Non Manipuri vendors may get new seat allocations
- Hueiyen Lanpao Editorial :: July 19 2011 -

The incumbent chairman of the Imphal Municipal Council has given a strong hint that Mayang fruit vendors will be given new stalls. This will not only be an unpopular move but a wrong move.

To be blunt and objective, Mayang migrant workers are here in Manipur not because of their affinity with Manipuri society and its values. They are here solely to make a good earning.

The average Mayang is not bothered about the trials and tribulations of the local people, all they need is a reasonably stable social set up where each one can send back thousands or lakhs of rupees every month to their families.

Some mayangs may interpret this view point as anti Indian and unpatriotic. But it is not, it is only asking for a reassessment of anti mayang migrant workers.

At best one can be faulted if by defining ‘Indian’ one is referring to mayang migrant workers only. In which case we will have made a monumental disaster in forming our understanding of what constitutes India.

The socio-economic reality of human community and individual life is to succeed, if need be, at the cost of the denial of natural rights to others. This is an undeclared law.

It is also absolutely natural for people whose rights are being usurped to fight back. Seen from this perspective it will be no surprise if Manipuris fight for their rights and only those with sinister thoughts about Manipur will argue otherwise.

One of the most fallacious and specious reasoning put forward by those lullabying Manipuris into eternal sleep and vegetation is that all Indians live as members of a diverse but large family.

That there should not be any 'artificial' boundaries among the kindred which forms the Indian polity. Further expanding this fallacy, we are told we enjoy equal rights and equal opportunities as Indians.

That if a Manipuri, if good enough, can succeed any where in India, and vice versa, ie a mayang should enjoy equal opportunities all over India, and protectionism should not be a hindrance.

Let us try to unravel this unique concept of being an Indian by first realizing that Manipur is the only state in the country where migrant workers are assured of police protection. In the name of equality can Manipuri workers expect the same advantage in any other state in the country?

But what indeed has gone wrong? In our obsession to be impeccable Indians we are quite willing to lose our identity as Manipuris.

Are Maharastrians willing to take this convoluted course of defining themselves as Indians par excellence? How about Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kashmir, Mizoram or Nagaland?

Have they all fallen to our base level? We are trying too much to be good Indians, and yet as a community we have only succeeded to earn suspicion, envy and isolation. You become a pain in the neck if you want to prove more than required.

We have enough as sports champions, administrators, officers in the defence forces, scientists, entrepreneurs and a skilled private sector force. There is no need to prove our Indianess by giving special attention to migrant workers.

Don't spoil them, let them eke out an existence in their own states. After all it is not their money which produces our achievers of whom we are so proud of.

IMC Chairman, N Raghumani, please put brain into gear before engaging mouth.