IMPHAL, February 15: The ong awaited road connecting Haflong, Tousem and Dimapur initiated by Armstrong Pame, an IAS officer from the one of the most remote area of Tousem Subdivision of Tamenglong is set to the people. Armstrong Pame, a 28 years old and his family hails from from Inpa village which had no road connectivity earlier.
The family rallied community support and from total strangers around the world to construct a 100 Km road which has come to be known simply as `The People’s Road` since it was built totally from donations from the public.
Armstrong says much of the credit goes to social networking site Facebook which helped him to spread information about the road and the efforts on the ground that in turned pulled in donations from all over the world, raging from Canada, England, the US, Israel, Kuwait, Belgium, Norway and other countries.
While the collections that came in through Facebook led to a figure of Rs 38 lakhs, Armstrong resorted to his traditional roots.
“In Naga tradition if one is in need of help, he or she gives a pinch of salt to a household and in return the house gives cash or kind,” Armstrong said during a meet at the Tamenglong DC Bungalow on Feb 14, 2013.
He continued that he ended up distributing a total of 6000 kg of salt to seek financial help from the public of Tamenglong area that amounted to Rs 3.5 lakhs.
He said that one of the followers of the site was so impressed that he contributed 2000 US dollars.
Armstrong said that the new road connecting Manipur, Nagaland and Assam will be inaugurated tomorrow.
He said that he remembered how the people of his village had gone through severe hardships due to the lack of road connectivity and how they faced pain due to the lack of health care facilities in the village.
The road inauguration will also witness an international bike rally. Bikers from all over the world will participate in the rally, which will start from Tamenglong, Dimapur and Haflong and meet at the road on Saturday.
The Royal Riders of Manipur is also part of the rally. The final destination will be Katangnam village where the inaugural stone will be unveiled on Sunday.
Earlier, the Facebook buzz over the `People`s Road` reportedly caught the attention of the social networking site.
And as part of a project to document the “extraordinary use of the social network”, Peter Jordan, film producer at Facebook, commissioned filmmaker Arpita Sinha in Delhi to make a documentary on the effort.
After Sinha was contacted on January 19, her team went up to Tousem subdivision and documentary film is likely to be uploaded on the Facebook stories site in a month.