With Govt abdicating its duties... Emerging enterprising people
- Sangai Express Editorial :: May 20, 2013 -
The booming private water tanker business.
The brisk sale of power generators.
The popularity of Led lamps from Moreh.
Taxi services criss-crossing the entire length and breadth of Imphal and the outlying areas.
The innovative idea of hiring out Led lamps to women vegetable vendors in the market by private players.
A case of a place full of enterprising people or a case of the Government abysmally failing in its basic duties towards its citizens ? The latter is more likely.
With people getting power supply for only 7 to 8 hours in a day, and here it is about Imphal, power generators have to be the answer.
With water supply limited to only twice or thrice in a week and that too for only a few hours, private water tankers have to be the only option left to the people.
The pressure of population on land, which in turn has translated into ponds disappearing in almost all the localities, the disappearing water bodies etc have only gone on to make private water tankers indispensable to the people.
Absence of public transportation can be seen clearly in the number of taxis on the roads of Imphal, anytime of the day.
This is not privatisation, not about opening up the economy nor the Foreign Direct Investment, which shook the country some time back.
This is about the Government pathetically failing in its duty towards its citizens. Little wonder then that political parties like the Left which is ideologically opposed to privatisation has not deemed it necessary to get down to the nitty gritty of the farce that is being enacted, with the people forced to shell out extra money from their pockets regularly.
This however does not mean that the Government has failed in providing all that is expected from them. Security is one thing that has not been short in coming.
The difference however is, providing security has come to mean providing security escorts to the class of people who come under the tag of VVIPs or even VIPs.
A skewed mindset, if one may add. The common people do not count. The absence of basic services is the standing proof of this mindset.
Obviously the language of the common people become the vocabulary of all the political leaders when election time comes and credit should be given to these leaders for managing to pull wool over the eyes of the public and continue with their charade which is then passed off as governance.
Not surprising then this is the place where major projects such as the Inter-State Bus Terminus, the City Convention Centre and others have been inaugurated but are yet to be opened to the public.
No wonder then that NH-37 or the Imphal-Jiribam stretch of the highway has been under repair/improvement works for nearly a decade.
Ironic and at the same time tragic that in the failure of the Government to provide even the most basic of services, a number of enterprising people have emerged to make a living.
A blessing in disguise ?
Or a curse in disguise ?
A curse would be more like it.
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