Delhi, Raj Bhavan: Losing the plot ? :: Paralysing Imphal
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: June 10, 2025 -

More than apparent that Delhi has lost the plot and so too has Raj Bhavan.

And in losing the plot, Delhi and Raj Bhavan have been stumbling from one fiasco to the other, the latest being the arrest of a leader of the Arambai Tenggol.

Raj Bhavan has explained that the arrest has nothing to do with the arrested man being a member of Arambai Tenggol, but there is something called timing and it says something profound that this aspect has not been taken into consideration while the CBI went ahead and arrested the man in question and took him outside Manipur.

The result is there for all to see on the numerous road blocks and bonfires lit up in the middle of the roads to dissuade the people from moving around.

240 hours is the timeline of the bandh announced by the Arambai Tenggol and Imphal has already finished 48 hours of the bandh.

God knows if the 240 hours or ten days bandh will secure the release of the arrested man but the inconvenience the bandh has caused to the people need not to be over stressed.

And the inconvenience can better be understood in the context of the movement of the people.

Anyone who steps outside the house on a bandh day, as stringent as the one called right now, must have a genuine reason to do so but as they say logic and the willingness to listen to reason can be tossed aside when one is blinded by the smoke bellowing out of the bonfire lit in the middle of the road.

The same road which everyone will have to use to go from one place to the other.

And it is the common people who will suffer the most from the potholes which will develop after the fires have died down.

The rich and those who come up in the higher pecking order of the Government will not be unduly inconvenienced, moving as they do in their fancy SUVs and MPVs but the common people who have to take the taxi autos and two wheelers and the lower rung cars.

So even as Delhi and Raj Bhavan have lost the plot on how to deal with the issues at hand, the worst sufferers have been those who do not come under the salaried class, meaning the people who make their living from day to day-in other words the daily wage earners and there are many in Manipur, a fact that can be established by just taking a walk down to the marketplace.

A case of the State administration failing or not bothering to understand local sentiments and conveying the same to the Centre, the power centre to which the CBI reports?

That the arrest would be met with strong protest is a truism which would not have blown over Delhi if only the correct situation and the pulse of the people had been conveyed to the Centre.

A reflection that Delhi still does not understand the ground reality here?

Either way this does not speak well of the regime, a step which was resorted to as the last step after Manipur burned for 18 months, since May 3, 2023 to February 13, 2025.

What is the way forward?

Raj Bhavan or the Chief Secretary need to study the option of reaching out to the people and explain the stand of the Government.

Such a move has the possibility of sending out the right message, in the sense that the Government cares for the sentiments of the people but at the same time has certain duties to adhere to.

Either way Manipur has burned for too long and it absolutely makes no sense to add fuel to the burning embers.

As repeatedly said, absence of violence should not be equated with normalcy for beneath the calm may run the pent up anger and fury of the people which can erupt any time.

This is what Manipur is witnessing right now.