Posers parents may raise within : Cacophony of protests
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: June 04, 2022 -

One wonders whether anyone has raised this question within themselves-How do parents cope with the task of bringing up their children amid the loud cacophony of protests, the voices of dissent, the bellowing of one’s trumpet-meaning the trumpet of the community to which one belongs to at the cost of another and the resultant war of words between different sets of people.

The irony is, these protests, the voices of dissent and the roar of one upmanship, have all been raised in the name of doing something good for the people or on behalf of one’s society.

This is the social/political reality of Manipur today and take this one or two steps ahead and one can also raise the question of what parents and elders of the family feel when their children are herded out of the classrooms to protest on the roads and defy the prohibition imposed by the Government and in the process be at the receiving end of water hoses and water canons.

How about when young children are even asked to stop attending private tuition classes, just ahead of their 10th or 12th class examinations ?

Welcome to Manipur and while situation seems to have improved somewhat in the last few years, no one can say when such a situation will return for the same mindset continues to rule the roost.

Parents/guardians and elders of the family are surely being stressed and pulled to the limits and the drama that is being played out by the seniors of society on the turf of even small school going children is there for one and all to see.

The only problem is, no one seems ready to acknowledge this fact and the bottomline is, young school children, when they come of age will have to compete with their peers from across the country.

Is the right ambience being created for the young children ?

The answer to this will obviously lie in the fact that thousands of students make a beeline to go outside the State for their future course of study once they cross the Class X or more particularly the Class XII stage.

Who is responsible for this ugly reality ?

Obviously no one will own up and there will be plenty of finger pointing exercise if this poser is raised directly on anybody or any organisation or any responsible person of the Government.

Parents are today haunted by the question of whether their young children should be kept shielded from what is happening all around or whether they ought to be exposed to the ugly reality to prepare them for life.

It is a tough call and pose this question to anyone and there will be no direct answer, but all hum humming with lots of justification for holding either point of view.

This is sick and will qualify as a classic example of elders of society so engrossed in their own world that they refuse to look how their action can impact on the young minds.

Of late it has been about Thangjing Hill and earlier about Mount Koubru.

Again earlier too it was about economic blockades, the long and serpentine queues in front of petrol pumps, how prices of fuel had sky rocketed in the black market (one never raised the question of how when fuel pumps ran dry, fuel was available in the black market at a price).

All these obviously impacted on the young minds and parents whose children have just crossed the Class X or Class XII stage may have been posed with the question of why highways are being cut off and why they have been consistently told not to step out after dusk.

Manipur is not doing their children any good-this is the bottomline and the paradox is everyone seems to agree that children are the pillars and future of society.

Time for all to take one long, hard look inward and see how things may be set right or at least an attempt be made to set things right.

It is also time for all concerned to seriously question why many parents advise their children against taking part in any student activism in Manipur.

This is a question which all concerned should have raised a long time back.