Manipur is a land of paradoxes.

Everywhere the cry for peace rend the air yet on the other side the gun culture thrives and people have reconciled themselves to live amid the threats and intimidations looming over their heads without so much of a whimper of protest.

The land is also infamous for its numerous bandhs and strikes, which means people agitating against the Government for robbing them of what they perceive are their rights and on the other hand we have a tolerant people who have learnt to cope with the lack of even the most fundamental of needs such as access to safe drinking water, power supply or clean and smooth roads.

So while a group of people will not hesitate to come together and form a JAC to impose a Statewide bandh or call a general strike, we have a people who have been tolerating the utter failure of the State machinery to deliver the goods.

For all practical purposes the numerous public utility services agencies in the State have utterly failed to live up to its duties and responsibilities and not a whimper has been raised, other than the solitary voice of dissent or anger.

Take any of the public utility service agency in the State and one will not disagree with the point that they have miserably failed the people. From the banks to the post office, water supply department, power supply department, etc, all of them have failed to deliver the service for which they were set up in the first place.

A day at the bank on any given week or month is something like a nightmare with computer breakdowns becoming something of a routine stuff. Or take the case of the water supply agency. Not a word of audible protest has been raised against the quality of water being supplied to the people for consumption.

The same is the case with the Postal Department. We have lost count of the number of complaints we have received from our readers over the failure of the postman to deliver their post on time. At times it is about young people looking for job opportunities receiving their call letter well after the interview date has expired.

At other times it could mean losing a year since the postman forgot to deliver the admit card for a competitive examination on time.

The latest complaint that we have received comes from the Headmaster of a school, whose student lost out on the opportunity to sit for the second phase of the National Talent Search Examination just because the admit card was delivered a few days after the examination was held !

We understand that a complaint has been lodged with the Director of Postal Department, Manipur by the Principal of the school, but it is not yet clear what action would be taken up and going by past experiences we are not very optimistic about the whole thing. A public utility service like the Postal Department ought to know its job better.

This may be the IT age where all information and messages can be sent through the E Mail, but still there are many places which do not have this facility and not all homes can afford a computer, much less an internet connection.

Hence the importance of the Postal Department continues, especially in a place like Manipur and more over many Government Departments still rely on the Post to communicate with the people.

It is time the authority concerned pull up its socks and fix responsibilities. We cannot go on compromising with the future of our youngsters because of the inefficiency of some lumpen elements.