Why Manipur is poor 2

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E-Pao! Education - Why & how Manipur is poor & backward? - 1

Why & how Manipur is poor & backward?
— Basic infrastructure / harmony & Peace —
Part 2

By: L. Robindro *

Factors affecting directly to the current socio-economic situation.

1. Failure to have basic infrastructure: At first, we lack two basic necessities namely sufficient Energy & Drinking water. It is not new thing to learn about our state’s worse energy & water management system.

Everyone is aware of how frequent power cuts are there in a day/week/month, how many times tape water come in a day/week/month. It is first & foremost worst (unwanted) thing happening in our state. It is most affecting to our day-to-day life.

Since there are no big, medium size industries in our state, most of our business class people are dependent on small-scale industries, service sectors etc. These sectors are most affected.

When everyone is busy with AFSPA issue or other in our beloved home state, the place where a businessman of PCO-cum-cold drink shop, having both generator & Inverter to run his small business, finds it (life) hard to live whereas a similar person lives easily in other cities/places. Under such situation many small businesses have failed, leading common man life from bad to worst.

Thanks to the erratic, frequent & long power cuts back home which force every house to buy inverter + battery set of Rs. 5,000-6,000/-. If there are 50,000 houses using inverter + battery set, how much money we are wasting? Such huge amount of money could have used to build a small wind or solar power plant in each town.

In such situations men/women having completed their highest educations lie idle & left alone to be frustrated/depressed. Other power related bigger problems & issues are left to reader’s imagination, what could be the worse situations?

On the other side, the water supply has failed, long ago, to deliver hygienic drinking water to public. Normally people fetch un-hygienic water from nearby ponds, wells, streams, and rivers etc. for day-to-day uses. Few people boil it and drink but most people do not. Thanks to our natural, God given, the power of anti-germs in our body for surviving from many water borne diseases & potential epidemics.

Let’s imagine a time, when all the people start BOILING water & drink for safety & health reasons. By the time how much energy we would waste? Sorry, I am not able to calculate it since each family is different in size. It may happen if we don’t have a proper, systematic & hygienic water supply system in our state. God’s grace let it not happen.

So it is high time to tackle the energy problem & to have a good, hygienic & systematic water supply system for each block/village/khul etc.

REMEDIES:

There may be many solutions to the problems but in my opinion, the following alternate solutions would be suitable to our region & state. State based NGOs to take up projects on lighting villages/leikais from renewable energy sources like wind & solar, biogas.

More public awareness or Joined public effort to save energy by switch off the bulbs, lamps & other home appliances when not in use. It can be done through Radio, TV, newspapers etc. (in this regard I have a write-up ‘how electric energy can be saved for tomorrow’ with many simple calculations).
We have to abandon using normal bulbs (incandescent lamps) slowly. Using these normal bulbs, lamps lead to more CO2 emission & leading to Global warming. Instead we have to adopt using CFLs (compact florescent lamps) or FLs (locally known as tube lights). There are many advantages (less power, more glow, longer life etc.) using CFLs / FLs over using incandescent lamps.
Of course, timely payment of electric bills is must. Let’s clear all our pending electric bills & let’s pay our electric bill at the end of every month. May be it is Up-hill job to do but we can slowly change & try to adopt it.
Voluntary R&D work on innovation of new & efficient water supply system or circuit depend on the location-to-location and a suitable drinking water recycle system.
Leikai/village clubs to take up social activities/services on proper water supply along with proper drainage system.

2. Disturbance to harmony & Peace: Our home state, Manipur, can be called as a ’Land of Strikes & Bandhs’ and it will make NO surprise to the outside World if once they visit us.

At home common people are NOT aware of how much we loose income/money everyday due to frequent road blockade, bandhs/strikes etc. Needless to mention how these strikes, bandhs are called in Manipur, every common people are aware of it.

In Imphal itself, we loose business or other transactions of estimated Rs. 2 - 3 crore and in whole Manipur we loose approx. Rs. 20-25 crore, every day during a strike/bandh hence affecting every common men/women across the state. Most affected are daily wage-earners, whole education system & other state mechanisms etc. It is the TOTAL LOST to all of us.

When we calculate how much we lost during those long-duration strikes/bandhs, the cost of every strike-day in Imphal can build a school or can construct any other small infrastructures & the cost of every strike-day in Manipur can build a medium size hospital or can repair many roads in better conditions.

And if we could convert those days into income/money, we could have built or constructed many infrastructures across the state.

What I observed is that there are too many clubs & organizations, in Manipur, involving in every single issue before they understand their participation is necessary or NOT.

REMEDIES: It may be difficult to control every single person and in a democratic country like us it may not be possible to stop establishing new clubs & organizations.

But I think it is NOT difficult to control the clubs & organizations. In my opinion, we, as a citizen of Manipur in particular, must be alert, informative & understandable than past since today can not be same as yesterday and tomorrow can never be same as today.

Dear brother & sisters, let’s think first & plan before we do anything. Let’s think one/two minutes in a day & then let us proceed. It really works… let’s try it today my dear Manipuris. In short, Thinking is the mother of all inventions & innovations.

To be continued.....

Read Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 |

L. Robindro, Scientist, R&D, contributes regularly to e-pao.net. He can be contacted at robin_laren(at)hotmail(dot)com . This article was webcasted on May 16th, 2007.

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