Develop NH-37 for what it is : Wallowing buffaloes
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: April 27, 2012 -

The condition of NH-37 :: Pix - TSE

Government babus and their political masters are not trained to think out of the box and this perfectly suits them. But with India opening up her economy from the early part of the 90s, a paradigm shift is in line and while tremendous changes have been witnessed in many sectors, there are still some areas where the cobwebs spawned by the license raj or Babudom to continues to cast its long shadow.

And nowhere is this more visible than the buffaloes wallowing in the middle of NH-37 or the Imphal-Jiri stretch. For decades, this stretch, which is otherwise a National Highway, has been caught in a time warp comfortably fitting the description of an inter-village road or a dirt track.

The failure or the unwillingness to think out of the box is nowhere more clearly reflected in the 'alternative lifeline' tag given to this stretch.

To draw a parallel, falling back on NH-37 when NH-2 is blocked is akin to calling up a player from the reserve bench after a key player in the first eleven has suffered a break down in the middle of a high voltage football match.

This is a temporary arrangement and while this may work in a football match, this will not work when it comes to the business of keeping a land locked State and people connected to the rest of the world, all the time.

A National Highway dubbed as the second lifeline of the State getting the official tag is a laugh, a joke.

B team as a term may sound prudent in the cut throat world of politics but not when it comes to necessary infrastructure of the State, especially its lifelines and more so in a place like Manipur, which is a land locked State.

A brief recap is in line. The Imphal-Jiribam line, then known as NH-53, came to the consciousness of the people and the State when Manipur witnessed her first marathonesque 52 days economic blockade imposed by the All Naga Students' Association, Manipur back in 2005.

This was followed by the 63 days economic blockade in 2010 and then by the record setting 121 days highways blockade in 2011. It is these three instances which made the Government of Manipur and Delhi sit up and take due cognizance of the presence of NH-37.

It is this mindset which has been one of the fundamental reasons for the on and off work progress over NH-37 and there is nothing to suggest that the Babudom has freed itself from the shackles of viewing the development of this stretch against the disturbance on NH-2 then known as NH-39.

In its essence all National Highways should be developed, maintained and kept in motorable conditions throughout the year, but as long as the motivating force to develop NH-37 rests on the premise of a second lifeline, then the stalemate will continue.

In other words, as long as there are no disturbances on NH-2 or the Imphal-Dimapur route, the urgency to develop the Imphal-Jiribam stretch will be relegated to the background and this is what has been happening.

Why can't NH-37 be developed according to the benchmark of what a National Highway should be ? Why should its development depend on what may or will happen on NH-2 ? The 'substitute' mindset should be banished from the cloistered world of the babudom and the political masters.

The Imphal-Jiribam stretch should be developed because it is a National Highway and because Manipur needs as much surface connections with the outside world as possible. A knee jerk reaction is what we see in the development work being taken up along the Imphal-Jiribam stretch.

This not only exposes a poverty of idea and seriousness on the part of the Government of India but also a 'devil may care' attitude.

That the State Government has utterly failed in keeping a tab on the work of the BRO along this stretch needs no elaboration and their submission to the Centre that the task be handed over to the State agencies reeks of the contract syndrome, nothing else.

Unshackle the 'substitute route' mindset and go about with the work of developing NH-37 to the status of a National Highway. This should be the calling card of the Babudom.

If Manipur did not suffer from the politics of blockade, then this route would never have registered in the minds of the Babudom and this is saying a lot without uttering too many words.