The Times of India brings a story, speaking to the necessity of preserving maps and records dealing with boundaries - apparently the official maps depicting the boundary of the Indian state of Nagaland have gone completely missing.
Nagaland is a hill state in the foothills of the Himalayas, located in the far northeast of India, adjoining the Indian states of Assam, Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur, and bordering Myanmar (formerly Burma) to the east.
From the article,
At present, it looks like some of the details of the boundary will have to be recreated from surveys and whatever remaining documentation can be salvaged. The region has not been without its share of historic boundary disputes.
The government has lost all "original documents" — comprising details of boundaries — of Nagaland, in a glaring instance of callous handling of vital public documents.
The Union home ministry and the Assam government, which originally kept the records of Nagaland, do not even have the valid "map" of the state which ironically is in the throes of violence sparked by the demand to carve out Greater Nagaland by extending the existing boundaries of the state.
The matter came as a shock to home ministry officials when it was brought to light for the first time by Nagaland during its submission before the Local Commission on the Assam-Nagaland Border here last week.
In response to the commission's direction to submit before it the original documents of the state to settle boundary disputes, Nagaland said it was not in a position to give the written statement unless "its original documents which were purportedly lost by Assam" were returned.
I was amazed to see the articles in the news about the border fence debacle, where construction evidently went full-tilt along the US-Mexico border to construct a fence to prevent illegal immigration, following 120-year-old barbed wire strands, and without any apparent proper surveying research, and construction stakeout.
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