Art of evading roadblocks : Aiding the curfew
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: July 11 2015 -

Curfew cannot douse the flame. At best it can only help in containing a situation.

The Government however seems to think otherwise. This should explain the reason for the current curfew in force in Imphal East and Imphal West.

Would have been much better and made more sense if only the Government had taken cognizance of the simmering tension amongst the people.

What the Government should realise is the plain fact that the current spell of unrest is much more than just a situation.

This is all that more true given the fact that a student was killed on July 8 in police action.

No way can a curfew or imposing restrictions on the movements of the people actually address an issue.

As a Government which is there to look after the aspirations of the people, something more concrete is expected.

It would have made much more sense if only the Government had the far sightedness to acknowledge that many are not happy with the Manipur Regulation of Visitors, Tenants and Migrant Workers Bill that was passed in the Assembly some months back.

The present unrest and the pitch battles between protesters and the police could have been avoided if only the Government had made the first move to take a fresh look at the said Bill and then acted accordingly.

A point which could have been realised if only the Government had recognised the gravity of the situation.

So it is curfew, pitched battles between the protesters and the police and days of tension and uncertainty. At stake is the geo-political entity called Manipur.

That the imposition of the curfew has not really helped should be clear from the confrontations between the protesters and the police and this has become all that more acute after the young student was killed on July 8.

This is for the protesters and the cops on duty, but how about the others ?

For those people who get to move around with security escorts and come under the VIP tag, this may not pose much of a problem but consider the hardships that the common people have to go through every day of the curfew.

Consider the conditions of those people who are engaged in professions from which there can be no breaks, whether there is curfew or not.

This is about the set of people who do not come under the VIP tag and uniformed services. For these group of people or professionals, it is not curfew alone that they have to negotiate but also the protesters.

The situation is all that more dicey when it gets late and perhaps no one knows this better than journalists, whose job profile dictates that they work late into the evening.

It was not for nothing why the Editors’ Guild, Manipur had to issue an appeal to everyone not to disturb journalists who have to be out everyday and every night to cover the day’s events.

If it is not the protesters then it is the road blocks that reporters and others in the field of journalism have to contend with every day.

Some thoughts ought to be given to their conditions too.