As responsible citizens of India, a group of people who were constantly worried about the underprivileged sections of our society founded the Student’s Mobilisation Initiative for Learning through Exposure (SMILE) in New Delhi in 1986. The main objective was to sensitise young people on various social issues. SMILE began its operations in the Northeast in 1995. Since then SMILE has been playing a leading role towards serving the youth specially street children, handicapped children, downtrodden girls, and orphans. With this vision in mind, the founders of SMILE set out to accomplish a mission...

That day I had gone to Mirza (some 6km from Borjhar airport) with my parents to see the ongoing construction of my father’s engineering college. While taking a stroll around the campus area I happened to meet Tupai Kalita, the supervisor at the site. As I was still chitchatting with him a young woman with a barely-one-month-old baby came to him to collect her daily wages. Kalita took the baby in his arms and said, “She is Geeta (name changed) and her mother had bought her in just five hundred rupees when she was just 2 days old.” I was taken by shock when Bhashwati (name changed), the woman...

Whenever I happen to cross the Zoo Tinali area or the Chandmari area I find that the drivers mostly stop their vehicles right before the zebra crossing or on the zebra crossing itself. I wonder whether they actually know what a zebra crossing is for. I still remember the day when the automatic traffic signal was introduced for the first time in Guwahati. People just didn’t bother to stop at the red signal for the police weren’t present. They were only concerned about driving on to their destination. Then the traffic police decided to control things manually because they knew that they will...