The hue and cry against the construction of Tipaimukh dam is quite understandable but what is puzzling is the seemingly ignorant attitude of our political leaders of both over ground and underground governments.

The concern and apprehension of the JAC against the dam is real and needs to be addressed properly. We all know that dams destroy environment and affects the lives of certain people.

Yet inspite of all these drawbacks why do Governments all over the world are still making dams.

Are these Governments ignorant? No. These Governments understand the drawbacks and advantages of dams. After carefully considering all aspects making dams makes sense for them.

For some environmentalists or archeologists a few endangered flora and fauna or historical artifacts are more important than the livelihood of thousands of people. Inspite of all the drawbacks dams create electricity which in turn powers industry which will create jobs and livelihood for thousands.

Nowadays raising voice against dams is becoming a fad in India in which some high profile personalities and NGOs jumping into the bandwagon. What these persons are lacking is the ideas for creating alternative energy sources and other job creating avenues.

We need electricity to light our homes, to power the hospitals, to fuel the industry. In fact without electricity we will be back to the Middle Ages. Our present energy needs exceeds the supply in the State. We can produce electricity by burning diesel or coal or wood or bamboo which are polluting and not environmentally friendly.

So as long as we are not yet able to afford nuclear reactors hydel plants through dams are the most environmentally friendly sources of energy. We are lucky that our topography gives the opportunity for such sources. If we do not produce electricity by ourselves we would be buying it from somebody else which is not a better option in the long run.

This is the reason behind China’s construction of the Three Gorges dam which is the biggest in the world and the environmentally conscious Bhutan exporting thousands of megawatts of electricity to India. Does this mean that the leaders of these two countries are stupid? The simple reason is these leaders act like political and public leaders by understanding every aspect of the society and not by looking through the lenses of an environmentalist or an NGO.

By making the largest dam many precious historical places and artifacts aging thousands of years are flooded along the riverbank in China. The Chinese Government understood this and accordingly made arrangements for transferring the artifacts to proper museums and alternative better housing for the people whose villages were flooded.

By sacrificing something China is gaining sources of energy which will fuel their fast growing industry which in turn feed the millions of hungry masses and improve standard of living for the millions.

Manipur has a small population of just over two millions and out of this around half are without jobs (uneducated jobless included) and in order to create jobs we need industrialization. We talk about IT revolution, Tourism industry etc.

But these need electricity and need them in large quantities. All those experts in universities and other economically secure sections of society will talk about environmental issues but they fail to come up with viable alternative.

Our leaders should understand our society properly before it is too late when the volcano erupting from social turmoil resulting from high level of jobless reaches over 50%. And also should stop playing in the hands of some foreign nations and NGOs and start thinking about the future of Manipur seriously.

In order to understand our future we need to look back to our past. If we study our past carefully we found the cause of our present predicament to our lethargic and myopic attitude.

A long time back Manipur was a force to reckon within the South East Asia and suddenly we found ourselves overtaken by Burma. They started firing modern artillery at us and we were devastated by them for seven years and then our inability to embrace modern technology landed ourselves at feet of the British.

Still we could not take the advantage of the British technology and now we land at the feet of Indians. The problem with us is that we think ourselves as smart but not smart enough to know we are hitting a stone wall when we are heading directly to it. Still we are acting smart and acting like high flying environmentalists.

The energy of the JAC ought to be directed to the aspects like the proper relocation of the populace and enough compensation for the affected people and other environmental precautions like earthquakes etc. But dams should be built to survive our selves as dignified citizens of the world.

When we talk about lack of compensation from the Loktak Project and other drawbacks it’s our lethargic attitude to blame. We can raise hue and cry to increase our share of electricity or other aspects which are not advantageous to us. The same is true for the Tipaimukh.

Let them build the dam and we can make it profitable to us. It is about time we acted smart.