Army Project NAVBHARAT brings 181 students to Likabali military station

Army Project NAVBHARAT returned to Likabali on 4 July, when the Spearhead Division of the Spear Corps opened a youth empowerment programme to 167 students and 14 teachers from Jogesh Gohain High School in Dhemaji. Attendance came to 181.

A day built around the military station

The centrepiece was a visit to the Likabali Military Station. Students walked past a static display of modern weapons, military equipment and tactical systems, and officers briefed them on how the Indian Army guards the country's borders. They were also shown the operational readiness and daily discipline that keep a station running.

For most of them, it was a first look inside a working military installation.

What Army Project NAVBHARAT set out to do

The programme was pitched at patriotism, national integration and youth empowerment. Motivational lectures and short documentaries carried the message, built around the courage, hard training and sacrifice of the ordinary soldier.

The sessions pushed students towards community work and nation-building, and towards a sharper sense of civic duty. By opening a station gate to school children, the Spearhead Division was also doing the quieter work of holding its bond with the towns around it, the kind of public engagement the Army has kept visible through its recent set-piece moments, from a change at the top to its Operation Sindoor honours.

The Northeast backdrop

Programmes like Army Project NAVBHARAT sit inside a longer Ministry of Defence and Army effort to stay close to the civilian population across the Northeast, where the force is both a constant presence and a major local employer. Likabali, on the Assam and Arunachal Pradesh border, hosts a formation-level station, which makes it a natural venue for civil-military contact of this kind. The same instinct runs through the service further afield, from border districts to a recent cultural evening in Ulaanbaatar on the sidelines of an exercise.

A second run at Likabali

This was not the first NAVBHARAT outing in the area. The Spearhead Division ran an earlier edition at Likabali in March, pulling students from Likabali and nearby Silapathar into a mix of educational and motivational activity, all of it publicised through the Press Information Bureau and defence channels.

Operation Sindoor on the syllabus

That March edition leaned heavily on Operation Sindoor. Lectures and short films drawn from the operation were screened for the younger audience, framed around bravery and resolve. A fuller talk on the operation's success ran at Commerce College in Silapathar.