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Anniversary Brings out the Youth Friendly Face of NEDFi

The North Eastern Development Finance Corporation Limited (NEDFi), the premier financial institution of the region and an agent for socio-economic change in the North East has implemented a number of innovative developmental plans for the benefit of the inhabitants of the region. In its twelve years of existence, in one of the most well-defined structures and adoption of best practices, NEDFi has been able to address the livelihood issues of the poor, the unorganised and peripheral communities by building upon their strength, in a cluster approach. Some of the major interventions made by NEDFi in this sphere were in Majlishpur craft village in Tripura, weaving cluster of Marups in Manipur, Sitajakhala milk village and Sipajhar fishery cluster in Assam.

Apart from the forays made in developmental finance activities, NEDFi has also undertaken a number of other activities for the welfare of the society. Recently NEDFi had organised the Brain Jam Quiz 2007 in Guwahati which has been recorded as the biggest event of its kind in the history of North East. During its anniversary celebrations spread over the first fortnight of August, NEDFi in collaboration with RuTAG-NE and GIAN-NE organised a three day Exhibition of the products invented by the grass root innovators of the North East. The items invented by young artisans included indigenous dual security alarm system, manual wood cutting machine, wind turbine operated water pump, multi bladed bamboo fan and eri-muga reeling machine etc.

In another youth-friendly initiative, NEDFi organised an Inter University Debate in the city in which teams from 11 universities and institutions viz. Gauhati University, Assam University Silchar, Assam Agricultural University Jorhat, Mizoram University, NERIST Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland University, North Eastern Hill University Shillong, Tezpur University, IIT Guwahati, Tripura University and Manipur University participated. The topic of the Debate was India’s Economic Growth has failed to have any impact on the Rural Poor and it was chairmed by Shri R.G. Lyngdoh, Minister for Higher Education, Government of Meghalaya. Three eminent persons, Shri Subir Bhowmik (BBC), Prof Udayan Misra (Dibrugarh University) and Tomi Ete (Government of Arunachal Pradesh) who were themselves outstanding debaters in their student days judged the competition. Mark V. Vanlalrema of Mizoram University, Manish Gupta and Aditya Singh of IIT bagged the top three cash awards of Rs 10,000/-, Rs 7,500/- and Rs 5,000/- respectively.

By its recent series of innovative initiatives NEDFi has demonstrated that it is not confined only to extending financial assistance to the deserving youth of the North East but it will go to any length to enhance their intellectual and performing skills to make them compete with their counterparts in the rest of the country.

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