Wanted : Recall clause - Dry depot, wet black market
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: August 17 2011 -

Does this Government have any business to remain in power any longer ?

It is the people's misfortune that no clause or mechanism to recall a Government has been included in the Constitution of the country or else the marching order should have been given to this dispensation a long, long time back.

No we cannot blame the Constituent Assembly for not including the recall clause in the Constitution for no sane man would have imagined that such a Government as the one we have presently in the State, would be possible.

So in the absence of any mechanism to recall or dump this Government the best one can do is to wait and if possible point out its utter failure which has done nothing except send the blood pressure of the people shooting up.

Manipur is once again reeling under the now familiar fuel shortage and this includes not only petrol but cooking gas and kerosene. Not that LPG and kerosene were available in plenty before, but at least officially the depot did not run dry.

This is a situation that any sane man would have anticipated the moment the Sadar Hills Districthood Demand Committee announced for all to hear that they are going ahead with yet another agitation to demand the upgradation of Sadar Hills to a full fledged district.

The Government did nothing to defuse the looming crisis at hand. It did not deem it fit to open its door for a political dialogue and it did not think that the situation warranted that NH-39 should be cleared. Maybe the Chief Minister and his men including the Babus were under the impression that the Manipur Rifles and the IRB units were set up primarily to provide them security escort.

Talk about the overblown ego of the political class and their stooges in the Government. Four people, including a driver have been killed besides numerous vehicles reduced to cinders on NH-39, all connected in one way or the other to the agitation launched to bestow district status on Sadar Hills, and the best that the Government has come up with is the announcement that foolproof security would be provided along the two National Highways from August 16 !

Okay this announcement came before the driver passed away but this in no way minimises the sheer indifference of the Government to the plight of the people. With NH-39 literally reduced to an off limit zone for all types of vehicles, the Government turned to the next best available option and the farce of a National Highway that is NH-53 is there for all to see and experience.

There is definitely something significant in the observation that it becomes literally difficult to recognise a truck or any other vehicle, after it has traversed through the length of the Imphal to Jiribam stretch of this highway.

Chief Minister O Ibobi was at his vocal best when he observed that it is only Manipur where National Highways are blockaded and in as much as his statement suited the occasion coming as it did on August 15, what was not said is the fact Manipur must be the only place on earth where it takes close to three days for a truck to cover 220 Kms on a National Highway !

Read this as Imphal to Jiribam or vice versa. This is the condition of the National Highways and seen against this fact it is therefore not surprising to see that all the roads in Imphal have been reduced to the status of inter-village roads.

This could be the reason why the Village Defence Force boys are seen all over the roads of Imphal, occupying every single standing space. It is amazing to see the tolerance limit of the people for nowhere will one find a place with roads, which are nothing but potholes, with some space for driving or walking.

It is not only the less frequented roads which are cluttered with potholes and bumps of every kind, but even NH-39, to the east of Johnstone Higher Secondary School.

The condition of the roads tell of a Government which gives a damn about the public and given such a situation where driving means not only negotiating through the crazy traffic rules and regulations but also bumping from one pot hole to another, it is not difficult to see the visage of wealth and contentment written all over the faces of all those who run the repair centres for vehicles.

Nothing wrong with this of course, but there is everything wrong with the utter indifference of the Government. Questions may also be raised on why the top floors of the newly inaugurated market complexes at Khwairamband bazar continue to remain unoccupied.

Why are these floors still empty when in fact a large number of womenfolk have been forced to ply their trade in the open at Lamphel ? The possibility of permits being issued far more than what these floors can accommodate cannot be written off entirely and hence the logical question that follows is, who are the persons who issued the permits ?

Not any Tomba and Chaoba, obviously and why ? The sensibilities of the common people have been outraged for far too long and the greatest irony lies in the fact that despite the fact that fuel stock and LPG is practically nil at the depot, the same floods the black market.

This itself is another damning story. Or is this a case of another avatar of the contract system over which the Government is obsessed with ?