Might be hard to believe, but it’s true that 87 per cent of working professionals from Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore, who are otherwise ‘well educated’, do not know the names of all the seven states of North East, viz.; Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura.
Such shocking revelations came to light in a first-of-its-kind survey about the perception of North East India amongst people in rest of the country conducted by the North East India Image Managers (NEIIM), a voluntary group of ‘communication professionals’.Moreover, it was found that as high as 52 per cent of the respondents had a negative perception about North Eastern Region.
“Their immediate recall of ‘North East India’ is that of ‘a region riddled with insurgency and most unsafe place in the country’ or ‘most underdeveloped region with hardly any modern infrastructure and poor connectivity with the rest of the country’ or ‘people with mongoloid features and weird food habit and an alien culture’” the survey found.
Interestingly, the findings of the survey indicate that due to the negative imagery that people have about the region, 30 per cent of the total professionals surveyed said they would “never go and work” in NE even if that best suitedtheir career interest.
