Guwahati:
A government school student in Guwahati has written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh demanding a clarification on a sentence in a NCERT book which says that tourism in the North-East has not been encouraged due to 'strategic reasons'.
The NCERT geography textbook for tenth standard in Chapter seven titled 'Lifelines of National Economy' on page 92 says "There is vast potential of tourism development in the north-eastern states and the interior parts of Himalayas, but due to strategic reasons these have not been encouraged so far."
Kavya Barnadhya Hazarika of Maharishi Vidya Mandir Senior Secondary School at Silpukhuri in Guwahati wrote to the Mr Singh and twice petitioned the President's secretariat helpline since April first week but is yet to get an answer to his query on what those 'strategic reasons' are.
"I contacted officials at the Department of School Education and Literacy at Shastri Bhawan in New Delhi after my petition was transferred twice to the department by the President's Secretariat, but I did not get any answer to my question," he said.
"I would like to know what are those strategic reasons for which the north-eastern part of our country still lags behind in the national growth rate and for which the pace of development is so slow," he wrote in his petition.
Kavya has passed the CBSE Class X board examinations this year.