Any city, starting from the ancient Rome, underlines the necessity of a conscientious administration. The need for such an administration is felt in Imphal right now than ever.

Experiencing the daily life to work in Imphal, I am now fully convinced that we have got enough rationale for suing the government for the so–called development projects being executed in the city under the environmental and hazardous activities regulations at least.

In any case, we sincerely wish, we had a judiciary as active as elsewhere in the country on matters concerning the daily life and livelihood of the commoners.

Contemporary reasons: The so-called development projects in the city have already overshot the calculated costs by a wide margin. Let me explain my reasons for saying so. First, time is a critical input in any urban administration for economic development.

As Robert Updegraff says, “To get all there is out of living, we must employ our time wisely, never being in too much of a hurry to stop and sip life, but never losing our sense of the enormous value of a minute.”

One invariant guiding principle of any urban administration anywhere in the world is to shorten the time taken to cover any distance.

While this principle can be compromised for absolutely short durations, yet it can never be violated for months together. The daily time cost to the economy of Manipur due to the current traffic mess in the city would range from about Rs. 9 million to about Rs. 15 million – a huge cost by any standard.

Secondly, reducing or mitigating the negative environmental impacts of a project is now globally accepted norm and respected in India as well. But what we now see in and around Imphal in the name of development projects is more of dust pollution than of progress in the works.

What is really disturbing the absolute negligence of this aspect and absence of any effort to mitigate this pollution. The daily environmental cost, other than negative health effects to which I come soon, of this dust pollution would be approximately of the range of Rs. 1 million to Rs. 3 million.

The third unattended and unmitigated negative impact of the current so-called development projects is in the realm of health. Any development intervention is fundamentally to enhance the welfare of the people, and this necessarily includes improvement, at least not worsening, the health condition of the population.

But any movement about the city is a sure means to acquire sinusitis and headache, and if exposed longer tuberculosis. This definitely is an unpardonable negative impact of the ongoing projects, and more so because India is one of the only 22 countries around the globe with a heavy burden of tuberculosis.

In other words, the ongoing projects add to the health burden of the country a sum ranging from Rs. 2 lakh to Rs. 5 lakh on a daily basis.

The point I am driving at is that the ongoing projects are costing the State and additional sum of Rs. 10 million to more than Rs. 18 million on a daily basis in terms of environmental, time and health costs.

More Unfortunate: What is more disturbing and definitely damaging from a longer run perspective is the scenario of absence of an urban administration in the capital of the State. The activities, the flows and the happenings all seem to be without any direction and all at loggerheads. It is this absence of governance which would be the most difficult aspect to rectify.

In any sensible city, the traffic, to give an example, should be based on a system evolved by the urban administration and protected by the police. But quite contrary to this norm, due to the absence of the administration, the responsibility has been taken over by the police.

I have every pity for the State police who now have an additional responsibility for which they are ill trained. Continuing on this point, zoning of urban areas should again be the responsibility of the urban administration, but this too has again been left to the responsibility of the police.

The present method of restricting entries to the city centers is a self-defeating approach if we are ready to learn the lessons of urban governance from around the world. If willed, we may convert the main business areas into foot streets like they do in Germany or the Gandhi market in Gangtok.

But the present approach of restricting with exceptions is a regulation of a worse kind. Well, purely on a transitory basis, we can think of exceptions to the vehicles plying school children, but definitely not of any other.

History of implementation of any rule anywhere tells us that exceptions create a scope for favouritism and corruption, and ultimately lead to the death of the purpose of the regulation.

The Upshot: The upshot of my argument in this intervention is that the present crisis in the State is not one of law and order to be addressed by the police forces, but one of governance.

The time has now come for the citizenry to rise and resort to the laws of the land to restore governance in the State.