Circle to Square; Conference to Chaos :: Streak of genius
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: June 29 2011 -

The streak of genius is unmistakable. If the Congress at the Centre displayed their innovative ideas prominently by turning a circle to a square by renaming Connaught Circle as Rajiv Square, the State Congress unit has gone a step forward and achieved the seemingly impossible task of turning a party conference into a street nuisance !

The circle to square transformation was pointed out by the inimitable TVR Shenoy in his column in The Week magazine and it came at that time when the world had not yet heard of Bill Gates and Windows meant...well windows and not the Windows as understood by the dotcom generation.

Fast forward by two or three decades and today we have the Congress led SPF Government dramatically turning a strictly Congress affair into a political do which had oodles of nuisance value.

Faleiro lived up to his calling as a Congress leader and while he did what was expected of him, Mr Ibobi and his men excelled themselves on June 27 and came up with ideas that will take some imagination and time to beat.

Ten thousand Congress workers, supporters and sympathisers was the projected number of people expected to attend the one day political conference of the Congress at Mapal Kangjeibung on June 27 and no there was no disappointment as far as the turn out was concerned.

To these thousands of people, the destination was Mapal Kangjeibung and so it was that a number of buses, Tata Magic, Boleros and vehicles of every sort and hue, filled to full capacity, rose to the clarion call of the Congress and magnificently towered above all and everything along NH-39 on the Kanglapat road.

No doubt, the teeming number of Congresswallahs must have impressed Faleiro so much so that he seemed to have been smitten by the Ibobi bug and there was no question of holding back when he opened his mouth to sing Halleluiah in honour of the honourable Chief Minister.

To thousands of Congress supporters and the hanger ons, it was a day to cherish and why not, for it is not everyday that the average Tomba and Chaoba get to be driven into the heart of Imphal, VIP style. It was altogether a different story to the others, who did not attend the self congratulating exercise at Mapal Kangjeibung.

The Congress made it sure that the motorists endure a nightmarish experience, negotiating through the heavy traffic and getting stalled in the middle of the road. "Foolish people, don't they know that her Majesty, the Congress, is going to have a political do at Mapal Kangjeibung today..." must have been the line that the Congresswallahs uttered under their breath on seeing the large number of vehicles being forced to proceed at snail's pace in front of Raj Bhawan.

The Congress, courtesy the SPF Government, also decided to extend their best hospitality to the buses for ferrying the participants and they were booked at the best available space-the eastern side of NH-39, just behind Kanglapat. Parking norms ? Don't be silly, it cannot apply to the important guests of the SPF Government and the buses were very important guests on June 27.

VIP connection is the term that was generally understood as the special arrangements put in place so that the important persons such as the honourable Mr Ibobi and his ilk enjoy uninterrupted power supply.

However in another stroke of genius or in another demonstration of the streak of genius in the Congress, all those who turned up at Mapal Kangjeibung on that day were treated to VIP connection.

The rider was that majority of the people in Imphal were starved of power supply, just to ensure that the political conference passed off without a hitch at Mapal Kangjeibung. If this is not innovation, then what is ?

And so it was that the full glory of the Congress, by virtue of being the party to head the SPF Government, was shown for all to see and suffer ! Now since all these innovations and demonstrations of the genius in the political leaders did nothing except add to the nuisance value, some lessons in the fundamentals of how to wield power is in order.

We are certainly not fools to believe that the lessons will be absorbed but just for the sake of teaching we will go ahead. In the first place, the Chief Minister and his men had no business to convene the political conference at Mapal Kangjeibung.

The MSCP did it, when the triumvirate of Nipamacha, Chandramani and Th Choaba were the Trimurtis of Manipur, but that was more than a decade back and the banks and financial institutions were not that generous with car loans. Moreover there was no Imphal Sewerage Project which means there were no roads which were left unattended after being dug up.

A number of young men and young women have since then become parents. These are the fundas which should have been kept in mind and of course Tata Motors had not yet come out with their Tata Magic nor Bajaj with the Auto rickshaw models that we see today.

Given their IQ, maybe these facts are just a little too complicated to register in the minds of the political leaders, but how long do we suffer their juvenile antics, is the question that comes to mind.

TVR Shenoy put it just right by explaining how a circle can be turned into a square and here we have the Chief Minister authoring a script on how a political conference can be turned into a traffic nightmare.

God must have been on their side that day, for no major fire broke out or else the Fire Brigade would have been pressed hard to develop a winged vehicle to let them pass through the vehicles parked all over NH-39. Here is a toast to the June 27, political conference of the Congress.