21st Century Berlin Walls: Damning people's mandate
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: August 09 2011 -

One thing is as clear as clear is. Adhocism is the policy that successive Governments have adopted while dealing with the Sadar Hills issue.

And while Chief Minister O Ibobi has already inked history by becoming the first Chief Minister in Manipur to complete a full term in office and is well set to completing a second consecutive term, which again is a record, it is this record which may be used to good effect to tear apart his stint in office as the leader of the people.

Ten years in office as the Chief Minister is not a joke and it needs more than good fortune to achieve this mark, but when history looks back at the tenure of Okram Ibobi Singh, effective governance may just be reduced to a foot note.

If this is how he wants history to judge him, it is okay and should be of no concern to anyone, but the problem is he happens to occupy the chair of the Chief Minister and expectations are natural.

The past Governments may just about escape being pilloried for failing to whip out the political mantra to resolve the Sadar Hills issue on the ground that it lacked stability and hence could not give adequate attention to this vexed issue dating back to 1971.

However Mr Ibobi will have no such leeway. There is no doubt that the MoU of 1998, which is being brandished by the United Naga Council and other Naga civil society organisations including student organisations to put down certain riders for the creation of Sadar Hills, was inherited by the SPF Government.

A little more than four years later, the Congress led SPF Government under the stewardship of Mr Ibobi came to the scene in 2002 and has been in power since then. It is here that valid questions may be raised on what the SPF Government has been doing all this while ?

Indifferent to the issue in the smug belief that an MoU of 1998 offers the perfect alibi for them to sleep over it ? To any sensitive Government, the circumstances that led to the signing of the MoU should have been clear and what was necessary in 1998 may not necessarily be so now.

Or even if concessions are to be made and the MoU should stand the test of time and changes, the two terms in office should have offered more than an opportunity for the Government to study how the issue could be resolved without demeaning the MoU. This is what is called the art of governance.

Nearly ten years in office and the best that Chief Minister O Ibobi can come up after a Cabinet meeting and a dialogue with representatives of Sadar Hills Districthood Demand Committee is, "We need to study the matter further" or "The matter needs to be studied more minutely."

These lines underline the fact that the SPF Government has been in office for nearly two terms on the trot, championing the institutionalisation of adhocism. This is what has emerged clearly from the dust kicked up by the huge boulders placed in the middle of NH-39 as road blocks as well as from the smoke billowing from the torched remains of trucks, cars and Government offices situated in the vicinity of Sadar Hills.

Given the scenes that have been unfolding on the National Highways since the agitation spearheaded by the SHDDC started, the grin of victory, the indulgences of self patting on the back, the tall talk of delivering the goods by Congress Ministers whenever a bridge or a community hall is inaugurated and most importantly the smug demeanour of the Congress leaders after the massive mandate in the election to the 9th Assembly election ring hollow and appear to be a cruel joke played on the people.

In other words the SPF Government has trashed the huge mandate it received at the election and this is nothing short of making a mockery of the universally accepted principle of democracy. So "the mandate of the people be damned" is the sentence that this present Government has proclaimed. There are two options before the Government.

One is of course to respect what it has been maintaining all this while, which is the demand to upgrade Sadar Hills to a district is justified, and accordingly do it. Or else the Government may say that Sadar Hills cannot be upgraded and accordingly take up steps to clear the highway and since dialogue as an option does not appear feasible at the moment, use the means at its disposal.

That the SPF Government has not deemed it fit to take up either of the two options rings out loud with the message that it cannot live up to the challenge demanded from a Government.

Mr Ibobi and the Council of Ministers are not kids and there is nothing innocent in their juvenile antics that come through the adhoc policies they have been clinging on to all these years.

Manipur cannot afford to have a Government which cannot decide between the lollipop and the toffee. In as much as the SPF Government's casual approach to such a sensitive issue is hard to digest, it is also extremely important for all to search their soul and study what exactly the creation of a district means.

More particularly it is also time to introspect whether tribalism fits the stage of the dotcom age. In as much as Manipur's beauty lies in it being home to numerous communities living side by side, its tragedy lies in each community eyeing everything through the narrow confines of community and ethnic affiliations.

This is the tragedy and no community can be free of the guilt of constructing their own version of the Berlin Wall.