"What is the meaning of the following statement?"
It really is just basic MATLAB operations.
[1,N(1),N(1)-1,N(1)-2,...,4,3,2]
2- that vector of values is used as a index into column.
Assuming that column is a vector, the effect is to access the elements (2:end) of column in reverse order, with the first element still in the first position. It would probably be simpler to use end:
column([1,end:-1:2])