The curious and undefendable stand of the BSEM
- Hueiyen Lanpao Editorial :: April 01, 2011 -

The school academic session 2011-2012 begins on April 1, 2011 and yet students are yet to avail of textbooks.

The Board of Secondary Education Manipur (BSEM) is again caught pants down. Surely by now they must realise theirs is a worn out act and that the distant drums they hear are not welcome beats but that they signify the launch of a hunt, the hunt for the BSEM.

Something is rotten in the realm of the BSEM. They have no scruples to worry about the fate of students. Procrastination is their way of life and blaming others is their second nature.

So smug is their self contained world, only the live electric wire of a PIL can wake them into their senses. They live in a world that defies reality.

The BSEM must be made answerable to the students and their parents and guardians why it is unable, time after time, to provide textbooks as and when required. The BSEM must realise that their shortcomings affect the students most.

And this is not confined only to the non availability of text books but that their omission ingrains a sense of denied justice in the psyche of young minds. Their's is a criminal attitude, period. This is not funny.

This rigmarole of not supplying textbooks on time is an annual routine. One needs to ask what are the troubles that besets the BSEM from making textbooks available on time. An official of the BSEM huffed and puffed to 'explain' the delay, saying that the delay was caused by the late submission of samples of textbooks by printing firms for review by the Board, and that the murder of the Board's chairman, Late N Kunjabihari was another impediment.

One does not know whether to laugh or cry. Laughing may be construed as a sign of pedestrian taste and since crying will entail borrowing tears from the crocodile we are left with no other choice but to glare fiercely.

The Board must realise that when it opens its mouth it speaks for the state as a whole. Blaming private firms is actually blaming themselves, because it was the Board that chose these firms in the first place, and implicating the Late chairman for the inability to supply textbooks on time is tantamount to laying the blame on a ghost.

One understands the steps of selection of contributors (to make anthologies etc.), the selection of printing firms are all part of a process which is determined by various factors, including extraneous ones.

The public ought to be made aware of such realities, if indeed they are happening, but on queries the Board has only wide eyed innocence to offer. Anyway we know enough of what is to be known, so why bother?

We are faced with the noxious possibility that education in Manipur is probably being shaped by the uneducated fringe.

Since most of us, that is including those who are unsure of their educational moorings love to teach our children the basics of up-to-date education, let us please leave that responsibility to the experts.

Above all let us all stop prying and prodding at the BSEM, let it do its job. Let us humble ourselves with the knowledge that in Nagaland, the BSEM, the counterpart of our BSEM is left alone, even by the two NSCNs.

And to the BSEM we say, please get down to business and stop fooling and toying around with the youth. Behave yourselves. And for once start supplying text books on time.