May 4, 2016: The honorable Governor of Assam and Nagaland, Sri P.B. Acharya visited the Art of Living International Center to meet the founder of The Art of Living, Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. The meet focused on service projects for betterment in the health and education sector in Nagaland.
Accompanying the Honorable Governor was a team of doctors with extensive experience in organizing medical camps in the North-East Frontier areas and Jeffrey Yaden from the Nagaland Post. The doctors attending the meeting were Dr. Hanumanth Rao Palep, Dr. K. C. Mohanty, Dr. P. S. Shankar, Dr. Agam Vora, Dr. Suparna Nirgudkar, Dr. Umesh Borwankar, and Dr. Manjiri Ranade.
The Governor explained that the need of the hour is to promote more people to people contact between the mainland and the North-Eastern Frontier areas. "This will alleviate the feeling of alienation that the people of the North-East, particularly the border areas have felt for a long time. This feeling of alienation has resulted in civil unrest and law and order problems leading to economic stagnation and isolation causing further alienation - a vicious cycle that needs to be broken," said the Honorable Governor.
As the outcome of the meet, Art of Living will contribute in upgrading health services in the border districts of Nagaland.
The Art of Living will set up a health center to provide medical facilities for common ailments, basic emergency services as well as promote indigenous medical systems. The health center will also be used as a staging area for periodic medical camps in remote locations and for distribution of medicines to other centers.
The Art of Living will also look to set up an orphanage and schools in the border districts to promote holistic value based education. These projects will be executed via people to people programs with the Art of Living working with grassroots community leaders.