Caricature of Meitei Nongsha : The law is an ass
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: July 18 2011 -

hops closed after traffic crackdown and cops on bikes break the one way rule

If the law is an ass, to refer to Mr Bumble in Charles Dicken's unforgettable piece of literary work, Oliver Twist, then it presupposes that the law should apply only to those who can be brow beaten into the category of the mule and the jackass !

Reverse this and it means that the law does not apply to those who cannot be herded into the category of the mule and the jackass !

Mr Bumble is the character credited for coming out with this observation in Oliver Twist, first published in 1838 and more than a century and half later we have another character in the form of the present dispensation in Manipur which is determined to better the original.

So it stands that the law is applicable only to those category of people who can be identified as the hoi-polloi, the general public, while this same set of law can be flushed down the toilet by those who have been baptised by the spin doctors with their immunisation jabs.

The spin doctors come under the nomenclature babudom and their political bosses and they roost at the secretariat while those baptised with the immunisation shots don the khakis and can be seen strutting and throwing their weight around.

What happened at Paona bazar on July 16 is the cumulative result of a system which has encouraged the existence of two distinct class of people, one who are expected to follow the rules and regulations while the other can give a damn about the such regulations.

The institutionalisation of such a system has come to mean that social status is closely and increasingly understood through the prism of how often or how long a rope one can get to buck the rules and regulations.

This is the reason why we see police officers, political leaders, those who occupy the corridors of power and those with the connection in the right places, flouting the rules and regulations and anyone who can buck the rules and regulations inevitably climbs the ladder of social respectability.

If this does not mean that the law is an ass, what situation will qualify to have this viewpoint ? And nowhere is this so visible as the manner in which this class of people flout traffic norms as if it is their God given rights.

Seen those heavy vehicles of the security forces parked plum in the middle of the busy Thangal bazar road, or to be more precise just to the west of the popular grocery store Jalan Provisional Store ?

The traffic cop, who is otherwise a tough man while pulling up the ordinary folk is suddenly reduced to a whimpering creature when these trucks accompanied by tough looking, mustachioed men in olive greens, make themselves comfortable in the middle of the road !

The scene is just right to rewind our clock and go back to the days when popular artiste Sanaton belted out the profound "Meitei Nongsha Mamingta Ngairay." No doubt it is the system, a system which provides ample roof for the bully mentality to prosper and we all know the mindsets of the bully.

There is a reason for the overwhelming sentiment that the men in khakis are mistakes, but deliberate mistakes and a product of the heady cocktail of power, read gun power, unbridled authority and patronage from the political class.

What happened at Paona bazar on July 16 is a culmination of such a system reaching its crescendo and the picture which showed shops with their shutters closed to protest the spell of devastation wreaked by a police team ostensibly to enforce the no parking norm inside Paona bazar against some cops on their fancy bikes nonchalantly violating the one way traffic norm, fits the description of "the law is an ass."

Or is the Government going to say that the photo was digitally manipulated ? Give us a break. Other than the misplaced sense of duty exhibited by the men in uniform, what also stood out glaringly was the complete lack of cohesion and logic in the decision of the Government to crack the whip against parking in the commercial areas of Imphal.

The objective is no doubt grand. Ease the traffic movement in the commercial centres of Imphal. This is what we need but there is nothing grand nor bright in turning Paona bazar and Thangal bazar into thorough fares.

On the one hand there is a no parking norm to ease traffic and on the other hand there is a Government which cannot look beyond Imphal and thinks nothing wrong in over populating the capital with one structure after the other.

The poverty of idea is not so disappointing for it is perfectly in line with the characteristics the present dispensation has demonstrated all these years, but what cannot go down well with the people is obviously the existence of two sets of rules and regulations.

Can the cops who personally took part in carrying out "Operation All Clear" at Paona bazar, sincerely say that the no parking norm applies to their bosses and the security forces ?

Why were the boys in khakis given the idea that they can zoom around on their bikes through the one way route ? Moreover can the SPF Government really say that the parked vehicles pose more hindrance than the "cover up and then dig up and then leave it alone" exercise that has been going on for ages in front of GM Hall and Johnstone Higher Secondary School, not to speak of the other routes in Imphal.

It would have looked fair, if the over zealous cops had also rained their lathis on the JCB parked near the dug out pit in front of Johnstone Higher Secondary School. If the Government is hell bent on creating two sets of laws in the land, then we have a class of citizens who too need to be taken back to elementary schools for some lessons on civic sense.

The people would have scored much higher if only they had objected to the grand idea of the Government instead of parking their vehicles in violation of the rules and regulations. But as two hands are needed to clap, perhaps there is the need for two sides to come together and script the farce of a land that Manipur has become.