Welcome Dutch Help

T he offer of help from the Netherlands to turn the waters of Assam into its assets made on Monday by its Ambassador to India, Alphonsus Stoelinga, should be heartily welcomed—at least for three good reasons. First, it is the first ready offer of help from any country. Second, the offer comes from a country that has only about half of its territory more than a few feet above sea level. So the Dutch have become experts at water magement. Third, the Dutch Ambassador has also assured Chief Minister Sarbanda Sonowal of help in other important tasks like dredging the Brahmaputra and tackling erosion and generating solar energy, and of massive investments over a gamut of enterprises. Stoelinga told Chief Minister Sarbanda Sonowal that several companies from the Netherlands are interested in making investments in Assam’s healthcare sector. The Dutch company Ayursundra BV proposes to set up a healthcare facility in Jorhat that will have various related facilities like diagnostic centres and a hospital in a hub-and-spoke arrangement. The healthcare facility will create 424 new jobs for an equal number of men and women. While the Chief Minister of Assam will do well to accept these offers of help with grace and gratefulness, the most important help for the State remains the imparting of skills appropriate to the needs of the 21st century. He should seek every possible means of not only imparting these skills, but of changing the attitude of people to physical work and of making people realize that no amount of talk will make up for the work culture we need for survival but have failed to achieve so far.

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