E-Pao! - a journey through 2000
- I Anniversary -

A very happy new year to all the visitors from all at www.e-pao.net . It has been a very successful year and it was so because of your support and good wishes. Everyone at e-pao.net would like to extend their heart felt thanks to you for your support.

It was quite a significant year for E-Pao!. The journey started with the launch of E-Pao! on 31^st , December 1999 under the bizhosting domain after a month of discussions and preparations by the core team. The Team Imphal was not properly constituted then and we were not able update the news on daily basis. This was soon solved with the constitution of Team Imphal comprising of a few very dedicated members. Thanks to them that we can read the local news of Manipur almost instantaneously. Well, 'Almost' because Manipur/Imphal still does not enjoy a very good connection in terms of lines and facilities and bandwidth. Also Thanks to our local dailies like Sangai Express, Imphal Free Press, Matamgi Yaikairol who had allowed us to webcast their news across the world through www.e-pao.net .

There was a very good and heartening response from the Manipuri community living away from Manipur when E-Pao! was launched. [ Actually we have coined a word to refer to them. We call them NRMs (Non Resident Manipuris) ]. This prompted us to register a proper domain name which we did. There were offers of help from our NRM brothers to help us in registering the domain on the web or to help us financially. We are very thankful to them for their generousity and good intentions but we could not take their help at that time as we knew that we would need their help in much better areas in the later time. The areas did come up and we appealed to them. Not only to a few of them but to every Manipuri and the response was very suportive. We did a web survey for advancing Information Technology (IT) in Manipur and you all responded by sending in your solidarity. The same has been forwarded to the Ministry of IT, Delhi and to the Government of Manipur for their kind perusal.

E-Pao! managed to gather all it's resources for an on-line coverage of the Vote Counting of the Manipur General Elections of Feb 2000. This was the first of it's kind from Manipur. The on-line coverage lasted for 48 hours as counting saw some unprecendented turn out of events. E-pao was still in it's nascent stage but everybody concerned chipped in their best and we could accomplish it. It taught many lessons to the team on how to co-ordinate an on-line and live coverage. Later during October last, E-Pao! also conducted an online poll for TAPRO Handloom Show and the response was awesome. The organising committee later constitued a prize for the internet poll winner after seeing the huge turn out of votes. This helped NRMs to take part in a local event happening at Imphal. Services like e-mail, chat and later a message board were added into the e-pao.net domain. These helped to keep the manipuris in touch with each other and to share their views and ideas. The message board was a huge success until 'certain section' kept abusing it inspite of our repeated request not to do so. It became increasingly hard for us to manage and monitor the messages so the service was discontinued. On this regard we receive many mails from visitors to re-open it. At this stage we are really sorry it has to remain closed. We would like those "certain few" who were abusing the MB to know what they are depriving their brothers/sisters of. A forceful registration and declaration of identities to take part in posting messages were thought to be childish and improper for us educated Manipuris. But we are sorry to say we have to re-think on that part.

Here it would be appropriate to say something about the Team functioning behind E-Pao! The first thing that could be said is that these people are the day to day layman that you meet in your life with the only difference of having had a vision of an e-portal for Manipur. E-Pao.Net is not a strictly commercial space and don't intend to be so though we offer services in the hope that the revenue would help us in meeting the running cost. It has no alliance with any group or owe allegiance to any group. It's an honest, clean and hard working group of Manipuris who happen to beleive that IT can help find Manipur a place in the world. E-Pao.Net's intentions are very simple and clean. It merely tries to help manipuris have a common platform for mutual help and growth away from the propaganda or power politics. It brought together the homepages maintained by Manipuris and websites about Manipur in the hope to promote them. It has channels on the History of Manipur to help a non-manipuri to understand it's beautiful history and to remind ourselves of the same. Another channel has Features on Manipuri personalities, issues, events, etc. The Gallery showcases the beauty of manipur through the lenses of a camera. Education and Leisure channels are not so developed due to lack of enough contributions. E-Pao is thankful to all the contributors for their time, support, belief and the worthy contributions. We can't thank them enough.

We have a firm belief that IT would be instrumental in solving much of the unemployment problem existing in present Manipur. We still believe that Manipur will come back to be the peaceful, safe, fun and green place that it was. E-Pao.Net would strive to give a common platform for the Manipuris on the world wide web. E-Pao.Net is proud that it has inspired so many other sites too. We would like to invite you to contribute with articles of general appeal and information so that it can be shared amongst all Manipuris and the world.

E-Pao! receives many mails from visitors. Some offered us ideas on how to enhance the site. Others ask us for directions. Some gives us constructive criticisms. They were Manipuris and some were non-manipuri Indians and few were foreigners but they all gave the much needed 'pat on the back'. Few of the feedback mails are selected and are compiled for sharing them with other visitors on our Reader's E-Mails page. We do receive our quota of 'hate-mail' too - just plain gibberish "I Hate you" or "Go to Hell" type of mails from some non-existant e-mail IDs, which really put us in the dark as to what have E-Pao! done to hurt them. MANI-MALA also receives quite a bulk of mails. Many a time, the Queries are so complicated that none of us could come up with a amicable reply even after long discussion over it. Some are very genuine and so personal that we dont put them up on the Mani-Mala page but directly reply to them. We try our best to attend to each and every mail that are sent in. Everybody at E-Pao! would like to take this opportunity to convey our deepest regret if anybody has been offended. We assure you that it was unintentional. Sorry!

You are much valued at E-Pao.Net and your suggestions are the prime movers and decision makers. We would like to extend our invitation to join us to create the web space for Manipuris and to prove to the world that we are no lesser than anybody. Looking forward to a long lasting relation between you and E-Pao!

Thank you and have a wonderful year!