Slumber: Thy Name Is Manipur

Jodha Chandra Sanasam *

With the Electricity Dept unable to supply power, customer make do with a torch light while marketing at Khwairamband bazar in Jan 2012 :: Pix - TSE

Do you know why the public of Manipur is suffering from shortage of power? I mean electricity, not the power of ministers, MLA's, ward commissioners, bureaucrats, executives, revolutionists, reformers, civil society iconic men, local club secretaries and presidents so on and so forth, whose power is stronger than that of any of the kind elsewhere in the world.

The cause of scarcity of electricity in Manipur is surprisingly the mere failure of the state to erect high-grid power-line to collect power from the National Grid or the North Eastern power-grid to reach Manipur. This they could have finished thirty years before.

If Manipur still fails to generate energy of its own, essential for its domestic use at least if not for others at a larger scale, it is not surprising too for such an ever-sleepy state. However, India does have some agreeable sources of energy, maybe adequate or inadequate.

There is this North Eastern Grid based in Shillong to feed power to the NE states. It may be costly, but if the state of Manipur has the will and money, it could readily tap the required power for its people.

If the department, now the corporation, can manage the distribution in well-regulated manner, which they should be able to, and provide uninterrupted power supply the public will be ready to pay due tariff.

However, the task of revenue collection should be in the hands of the department or now the corporation. If the BSNL or the private firms can regularly collect their tariff and run the communication system without a crashing failure, why cannot the electricity department or corporation also do so?

The people of Manipur are now sensible enough to pay or spend if the service is good, the characteristic of realization how to be a good citizen. Even after its merger in India, 65 years now, Manipur is still failing to collect its share from the national distribution! What a pity! Even after its statehood of 42 years or so! They may pretend to do something to last one month or so when people make some cries, they will go back to their slumber.

How about the department of water supply? We saw the hollowness of this department in the recent weeks of scarcity of water, a department ever in languid slumber. It is doubtful if the department can ever collect Rs 500 a month from the public as its revenue.

Who will be ready to spend when there is no service at all? No soul ever visits a house to inspect if the water supply is working or not (as is done in any advanced city in other countries), no postal bills come and no person from the department comes to serve bills to remind that the consumer is to pay.

To many houses, which got legally connected, water stopped to come in about three-four months after connection. Nobody would ever pay any attention to written request letters or complaints. It is the linemen or the manual people of the department who would indifferently agree to come and repair, but that too on generous palming and heavy charges for the labour.

Thus, a house has to request such people every 5-6 months with unreasonably high charges, otherwise no water. Is it a ploy of the department for their poor labour men to earn some dough on their own or is it just sheer negligence no one can say. In certain neighbourhood, the pipeline for the so-called legal connection is no more traceable now. Then they started to lay a new pipeline, the public were pleased then, with the hope that they would get some water, but only to realise later that a connection to the new pipeline was illegal.

The department, they said, laid that pipe for VIP's only. Just imagine the water reservoir, the source of water to run through that pipe is right in the neighbourhood but the people around are not allowed to touch it? Because, they are not VIP's. What a smug department!

Naturally, the people around the locality would call their old contacts but who could not find the old pipe anymore and thus gave connections from the new pipe.

The department dares to declare that they would disconnect all the illegal connections to houses. Where is the pipeline for a legal connection? Now the rains have come. For some time the houses may be able to manage with the rainwater, when the rain is over, then what?

If the department or the government fails, why cannot it outsource to some agency, earn some money from the agency, and give relief to people at the same time?

For that matter, people in every department in Manipur are of the same disposition only. They are the proverbial khunus, the pigeons of the khunu na mathong da kalli. The sad part is people in Manipur are really cynical now.

What has turned people of this land to be so?