The present strike in the Imphal Post office is first and foremost, crippling for the entire state. For a state with bad, to very bad communication infrastructure in even the most rudimentary sectors, the postal services is vital, unsatisfactory and how much below par the service may be. It is true in recent times a number of private courier services have sprouted in the state, but most of these are still prohibitive for a larger section of the people. We are not complaining against the private courier services. They are expensive mostly because their overheads are not subsidized by the government tax pool as the postal services is. As a matter of fact, this makes it all the more imperative for the people to question the relevance and justifications of the ongoing strike. It is the tax payers' money that is being flushed down the drain each day of the shrike. It is also the people who pay for the service who are being denied the service. The strike better have reasons weighty enough to deserve the price extracted without the consent of those who are paying.

From what we have gathered so far, some of the issues are weighty enough, although we are not certain if these can be settled in Imphal. In particular, we do feel this business of special duty allowances, SDA, that employees of the department posted into the northeastern states from outside are entitled to, is not fair. In fact it reflects a certain condescending attitude of the mandarins in New Delhi, much in the nature of the attitude of the developed countries towards the Third World. We remember diplomat friends posted in India, telling us about "Third World Indemnity" they get for their having to tolerate the heat and dust here. It would have been all very well if those from the northeast posted outside the region, or else everybody posted in the northeast are entitled to the same allowance. It would indeed be a good idea, so as to encourage movements of employees so as to accelerate the much hyped assimilation, process. But this anomaly is there not just in the postal services but all central services.

Apart from this, we have hardly been able to identify any other reason worth a strike of the magnitude we are witnessing. One of the demands of the striking employees is to have their director postal services, transferred out for being "dictatorial." We wonder what is actually meant by the term as the term has many different connotations, but from what we are able to piece together so far, it seems to mean the act of opposing anarchy and introducing discipline in a service of such vital importance. It always helps to call for a third opinion in such disputes, and who better to be this third umpire than the customers. Delayed if not lost mails, snail-paced speed post, empty post office counters in peak hours because the persons suppose to be manning them have gone out for an unscheduled tea break, or are busy catching up on the latest gossips elsewhere in the office, counters opening late and closing ahead of time, are only some of the complaints anybody who care to do a round of the Imphal central post office, on any given day, will get to hear. If trying to bring in order to such a situation is being tyrannical, we suppose these wanting status quo are also jesters.