Landslides, blockades and Manipur's vulnerability
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: August 27 2015 -

Manipur at present is literally cocooned within the nine ranges of mountains that surround the central valley portion. Imphal-Dimapur highway is cut off at Phesama, Nagaland by landslides.

Barak Bridge has gone out of service and it is still very difficult for heavy vehicles to ply on Imphal-Moreh highway.

Landslides may be partially attributed to natural factors but break down of man-made bridges cannot be attributed to any force of nature.

It only manifests inefficacy, ineptitude and laxity on the part of BRO which is responsible for constructing and maintaining Imphal-Jiribam highway.

It also suggests Government of India’s treatment of Manipur as nothing more than a frontier which is there to protect the boundary of India.

Whereas Manipur is entirely dependent on imported goods for its daily requirements, Imphal-Dimapur-Guwahati highway is virtually the only route which is fit for movement of heavy trucks.

Yes, there is the Imphal-Jiribam highway but it is still as unreliable as it was 20 years back. Manipur is a classic case of landlocked hinterland.

It is simply bewildering that those at the helm of affairs at New Delhi cannot make a standard, all-weather highway between Imphal and Silchar even in this cyber age.

A landlocked State like Manipur needs not just one or two highway(s) but at least half a dozen which would connect the State with the outside world in different directions.

Now it is landslide which is isolating Manipur from the rest of the world. Many a great time, Manipur’s connectivity with the outside world was cut off by highway blockades.

Blockades and their impacts are always painful to the common people and this is something universal.

But impacts of highway blockades get multiplied manifold in Manipur because of the State’s virtual dependence on a single highway for connectivity with the outside world.

So even if everything is calm on Manipur section, movement of goods and people is affected when there is any kind of disturbance or unrest in either of the transit States; i.e. Nagaland and Assam.

Vulnerability to landslides and highway blockades can be reduced significantly by opening as many routes as possible instead of depending entirely on a single route.

No landlocked state can afford to rely on a single transit state. This is a universally accepted understanding and one need not be a rocket scientist to grasp its implications.

Today, highways are road to survival. In future, they can be roads to prosperity.

This is all the more undeniable in the absence of access to sea routes or maritime trade.

What is surprising and indigestible is the failure on the part of political leaders of Manipur to understand the vulnerability of a landlocked hinterland state.

It is agonising to read that our political leaders could never sense the risk of putting the entire population totally dependent on the single highway.

We say single highway because we have stopped counting Imphal-Jiribam route as a highway.

At the same time, we cannot help questioning New Delhi’s sustained policy of keeping Manipur remote and isolated.

Before Manipur’s controversial merger with India, Manipur had road connectivity to the North through Imphal-Kohima-Dimapur road, to the South-East through Imphal -Tamu road and to the West through Imphal-Jiribam-Silchar road.

Yes, these routes exist till today. But over the last 60 years, these routes have been put to disuse except Imphal-Dimapur road which has been made the only serviceable road.

Virtually, Imphal-Dimapur road serves as the only ‘umbilical cord’ (strictly in terms of supplying foods and other goods) between India and Manipur and interestingly this ‘umbilical cord’ is always under threat from highway blockaders.

There is no blockade at the moment. Now, it is landslide but the impacts are more or less the same.

It’s high time as many routes as possible are opened to the outside world to overcome the vulnerability of Manipur to landslides, highway blockades and other disturbances, man-made or natural.

Dependence on a single highway in this cyber age sounds like a dirty political joke.