Imphal City Under Siege to Flash Floods
- Hueiyen Lanpao Editorial :: May 23 2011 -

Road subsides exposing the sewerage system on May 22 2011
Photo Courtesy : Hueiyen News Service Photo

THE MUCH vaunted sewerage system, the cleaning up of drains, and providing of drain covers finally met its first examination, in the form of a flash flood. The result? It was a shameful failure.

A red faced government could possibly be trying to analyse what went wrong, and work out answers to assuage the ire of the public. As usual their tail has been caught in a cleft.

The only commiseration we can offer is that most people already know that the government with its two clumsy left hands can do nothing right. If they can find any solace in that good for them, they are in good vibes with the people, though for all the wrong reasons.

And now for some good old fashioned jokes and banter. Whatever happened to the crores and crores spent to provide a proper sewerage and drainage system for Imphal city.

We had tolerated the rudely protruding man hole covers and had scratched our heads at the necessity of putting tiles on the pavements instead of improving the conditions of the roads, but we were too bemused to raise a question.

Who is to be blamed? The engineers, the contractors or the government at large? Since we cannot meet them except through PILs how are we to show our disdain?

A solution is, we can make effigies of them, though not for burning, because that will be too ceremonial and mercifully quick, but instead cane them black and blue.

After all which authority, in person, is going to override the suggestion of his driver not to travel by a particular route because his effigy is being subjected to a severe caning on that road?

Coming to the really funny part, though in a way this is no laughing matter, what should be the new nomenclature for our fake sewerage system? 'The Great Flop', 'The In-built Disaster', 'The Make Belief' or 'The Great Money Spinning Device'?

One thing is for sure this is not a working sewerage system. This is a non performer on the scales that could only have been envisaged by Mahammud Bin Tughlak.

With the Nambul river being concrete walled on both flanks without having dredged the river we could well be on the way to make Imphal turned into a lake during the rainy season.

Come every monsoon, the order of the day will be boats, dugouts and rafts. Whatever is happening to these people who claim to have 'brilliantly lit minds'? One sincerely hopes that they are not spurious quality ones.

To all authority concerned, calm your frayed nerves, they have reached the limits of their capacity, read the manuals carefully before engaging any new device, don't make it a habit of reading them after you have reduced the device defunct and beyond repair, clean up the muck you have created and above all don't be corrupt and inefficient both on the same day, 24x7.

Good Luck.