Driving Naari Programme launched in Chandigarh
Nay Pyi Taw , The 25th ASEAN Summit that got underway in Myanmar’s capital on Wednesday is being termed a historic moment for the bloc of 10 nations, with its secretary-general Le Luong Minh terming it “the most important turning year deciding the achievement of the Asean Community”. One of the key reasons why the ASEAN and East Asia Summits and the related meetings are relevant is because there is barely a year to go before the member states launch an ASEAN Community, including the Asean Economic Community that aims for greater economic integration and freer movement of resources.
Myanmar has deployed an estimated 20,000 police personnel to secure the Summit, according to official estimates released in the run-up to the event. The ASEAN Summit is happening at the Myanmar International Convention Centre in Nay Pyi Taw, where a number of foreign leaders are coming in for the summit and the East Asia summit the following day, to be attended by 16 regional countries as well as Russia and the United States. Apart from the regular restrictions at entry points, passengers on highway buses are being thoroughly checked.
Myanmar is the rotating chair of ASEAN this year for the first time after joining the group in July 1997. The security cordon around the capital is so tight that about 20 per cent of Myanmar Police Force is now deployed in ensuring security in Nay Pyi Taw. The authorities have already designated Myanmar International Convention Centre-MICC1 and the State’s guest houses, the venues of the summit, as limited zones in Nay Pyi Taw.
In terms of sheer planning and execution of a Greenfield project, Myanmar’s capital Nay Pyi Taw would put any Indian city to shame. Ridiculed sometimes as the ‘ghost capital’, the capital city has a short history, having been founded on a malaria-infested shrubland, 3 kilometres west of the country’s logging town and sugarcane refinery center of Pyinmana, and approximately 320 kilometres north of the previous capital of Yangon.
Construction started in 2002 and the administrative capital was officially moved to the militarised
greenfield site on November 6, 2005. Nay Pyi Taw is generally translated as “royal capital”or the “seat of the king”, the name literally means “royal city of the sun” in Burmese.
The city is organised into a number of zones. The residential areas are segregated and organized, with apartments allotted according to rank and marital status. The roofs of apartment buildings are color-coded by the jobs of their residents. But many of the city’s residents, however, live in slums on the outskirts.
