Unheard Pleas :: Education zone a merry ground for armed gangs and UGs
- Hueiyen Lanpao Editorial :: October 21, 2010 -
A lot of brouhaha over underground groups frequent trespasses on educational spheres had been raised by various sections of the society including the teachers and student community, parents and guardians' associations, CSOs, intellectuals and academics, government authority, etc during the past many years.
Uncountable number of workshops, seminars, public dialogues, open discussions, etc had been held over the years with the sole objective of convincing every armed and unarmed groups, interest groups, pressure groups, etc to leave educational institutions alone, and make education a free zone.
Needless to recall, innumerable protest demonstrations, sit-in-protest, human chain, class boycott, black badge protest and so on had been organized by the student bodies against terrorizing teachers and students, attacks on educational institutions, undue pressure and intimidation for extortion by the insurgents of one or other group. Thus the phrase "make education a free zone" which is unheard-of anywhere else in the world has become a common slogan in Manipur.
Underground groups' interest in education, schools, colleges and Manipur University had always been immense. Earlier, the interest was confined to the annual election of the students unions and the representatives, who would again vie for the presidential post of certain powerful student union.
The campaign for election of the student unions in the higher secondary schools, colleges, law college and University used to be huge and intensive in terms of cost and contest. Day and night camping, with food and other aspects to spend time with provided, used to be organized at the residences of the candidates or at any convenient places for days or weeks prior to the poll day. Many vehicles were required. Many student supporters and non-student volunteers/workers were required.
The winning candidates had to spend huge amount of money from thousands of rupees to over several lakhs. Many believed that the student candidate or his/her family alone could not have invested so much money without somebody sponsoring. A lot of unwanted incidents, violence, fighting, abduction, etc used to occur, and guns were apparently an essential part.
Apart from that, the kind of election trend then had become a cause for cultivating immoral behaviours among the young students. It's good for the Manipuri society that such egregious mode of student election has virtually disappeared now-a-days.
Then, the interest of the rebels, say a particular outfit, got to be focused on quality education, and nurturing clean and potential human resource in Manipur. To achieve that, the said outfit found it necessary to cleanse the whole gamut of educational establishments and systems including the way examinations were conducted.
So the outfit started cleansing the Department of Education, Government of Manipur of corruption, nepotism and all dirty things. The cleansing operation extended to the schools, colleges and the MU. Many people––officials and teachers who were found to be not doing their jobs honestly with dedication had to face music from the rebel outfit.
The outfit had succeeded in cleaning the system to a large extent, though plenty of heartburns had been caused by the operation. But now, the interest of the undergrounds and fake insurgents in the educational establishments and institutions seems to have been focused on one particular aspect – i.e, extortion of money from the officials and the teachers.
Attempts of such elements in the name of one or other insurgent organization to extort money from the teachers have been increasing of late. The incidents that occurred at Johnstone Hr Secondary School in the heart of Imphal city and Anand Singh Higher Secondary School in August and September this year, in which students of both schools could capture two extortionists who were threatening and assaulting the school teachers to pay up money, have once again amply demonstrated that the people's earnest appeals and slogans to make education a free zone had fallen on deaf ears.
Unless all parties concerned pay heed to the people's appeals sooner than later, a lot of undesirable incidents would happen in future which may disturb academic atmosphere.
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