As they stood huddled in the cold and cheered loudly every time a car from the first India-ASEAN rally passed by, young people here wondered how it would make a difference to the things that concerned them most - HIV/AIDS and employment.

"I am excited seeing all these nice cars zip by but I wonder what it will really change when the dust settles," said Er Neidilhoulie, 24, standing at the Kohima grounds surrounded by colourful banners which said "Women/girls do you know about HIV/AIDS?"

"We need more to fight AIDS - more funds, more efforts, more attention. Will all that come? When I see these big cars I think, 'Will I ever have one?'"

The 8,000-km rally began Wednesday in Guwahati and will end in Batam, Indonesia,Dec 11.

Neidilhoulie was one of the dozens of volunteers helping rally participants with logistics as they halted in the Nagaland capital Kohima for the night Tuesday.

She and her friends smiled broadly and waved placards as they welcomed in the caravan but also expressed concern about what they called the "real issues".

"I'm worried about drugs," said Shilu. "A lot of my friends do drugs and I'm scared, many people here just don't understand the scary situation of AIDS."

Sixty cars carrying 240 people from 10 Southeast Asian nations and India are participating in the rally. The only country in ASEAN not participating is the Philippines.

The rally is being seen as a major diplomatic thrust by India to engage with a region that it neglected for long until its Look East policy in the early 1990s.

India, which is spending $1.2 million just advertising the rally, is hopeful that tracing a land route through to Southeast Asia would greatly push trade in its landlocked northeastern states, which share almost 98 percent of their border with foreign countries.

These states also geographically fall right between the Indian mainland and Southeast Asia. They also border the heroin-producing Golden Triangle of Laos, Myanmar and Thailand and have high rates of intravenous drug use, the main reason of HIV infection here.

The northeastern states account for just 3.8 percent of India's billion-plus people but have more than 30 percent of the country's total intravenous drug users.

India has around 5.1 million HIV/AIDS patients - second highest in the world after South Africa - and the northeastern states of Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur, Nagaland, Tripura, Mizoram, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh are said to have more than 100,000 HIV-positive patients.

"I hope rallies like this one will help focus attention on problems here," said Aienla Lonchar, a science graduate. "That's what we are all hoping. That, and a few jobs would be nice."

The northeast is one of the poorest regions in the country where, in many places, the per capita income has actually fallen since Indian independence in 1947.

For instance, in Assam, one of the largest northeastern states and therefore a good indicator for the whole area's economics, in 1950/51 the per capita income was fifth from the top among all Indian states.

In 2002-03, it was but one from the bottom. Result: acute unemployment.

"We need jobs," said Narola Pongen, who has a masters' degree in political science. "Without jobs nothing means anything, and the mind plays all sorts of games, maybe you even want to do drugs - to escape."