongqing, Bo Xilai, had plotted a coup to pre-empt or repeal the ascension of Chinese President and Party General Secretary Xi Jinping. Thus, the court's statement marks a radical departure from the hitherto depoliticized official language of the anti-corruption campaign.

Of course, it has long been clear that the Xi administration's anti-corruption campaign is far more than just a fight against graft — it is also a political purge designed to tighten the new leadership's control over Party, government and military apparatuses. But up to now, official language on the anti-corruption campaign has been couched in terms of fighting graft and abuse of power "for personal gain." So far as we are aware, very few if any official statements have alluded to "political activities" by suspects — and certainly none concerning high-profile figures like Zhou, whose position at the top of the country's energy industry and domestic security apparatus made him one of the most powerful Chinese politicians of the 2000s. Whatever the court's precise intent, that it chose language even hinting at a coup by Bo and Zhou is extraordinary.

If we accept that the use of a phrase like "non-organizational political activities" is significant, then we have to ask what the decision to use that phrase at this time may signify. To our minds, two possible interpretations stand out. First, it could mark a nascent shift in the way Chinese authorities frame the anti-corruption campaign and imply that going forward the campaign will become more overtly political. Second, it could signal that Xi and his allies, confident of having fully eliminated any threat posed by Zhou and his associates, are acknowledging an end to one phase of the anti-corruption campaign — the elimination of competing factions — and are now embarking on the further consolidation of authority and control over the far reaches of the bureaucracy.

If the former interpretation is correct, the anti-corruption campaign is about to get more brutal and potentially more destabilizing, as it moves from a relatively focused purge and general cleansing of the Party to a full-on assault against those who have the strength to challenge Xi's nascent authoritarianism. According to the latter hypothesis, with the would-be challengers routed and acknowledged as anti-Party plotters, and with political power firmly centralized under Xi and his allies, China's leaders can now put politics aside and move on to the more difficult and important task of building a government ready to manage the profound social and political disruptions that will almost certainly accompany China's economic slowdown.

In either case, the anti-corruption campaign and political centralization are not occurring in a vacuum. The campaign may be the highest profile of Xi's initiatives thus far, but it alone is clearly not sufficient to deal with China's myriad problems. The question, then, is what to expect next.

Two recent developments in particular frame our understanding of the trajectory of China under Xi and his strategy for ushering China and the Communist Party safely through the difficult years ahead. First is the Party's renewed emphasis following the Fourth Plenary Session in October on establishing effective rule of law. Second is the announcement in February that going forward, the anti-corruption campaign would center on 26 of the country's largest state-owned enterprises, with a focus on resource, construction, heavy industrial and telecommunications businesses. This announcement came one month prior to renewed government pledges to merge and consolidate the state sector. It also stands out as the first time the government has pre-emptively and publicly named potential future targets – thus, in theory, giving them fair warning. As one official put it, the government plans to "hang the sword of Damocles" over the state-owned sector's head.

The thread that binds these two seemingly disparate elements together is the problem of political development in the context of rapid social and economic change — that is, how to build flexible and adaptive governing institutions capable of adjusting to meet the emerging needs of an urbanizing and industrializing (in some regions, post-industrializing) society like China's.

Although Chinese society and its economy have undergone profound changes over the course of the past 30 years — China's economy has grown nine-fold since 2000 alone — the country's political structure has changed only incrementally. To be sure, China's government is in many ways stronger and more effective today than it was when Deng Xiaoping took power in 1978. But it retains the same basic form he put in place more than two decades ago. As long as China's economy was growing of its own accord, this model sufficed. Its task was simply to prevent politics — a second Mao — from derailing the economy. But as the anti-corruption campaign and Xi's power consolidation drive signify, the model of consensus-based political decision-making put in place by Deng is breaking down.

The leadership transition from former President and Party General Secretary Hu Jintao to Xi was the first since the late 1970s that was not pre-ordained by Deng. Following the ravages of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and the brief reign of the so-called Gang of Four, Deng assumed the mantle of Chinese leadership, reversing many of Mao Zedong's economic policies, but also fundamentally altering the political organization of China. Rather than Mao's revolutionary model, which required perpetual upheaval, Deng proffered an evolutionary model — one that would useconsensus politics to both break down the extreme factionalism of the Mao era and undermine the ability of any single individual to rebuild a clear faction in the face of multiple competing and cooperating interest groups.

To further reinforce stability, Deng selected both Hu and his predecessor, Jiang Zemin, ensuring more than two decades of clearly defined succession plans. During the economic growth of China's nearly three-decade “miracle,” the system of political consensus proved largely effective. The main purpose of government was to provide stability in the Party and the overall economic system, primarily serving a managerial role rather than a truly innovative leadership role. Certainly there were crises during these years, but these were frequently short-lived, and the government response was often one of delay followed by mitigation, rather than the implementation of any significant change in the underlying political, economic or social systems.

But as China neared its 2012-2013 leadership transition, it was clearly entering uncharted waters. Not only did this transition move beyond anything Deng had prepared for, it also occurred at a point where China's Deng-era economic model had clearly run its course. As with many of the Asian economic tigers before it, China's export-oriented and government investment-heavy model had reached a point where growth alone was no longer sufficient to sustain economic activity, and society had evolved faster than the political model. The global economic crisis, along with Europe's sustained sluggishness, only served to reinforce the end of China's easy times, and made it clear to China's leaders that they could no longer postpone what they had been delaying for more than a decade: a restructuring of the economy to one that would better harness internal consumption.

Xi Jinping's actions are symptoms, not causes, of the breakdown of the Deng political and economic model. As we wrote previously, the anti-corruption campaign is one element in a broader evolutionary process driven by the realization that the transition between China's former economic model (based on low-cost exports and investment-led construction) and new economic model (based on domestic consumption, services and high value-added manufacturing) will entail five to 10 years of immense social, economic and political strain. Simply put, the old model, whose legitimacy rested on the promise of ever-rising material prosperity and stability, is no longer viable.

What China is building in the old model's place appears to be a more centralized and more personalized political order: in essence, a dictatorship under Xi. At the same time, given the trajectory of Chinese social and economic development — the need to stimulate domestic consumption and innovative, high value-added industry — it is also clear that to succeed, this new order will have to differ fundamentally from the kind of dictatorship established under Mao.

The campaign against Zhou and Bo was more than a personality clash, and much more than an issue of basic corruption. It was a battle between competing models for the Party to maintain authority and control during the economic transition — and it was a battle over how the economy would make that transition. On the one hand, Bo — and by implication Zhou, as Bo's patron and ally — seemingly espoused what amounted to a return to the revolutionary politics of the Mao era, in which political legitimacy would rest not with the administrative apparatus, and certainly not within the rule of law, but in the hands of a charismatic leader, presumably Bo himself. On the other hand, if recent pledges to strengthen the rule of law and streamline and improve the functioning of powerful state-owned enterprises are to be taken seriously, then Xi and his allies would appear to be driving toward something else. The Xi camp's vision seems to be a political framework that could draw on elements of Mao's legacy — centralization of political power and nationalism, most saliently — while ultimately preserving the Deng model's promise of evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, change.

Let us assume that the politicization of the charges against Zhou is a sign of the Xi camp's victory over the Zhou and Bo camp regarding the political, social and economic model for Chinese reform. If that is the case, the Chinese leadership is, at least publicly, seeking a model that, though under tight central leadership, will try to rest on an autonomous, efficient and high-performing bureaucracy. This model also will almost certainly entail some level of legal protection for private and intellectual property rights — at least those of Chinese citizens — as a means to stimulate domestic consumption and innovation.

Recent Communist Party pronouncements on the importance of strengthening the rule of law, far from empty doublespeak, represent embryonic moves toward this end. The same goes for the anti-corruption campaign, especially in its application to the process of consolidating and streamlining the state sector. Authoritarianism and effective rule of law are not fundamentally incompatible. Neither are dictatorship and efficient administration. History offers several examples of countries that combined strong government and legal protection for things like private property and contracts without also adopting democracy: 19th century Prussia, for example, or 20th and 21st century Singapore. As China's leaders attempt to bolster their own rule of law and bureaucratic reforms, these examples are likely not far from their minds.

But the problem with this comparison is that Prussia, at its peak in 1871, had fewer than 25 million people. At the end of the Napoleonic Wars, its population measured only 10 million. Singapore is a city of 5.4 million. The leaders of each country worked for decades, over successive generations, to build high-performing bureaucracies that combined the kind of effective protection of property rights historically necessary to support the transition to advanced industrial economies. The differences between Prussia and Singapore and China are so many and so great as to make comparison virtually impossible. But two key differences — two fundamental constraints on China — stand out: size and time.

Throughout history, China has struggled with a common cyclical problem: To manage a nation as vast as China, the central government that first pulled together the far reaches of the empire needs to build and expand a bureaucracy to manage the complexities and scale of China. Over time, that very bureaucracy steadily usurps power from the center, and parochial interests reign supreme. At times of national crisis, the center tries to reclaim authority and control, only to realize that power has fragmented. The bureaucracy is resistant to change, and the system often breaks down after struggling to reform. Then, a new centralizing power rises from the ashes of the old, and the cycle begins again.

The Communist Party is no stranger to this cycle. Mao followed a revolutionary path, allowing frequent disruptions to keep the bureaucracy from ever fully usurping power from the center. Deng encouraged the bureaucracy, hoping that the economic prosperity it could bring would ultimately allow the center to balance the competing centrifugal forces with a fairly light touch. While Deng's model was a revolutionary shift from the Maoist model, it was predicated on a slow, steady evolutionary change in China and assumed it could somehow avoid the challenges of China's centuries of cycles. The transition from Hu Jintao to Xi Jinping, and the attendant challenge from Bo Xilai, questioned whether the Deng model was still applicable.

The difference between the Xi model of reform and the vision espoused by Bo was in part in how they would harness support from the population. Both Xi and Bo would need to reallocate capital from the more economically advanced coast and Yangtze River basin. Bo, who had built a cult of personality in Chongqing and blended Chinese nationalism with Party veneration, was apparently going to justify that through revolutionary propaganda, following the Maoist pattern of harnessing the vast masses of economically disenfranchised to force the redistribution of wealth.

Xi, on the other hand, though certainly consolidating power and taking on a more controlling tone, appears to be pursuing a more evolutionary path to reshape China's economic landscape. Rather than Maoist revolutionary ideology, Xi's propaganda machine nearly paints him as an equivalent of a U.S. or European president, a leader best qualified to be trusted to guide the Chinese forward through difficult times. While he is harnessing a type of Chinese nationalism or extreme patriotism, it is intended to keep all of the Chinese agreeing on policies, rather than turning against one another.

The fundamental question, however, is whether China has time for an evolutionary change. Other Asian nations that underwent significant economic and political transformation, from Meiji-era Japan to Park Chung-hee's South Korea, each made more radical and rapid changes — something that may be forced upon China's leaders. But each did so with the attending major social disruption and a heavy hand in domestic security. Major economic overhauls are messy affairs, and China has decades of dead wood to trim from its economy due to the lingering effects of Mao's intentional drive to ensure massive industrial redundancy, as well as to mismanagement and frequent unprofitability among state companies.

Although Singapore and even Prussia may be idealized models for China as countries that were able to transform and retain tight central authority, Lee Kuan Yew and the kaiser never had to manage a population of nearly 1.4 billion people, more than two-thirds of whom have effectively been left behind over three decades of promises that everyone would get rich in the end. As China tries to transition away from low-end manufacturing and economic stimulus driven by government-financed construction, it is the low end of the economic spectrum that will be disproportionally affected. A gradual shift in its economic model would allow China to slowly metabolize these displaced workers, but it is far from certain that China has the time to allow for this slow change, as the rest of the global economy is shifting with or without Chinese consensus. 

In the month of September 1957, Mr Peter Ngin Za Thang, proprietor of the Chin Burma United Co. Ltd., of Rangoon and editor of the Hun Thak weekly (published from Rangoon in the Siyin language) called upon me to accompany him to India for the dual purpose of opening a border trade firm called Frontier Trading Co., at Lamka (New Churachanpur) and for carrying out historical researches on the affinity between the Siyins (Suantaks) and Vaipheis.

Having jumped at it, I arranged a rendezvous with him to meet each other at Lamka in the last week of September 1957. I set off from home in the mid of the month so as to reach our RV ahead of him and after trek/iddim on the Imphal-Tiddim road below a police station.

So all the casual visitors had to seek for new acquaintance for taking shelter in their own sweet way. As I entered a foreign territory illegally I was self conscious of crime of intrusion upon it that I dared not stay in the heart of the town near police and CID stations. I preferred to sojourn with my friend Shri Song Kam Paite who was a seri-cultural officer residing in an isolated quarters on the outskirts of the town which adjoined a mulberry plantation with a silkworm rearing house that afforded me safe haven from the threats of the police, CID personal and traitorous civil informers. Though there were some Vaiphei families living nearby, I did not make acquaintance with them as yet for I feared that my immature exposure might betray myself to give them any trouble.

Also I was in no mood of over staying their welcome until my boss Peter's arrival.

By the last week of September 1957, Peter arrived there legally from Rangoon by plane to Culcutta and onwards to Imphal by train and bus successively. He was warmly greeted and received by the Vaiphei elders at Paukhawcin's.

In the evening, Paukhawcin fetched me to his home to join up Peter in his lodging. They (the Vaipheis) were very glad to see us and they welcomed our visit as to receive the return of the prodigal son as told in the Bible. They treated us as VIPs beyond measure. In the night we made an agreement with Paukhawcin to lease his house to us for our company office.

According to our schedule, we departed for Dimapur the following day by Manipur State Transport bus to take train to Jaipur via Culcutta.

After a tedious journey for a whole week without any stopover between them, we reached Jaipur where we were welcome and received by a Gujarati millionaire who owned a chain jewelry shop all over the country of India and abroad. He was so kind to us to study his business transitions.

During our stay there for three days, we went for sight seeing in the city of Jaipur and its surrounding country where we were much captivated by the sight of the imposing palace of Maharaja of Rajasthan.

We left Jaipur again on the 6th October 1957 for Imphal and on tracing our steps, we reached back Churachandpur on the 13th October 1957. We put up at Paukhawcin's and took rest for three days. On the 14th October 1957 the Vaipheis of Lamka slaughtered a pig to play host to us in honour of our visit which they thought to be the unprecedented visit of a Siyin to them.

All the Vaiphei families of Lamka proper and some invited guests from the surrounding Vaiphei villages came to the feast. Pu ThianLam who was then the Headmaster of the Government High School of New Churachanpur was also present among others to grace the auspicious occasion.

We conducted exhaustive interviews with the old folks exchanging between us on the contemporary stories of the two tribes. Then Peter narrated, "In their early era, the ancient Vaipheis lived together with their Siyin brothers in the Siyin Valley for a few generations. But with the increase of population the Siyin Valley had no more sufficient fertile land for cultivation, they (the Vaiphei clans) shifted to the eastern reverse of the Letha range and settled at Mawnglian (near the present Ngalzang village) for another number of years.

As Mawnglian village was accessible easily from the Kale plain, the plain people raided it from time to time that they moved back in to the Siyin valley, as they were intolerant of the repeated assault from Kale. The Khuasak and Lophei villagers gave them land for cultivation and lived there until the British annexation of the Chin Hills in about 1886.

In fear of the British invaders the Vaiphei clans took to fight in the north and some of them settled at Tuipi on the way and the rest reached as far as Manipur State and settled there. Hence the separation between the Siyins and the Vaipheis".

As the separation has not yet been remote the existing Siyin animists are still adopting Vaiphei folksongs and they sing them with dancing the Vaiphei folkdances in their marriage ceremonies held according to the Siyin old customs. The remains (skeleton) of the dear ancient Vaipheis carefully preserved in earthen pots which were buried in the ground can still be seen today in their graveyard near Khuasak village.

We can learn that the Vaipheis were good cultivators because their masonry works and terraces on the slope hillside for prevention of soil erosion are still their integrity upto this time. Besides, as they were curious to learn the social advancement in the Siyin society. Peter added "by the Grace of God, there have come up many personages in our society in military and civil service in the Government of Burma."

To mention but a few—Pa Vum Khaw Hau of Thuklai rose up to an international level as an ambassador of the Union of Burma to France. He, one of the founding fathers of the Union of Burma, was a member of Aung San's inner Cabinet who went to London to take part in NU-ATLEE treaty for taking independence of Burma from the British Government.

He was also the leader of SIA (Siyin Independence Army) in rebellion against the Japanese Imperialist army that he was the bosom friend of Earl Mountbatten, Supreme Commander of South East Asia Command in the Second world war; occasionally he led the Burmese delegation to the UN session on some international affairs. Pa Lun Pum of Khuasak became Minister for Land Naionalisation in the Burmese Government. Then, when Peter listed all of the high ranking officer in the Burmese Army and Civil Service and several medical college graduates, the crowd raised rapturous applause. And he said that Pu Thianlam from Vaiphei side had reached the upper echelon of Education Department in Manipur State.

To conclude his speech, he reciprocated his thanks to the Vaipheis relatives for their warm welcome and entertainment throughout our stay with them at Lamka. He added, "We will leave from here for our home tomorrow. So I want to leave you with a word for your kind remembrance that this unprecedented meeting will serve as a herald of our future unification again in one land as our fore fathers were. Also with this wish : "Bless be the tide that Bind us" and may it bring a stronger and closer relation between the Vaipheis and the Siyins forever, Amen.

The Vaipheis relatives gave us a hind leg of the pig killed for us for bringing home according to our customs and, with this meaningful flesh we left Lamka on the 15th October 1957 by land route in motor cars via Imphal, Moreh, Tamu and Kalay. We arrived back Khuasak on the 18th October 1957. On reaching home, we handed over the leg of pork to Pi Cing Khaw Zam, mother of Peter and after slicing it up, she doled them out with pride and joy among her neighbours to show the significance according to our customs.

Though we have been dispersed far apart in the flesh, our tie in the hearts has never been lost that it has been growing into a closer and stronger one since then. They began to trace back their origin, afterwards. Most likely an observation team consisting of some reliable leaders of Tamu Vaiphei community was sent to Khuasak village to attend the 75th Anniverssary (Diamond Jubilee) of the conversion of the first Christian converts Pu Reverend Thuam Hang and Pu Pau Suan of Khuasak held in 1979.

After the anniversary the Khuasak Baptist Church slaughtered a cow to host a meeting of the secular and religious leaders of the Siyin and Vaiphei clans to make consultation on their common future in the aftermath of the Jubilee. In the meeting, the Vaiphei elders moved that the Siyins and Vaipheis would be reunified to live in a land in Tamu area where there is a lot of arable land flowing with milk and honey. The meeting affirmed their proposals but no Siyin people have yet joined them up to this time, except Saya Do Thian Pau, PAT from Buanman village who married with a Vaiphei woman there so as to become our pioneer. Both of them are descendent of Lian Sung (Lian Chunga).

Since then, many of the students studying in India have already graduated with secular or theological degree with the financial or moral support of our Vaiphei relatives in India. Gazing into long futurity, the Vaiphei Christians of Tamu area have been affiliating with the Siyin Region Baptist Association (SRBA) since the year 1999 and working together in one fellowship for the services of the Lord, as we have had desired from a long time ago.

Bless our unification ! Pome WA !

Mihing bang a tel hiam! Thianmang?
Na Ta thangvan nusia N'on sawl;
Na itna thuk Na itna sang! Thianmang,
Mihing pilna lung in gawl maw'ng.

Sakkik:Gelmaw'ng e gelmaw'ng e, gelmaw'ng
Mihing leh na itna simthu;
Mihing pilna lung in gelmawng Thianmang
Laukha'n lailung ah hon gel hen.

Mihing bang a tel hiam! Toupa,
Vanmang tutphah nusia N'on tat;
Na lainatna lian in za e,
Toupa, Simlei singta lung in gel moh.

Mihing bang a tel hiam! Thianmang?
Kum sang zatam Na lunggimna;
A gawl haan, a lei khemna hilou hiam?
Naubang Na dopna kansang sa'ng!

Mihing bang a tel hiam! Thianmang?
Van gouluah dia ngaihkhua Na tuah;
Itna sang hi! gupna sang hi! Thianmang,
Mihing simthu zaila'n lel maw'ng.

Fullname +C Jambiakmuan Paite 

call me @biak, @biakmuan @cj as you pleased

Nopna zongin ni sim in buai ung;

 Simlei thupi na te’n a hon pi zel; 

Nang hon ngilhung Toupa na tate’n, 

Huaiham na sung a kibual ta in, 

Duham nate’n aw a hon zouta 

Itna akiam nisim a kiamzel, 

Lainat na zong tuibang in kiam a;

Hehpih nalui pite a kang zou ta,

Nang toh nunnuam kholhkhawm na munte,

Gitlouh nate’n aw a luah zou ta,

Honpi kiknawn in nahuang sung ah

Toupa aw tu ni in ka hon ngen, 

Koute a di’n aw na zah ngaihna;

Honpia in aw Toupa ka hon ngen hi,

Nang hehpih thei Pathian na hi a,

Itna aw nem in ka lung sung uah,

Honsam lai in la nang a ding in

 It's a Siamsinpawlpi Silver Jubilee Sovenir title "Siamsin Thelnah" published by Siamsinpawlpi Mizoram HQ, for our better understanding Siamsinpawlpi is a Paite Student welfare body with its General headquarter in Lamka . The book 'Siamsin thelnah' with Pu Kamkhokam Guite as it Chief Editor give us the insight of the how Siamsinpawlpi began its journey to its present day..

On turning the page at Messages section we can see messages from our honarable leader. The book written in trilingual by its contributor are sometimes creating confusion for a reader like me  as I couldn't read one written in lusei dialect luckily for me few are written in lusei dialect. 

Here in this book its also give us a little knowledge of the socio-political scenerio of Paites in Mizoram. As i read further and further i came across a nice article 'Tunkhopum Baite and his Chin liberation army in the 1960s'  this article literally touch my heart ,  now i can see why  zomi didn't get a state and we can also see that enemy doesn't come from faraway.

Once reading the report from SSPP Heeadquaters , we can know how SSPP has made contributions to the society..  And once again after reading MLA te tanchin and Mizoram Paite khaw tanchin i am more enlightened and feel proud that my community are well represented despite being a minority.