Unpalatable side of the visit : Odd after taste
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: December 06 2011 -

The car which the Prime Minister used during his visit to Imphal on 3rd december 2011 - Pix :: David M Mayum

The estimated cost for the fences put up along the sides of the roads where the cavalcade of the Prime Minister and the UPA Chairperson was supposed to take was pegged at Rs 1 crore.

The other beautification drive taken up in Imphal for the high profile visit too must have worked out to quite a tidy sum. In the days running up to December 3, the efforts of the Government to ensure that everything went off perfectly well were clearly visible on the roads of Imphal.

Window dressing exercises on the roads, labourers at the work sites, security personnel on round the clock duty, intensified frisking and combing exercise in the commercial areas of Imphal etc defined the days ahead of the visit by the Prime Minister and the UPA Chairperson and while everything, well almost everything, went off quite well as befits the occasion, the remains of the day of the visit continues to tell a significant tale.

While no time was wasted in collecting and removing the 4x4 inch wooden rods used for fencing the sides of the roads, the welcome gate put up just to the eastern side of Keishampat bridge continues to stand in all its glory adding to the traffic nuisance. A fitting left over gift of the high profile visit from Delhi ?

More likely it is a case of a Government conveniently forgetting to clean up after occupying public space and as for the inconvenience posed to the public, who cares ?

Certainly not the Government and it remains to be seen when the towering structure will be removed. This much must have registered in the minds of the public besides the hash of the translation work of the Prime Minister's speech.

Last heard, a person no less than the Chief Minister is understood to have taken a serious note of the communication breakdown rendered by the translation work and while this is expected of any Government, the question 'what happened ?' still remains with regard to the situation in which Union Ministers who accompanied the Prime Minister and the UPA Chairperson were made to cool their heels on their feet outside the dais just because no seats were arranged for them.

At least some section of the public may derive a certain sense of satisfaction in the knowledge that inefficiency compounded by arrogance of the Government agencies can also deal a blow to the self respect of those who come under the category of VIPs.

With the Congress led SPF Government leaving no stone unturned in mobilising the people from across the State, thousands of people made their way towards Kangla ensuring that the Prime Minister and the UPA Chairperson did not address a sparse crowd.

In fact, 40 thousand was the claimed number of people who turned up at Kangla to hear Dr Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi hold fort on a number of issues which have a direct bearing on the lives of the people.

So far, so good and even Chief Minister O Ibobi and his trusted lieutenants must have been pleased with the handsome turnout.

While thousands turned up to personally see and hear the two leaders from Delhi, thousands more were left in the lurch thanks to the decision of the Power Department to suddenly play hide and seek.

A large number of people, who did not have the stomach to brave the huge crowd and the heavy security bandobast but were nonetheless keen to catch them live on the local TV channel were treated to an inexplicably long bout of power cuts.

Indirectly cutting off access to the Prime Minister ? In fact in some localities, the power cuts continued well into the next day after Dr Singh and Madam Gandhi had left.

Was this an exercise in economising energy consumption ? Were some areas deliberately plunged into total darkness just so that the power supply at the places where the Prime Minister and UPA Chairperson were supposed to visit did not snap ?

And was the blackout extended into the next day to make up for the uninterrupted power supply in some areas the previous day ?

Another example of the Government extracting their pound of flesh from an unsuspecting public, who in the first place had nothing to do with the visit at all.

In other words, the unpalatable side of a VVIP visit.