We all know and experience that the Government of Manipur is corrupt, incompetent, and insincere. But what pains us most is its dogged refusal to learn from own mistakes, arrogant denial of the necessity of improved changes, shunting out the global thinking and approach, and the absolute lack of willingness for a transition to a more sincere approach.

Two recent events and the management of the Government of these two are quite telling in so far as the incompetence of the Government is concerned. The two events are the management of the bird flu epidemic and the approach to the 2001 census as it relates to the delimitation issue.

Bird Flu: The National Aeronautics and Space Administration of United States has a massive space research and satellite programme. But they have a key person in the organization who can save or kill a programme. This person is the economist whose words on the cost effectiveness of a programme are always awaited with bated breath by the scientists and engineers.

Similarly any nation who faces epidemics, floods and other calamities always include economists in the control and management programme in order to simultaneously assess the effectiveness of the programmes as well as the spread of the damages caused by the epidemic or calamity.

This is because the effects and the spreads cannot be easily assessed by economist at their individual level because of the lumpy costs involved in such studies. But such costs can be easily accommodated as part of the Government schemes of management.

Given this global background and the logic of assessment, the recent approach of the State Government to bird flu management is plain stupid. First, bird flu is much more than a culling the birds approach. Secondly, the livelihood of many is involved in the management of bird flu.

When it is affected thus, there are secondary effects as well on the livelihood of many who depend on buying from or selling their products to the poultry people. Thirdly, the eagerness with which the officials appeared on the camera rather than initiating prompt action on the epidemic must be the joke of the year.

In short, bird flu is an epidemic with economy-wide implications, but the reduction of it to a culling the birds approach is an extreme example of the stupidity, incompetence and insincerity of the State Government. In fact, the State Government has wasted an opportunity to enhance its own capability and improve upon its own method of crises management.

2001 Census and Delimitation: Well, the leaders of the people have announced, after their joint pilgrimage to Delhi, through the media that the delimitation on the basis of 2001 Census would be deferred. Hope it is something more than a political gimmick.

What makes one have a good laugh is the argument and approach of the State argument and ultimately the resolution of the Assembly. It was about three years back that the response to the issue was made farcical by the State Government by appointing a committee of officials.

We had argued then that controversies surrounding census cannot be handled by officials as the latter have neither the competence nor the authority to deliberate. Now the State Government has doubled the folly by renaming the committee of officials as Technical Committee. We sincerely wish the State Government were genuinely technical in its performance and competence as it wants to have in name!!!

The latest matter worthy of a good laugh is the resolution of the Assembly to have a repeat census. It is a kind of resolution which betrays lack of awareness, absence of application of mind, and the general incompetence of the administration. We have reasons for saying so.

First, any census is a decennial event with almost regular intervals. It is something which cannot be undone or redone by a resolution of the Assembly. Secondly, supposing the silly proposal for a re-census in 2007 is somehow accepted, the question necessarily arises as to how the births after 2001 to be accommodated; even if accommodated, there arises the issues of comparability of census results.

Thirdly, there have been cases when the projected figures were taken as figures for the particular census. This had happened recently, for example, in Assam and Jammu and Kashmir. The most sensible and respectable resolution of the Assembly would have been to treat 2001 as non-census year for Manipur.

Once this is done, what figures and how to estimate the 2001 figures would be for agencies vastly different from the “technical committee” of the State Government.

The bottom-line: The bottom-line of my argument is that the State Government is already too late in learning from global approaches to management of crises. While the self-assumed perfections and know-all mind-set of the functionaries of the State Government have so far served the personal interests for self-aggrandizement wonderfully, they have utterly destroyed the capability of the people and Government.

It is time every Department in the Government learns that there is also life beyond its own immediate concerns. The appreciation of this requires the collaboration of a cross-section of people of different disciplinary backgrounds.