Time to bust the myth : Defanging the agenda
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: September 26 2011 -

This is enough. The economic blockades imposed on the National Highways should be immediately called off. Or the highways should be cleared without delay.

Reasoning that cutting off the lifelines of the people to pursue a demand, however justified it may be, has obviously failed to cut ice with the blockade masterminds on either side of the Sadar Hills district demand and this is more than enough indication that their top agenda is no longer pressurising the Government but to inflict wounds on the common man.

This is abhorrently unacceptable. Sadistic pleasure, this is what the people behind the two blockades are deriving out of the situation.

What has life saving drugs got to do with the demand to upgrade Sadar Hills to the status of a full fledged district or with the opposition to grant district status on Sadar Hills ?

It is clear that the issue has moved beyond the demand or its opposition to the demand for district status and has today come to mean something more hideous.

The one common thread that binds the master minds on either side of the Sadar Hills district demand is the mischievously misplaced sense that the fate of 25 lakh odd population lies in their hands and they can do whatever they want with the lives of the people.

This needs to be trashed immediately and to work towards this, the focus of the people should shift from merely an end to the present blockades but on how to defang and impair this train of thought and demonstrate that the survival of the people cannot be in the hands of some people who are nothing much better than a bunch of sadists, who take a vicarious pleasure in inflicting wounds and pain on the common man.

The first step towards working this out then is the need to acknowledge that it is invariably a few individual who hijack the “commonness” of the common man by constructing artificial political and social divides and then deliver the killing blow.

It has been a win-win situation for such class of people. Whipping up a sensitive issue, holding the population to ransom with their rhetoric, earning the tag of heroes by hoodwinking the gullible section of the society by playing with their emotions, these elements then gradually make their way into the consciousness of the public and become some sort of power brokers, doing everything in the name of the public for their private and personal agenda.

The need to puncture this myth has never been felt so urgently as now. First the people, the common man at whose backyard the National Highways pass through, need to be educated on its real importance.

For far too long, these self serving leaders have been defining the importance of the National Highways to suit their narrow political needs and the contrast in the comfortable lifestyle these leaders lead and the hand to mouth existence of the villagers tells many a story.

It is this which should be corrected. Why should the artificially created political and social divides rob the commonness of the common people ?

It is the devious agenda of these elements which have driven one common man to inflict wound on another common man and the commonality of the common people needs to be stressed and highlighted at any cost to heal this wound.

At this age and time when communication and roadways have become the passwords for development, there is no reason why the gullible section of the society should be allowed to be misled into believing that the highways is a convenient tool to inflict wounds and sow seeds of mutual animosity amongst the people.

The longer these self serving and self appointed leaders are allowed to bask under their self scripted world of glory, the more dangerous would be the fate of the common man, spread across the artificial political divides.

Aiding these elements is the SPF Government which has not bothered to even lift a finger to blunt the agenda that is being scripted from the comfort of some luxurious residences in the valley area and enforced on the National Highways with the people forced to bear its impact.

A near perfect example in co-ordination and planning, which has been achieved by playing with the emotions of the people and hoodwinking them