Road Woes :: Time to start work on the hill roads
- Hueiyen Lanpao Editorial :: October 05, 2010 -

There are perfectly valid grounds for the people living in the hill areas of Manipur to be extremely disappointed and angry with the state government for its apparent negligence toward their plight.

Take any aspect for example which is essential in day-to-day life of the hill people, say, the inter village roads, water supply, electricity, health centre, school, government office, public distribution system and what not, nothing is usable and satisfactory. The roads are perpetually in deplorable conditions.

There would always be knee-deep mud and water all along the roads. The condition is worst during rainy season, which gets compounded by landslides. No kind of vehicles including even Shaktiman truck and Jeeps can wheel through. Such are the roads in the interior parts of the hill districts.

So many villages with thousands of villagers are connected by such roads with the sub-division head quarters, district headquarters and the rest of the state and the country.

Then take the case of water supply–it is still a dream to a majority of the people. Most of the hill people live by the water from the natural streams located deep down the gorge where the village girls and womenfolk have to trudge down and up the hill to fetch a few litres of water in bamboo containers in the cane baskets on their backs to drink and use for all purposes.

It's only in a few places in the hill districts that the state Public Health Engineering Department (PHED) had installed water supply schemes. Similarly, go to the so-called primary health centres–there are no doctors, no compounders and no nurses. The Chowkidar would act as the doctor, compounder and nurse–all-in-one.

Then there are no real teachers in the schools. One or two literate villagers, who substitute for the real teachers and get a part of the monthly salary of the teacher, would be found teaching the village pupils. And talk about PDS items like rice, sugar, kerosene, etc, the villagers would never have heard of or seen them.

These are the stark realities of life in the interior parts of the hills of Manipur, and we talk about integrity and brotherhood in the comforts of the city life. How hard life in the hills must be. No wonder the rich tribals, who can afford, leave their ancestral villages and come down to Imphal, purchase land, build nice and big houses and settle in the city.

The tribal leaders and politicians, who have made millions out of the funds allocated by the state and Central governments for development of the hill areas and welfare programmes of the people of their respective assembly constituencies, in order to win the election, blame the state government for the pathetic backwardness of the hill areas.

They tell the simple and innocent tribal masses that it's because the state government has neglected their (hill) areas all these years, the hill areas had remained so badly underdeveloped. These tribal political leaders' only tool to conceal their own wrong-doings and looting the public money meant for the people of the hills is to blame and castigate the state government and the valley people, thus injecting venom in the mind of the hill people to the extent of seeding hatred and animosity toward the major community.

This is one among other factors how the bond of brotherhood between the hill and the valley people began to experience a rupture. It's the result of a long and gradual process or campaign, and will take time to heal. It would heal. But in order to get it healed, the government and the people need to do a lot of work.

Especially, the government needs to reach out to the people of the hills, adopt a more pliant position and listen to their grievances, and take up steps immediately to provide what they require. Now also, there are plenty of works that the government must take up.

First of all, we, in the media, have been getting a lot of complaints from people of hill areas about the deplorable condition of the roads, particularly in Ukhrul, Tamenglong and Chandel districts. The authority concerned needs to look into the matter seriously and do what it is expected to do. The government should not sit on the grievances and look the other way.