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var addthis_product=’wpp-252′;var addthis_options=”Google+1″The protest over the bomb blast on August 1 is overwhelming and also cuts across communities and political parties, as it indeed should be….

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Read more / Original news source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Kanglaonline/~3/fSuXI_6vEEo/

For far too often we have been told, and indeed made to believe, there is no paucity of developmental funds for the Northeast. The North Eastern Council, NEC, with its headquarters in Shillong and the relatively recent Department of North East Region, DoNER ministry in New Delhi, are supposed to be the nodal instruments by which these development funds are to be disbursed for the purpose, and whatever funds not utilised is also supposed not to lapse but go into a separate coffer of non-lapsable pool of fund to be carried over to subsequent years and remain basically a Northeast developmental fund. Although we do not have the exact figure, understandably this non-lapsable pool of NE developmental fund would have built up quite sizeably in the years that have gone by. The question is, why is this fund not translating into any tangible and visible developmental projects? There are developmental activities no doubt, but hardly at the pace of magnitude that could or should have been.

A sense of urgency is what is primarily missing in any government activities in the regard. For the last five or six years, consumers in the state have been fed the excuse that electricity is scarce in the state because transmission lines available currently are outdated and not broad enough to bring in the state’s greatly increased requirement from the Northeast power grid and that these transmission lines were being upgraded to make them fit for the purpose. What is taking the government so long to do the needful? Why is it not taking up this matter on a war footing? The injuries this acute power shortage has caused and is still causing are immediate and desperate for it is stunting the growth of the state’s fledgling private sector, the health of which nobody will doubt will prove to be the ultimate solution to the employment problem above all else, the government’s direct employment capacity being limited and already super-saturated. This is a matter which cannot wait unlike say the rail line being constructed. The rail line is important but it is a long term need. Electricity is a daily necessity for any modern economy and indeed household.

In the midst of the monsoon, we also find treated municipal piped water is still scarce. One can only imagine what the situation would be even a month after the wet season is over. Why is this issue also not being taken up on a war footing? There are many more similar cases that need urgent government attention and with it remedial action. None however is forthcoming. There are also many ongoing projects, such as the Imphal sewerage project, which have been overshooting deadlines continually. What is worse, there are also no indications whatsoever so far that this project would come to a fitting closure in the near future. Meanwhile, the citizenry are expected to keep tolerating the fiasco created by these projects in perpetual states of incompleteness. It is atrocious that the old argument that it is insurgency which is keeping all these work at bay is still sought to be the balm to keep public outrage at bay. Development must happen despite all barriers. If the government acknowledges extortion cannot be curbed then let it factor in this extraordinary cost into its project estimates so that the projects themselves do not suffer.

What is also noticeable in recent times is that the military suddenly seems to have become flushed with developmental money. It is now thinking in terms of undertaking small and mid level developmental projects as part of its civic action programmes. Is this money coming from the non-lapsable pool with the DoNER ministry? The military can now donate community halls, sports complex etc to villages. Has there been a shift in the developmental funding pattern of the Government of India? The military adamantly refuses to be brought under civil law when it come to the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, AFSPA, which incidentally is 54 years old now, but would readily be given civil responsibilities in matters of implementing civil developmental projects. Is this an amplified version of what has often been referred to quite disparagingly as “donor agenda” (meaning donors would directly or indirectly dictate the terms and directions of development) when it came to funds availed to various Non Government Organisations, NGO, especially by foreign funding agencies? Is this a way of silently militarising civil space both literally and metaphorically? India is a thriving democracy. How then is it that in backwater states like Manipur, governance seems to tend towards conditions that resemble that of a military junta.

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2011/08/fuzzy-development-logic/

Sharmila’s response to the invitation by Team Anna to join the hunger strike campaign to make the Union government introduce a legislation in Parliament to constitute a statutory people’s ombudsman aimed at curbing official corruption effectively, was measured and mature. The invitation was obviously an afterthought following many comparisons and questions raised in the media about the public clamour over the fast by Anna Hazare and the lack of it in the case of Sharmila who had been on a fast for a record 10 years and still counting. It is unlikely Team Anna did not know the facts of Sharmila’s status as a jail inmate and for this reason it was not totally up to her individual volition to participate in their protest strike in New Delhi. The invitation in this sense was, so to say, a token gesture, or the biblical fig leaf, to cover up what was increasingly becoming an uneasy embarrassment. It was interesting to note how a great section of the media in the Northeast rallied behind Sharmila in varying shades of outrage calling for parity of concern of the Indian public in the two cases. There was also a good section of the national media, lead from the front by Chennai headquartered The Hindu, constantly reminding the Indian public of the difference in their reception of the two cases. Most memorable of all was well known social activist, author of Booker Prize winning novel “God of Small Things” and acknowledged champion of the underdogs in the Indian state’s assimilative nationalising mission, Arundhati Roy, who lent her voice to highlight this discrepancy further. The main thrust of her hard hitting articles derided the public hysteria over the campaign against corruption as this looked only at official corruption and not that of the corporate world or for that matter the corporate media, the indication of which became quite stark after scandals like the infamous Radia tapes expose.

Sharmila was humble in her reply. She wholeheartedly expressed her solidarity with Anna Hazare’s campaign but expressed her inability to join him and his team because of her internship in a Manipur jail. She instead invited Team Anna to visit Manipur, which she described as the most corrupt of all Indian states. Her last jab should have had the sting intended. Manipur must rank as the state with one of the most corrupt official establishment. From the lowly fourth grade employees to the top bosses in the political leadership and bureaucracy, all have collectively and in a collaborative manner, ensured that corruption is entrenched not just into the system but in the psyche of the people. Even the most humble citizen today talks with a clear conscience of the need to pay bribes to get in a child or ward to a government job position as if this was the most natural and only way such things were to be done. Roads and other infrastructures constructed continually are so substandard that they cannot even withstand the onslaught of a single monsoon not because of paucity of funds but because funds were siphoned off into individual pockets. Of such works, there will be no proof needed, as they are plenty of extremely visible examples stark before everybody to see. Corruption in other states is about occasional explosive scandals that break out in high places. Corruption in Manipur, although relatively much less in magnitude, is much more in spread and extend. Indeed it has been made a part of everyday life, therefore endemic and perpetuated endlessly in an unnatural cycle. We hope, even if as just another token gesture, Team Hazare visits Sharmila after their high profile campaign is brought hopefully to a happy conclusion. That would be such a jolt to the corrupt system at in this state. We hope Team Hazare also lends its highly audible voice to Sharmila’s own campaign against the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, AFSPA. They are out there on a campaign to what they believe would ultimately save India but this too is equally about saving the spirit of India.

No argument about it, putting an end to corruption would be a big fillip in the public morale and the economy of the country, considering the estimate that close to 40 percent of the Indian economy is black. But as critics have pointed out sharply and sometimes disparagingly, we hope the campaign also ultimately brings in other forms of corruption other than just the official ones. Corruption happens everywhere including outside the official realms. It includes the ways of cheating small time traders and contactors as well as those who award and approve their cheating ways. The very fact that prices sky rockets every time there is a road blockade or landslide is itself an indication of the cheating ways of many. On all these occasions, essential commodities, in particular petrol and diesel, disappear from the petrol pumps, but nonetheless begin to appear for inflated prices in the black market. How could this happen other than through the vile contagion of corruption?

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2011/08/two-fasts-too-far-apart/

There are two ways of looking at the way things are developing in Manipur. One is that everybody is taking the law into their own hands. But this leads to the second conclusion, that the establishment in which hands the law should solely rest has lost its moral legitimacy and with it the authority to make the citizen trust it is there to do them good. And so here is Manipur again under a prolonged siege. Even the thought of the creation of a new district is threatening to turn the state upside down, with one group wanting it at any cost and another threatening to oppose it to any extent. Even as the siege is nearing a month, the government remains clueless as to how to proceed. The only thing it has said is that it would not be coerced into doing anything against its will and that it would execute this will on its own once a study by a high powered committee it has instituted to find out how feasible or desirable this proposed new district would be from the consideration of administrative convenience alone, is completed. But at this moment, neither those demanding nor those opposing are willing to step back an inch from where they were despite the government’s show of intent that it would proceed on the issue solely on its own will and not be dictated by any of the agitations.

What about the common man in the meantime? Does the government think that merely instituting a probe committee and arbitrating the deadlocked issue is enough remedy? For while it is doing this, there are people on the streets put to immense hardships. The poorer sections are the worst hit by the blockade consequent price rise, and if things get any worse, there is no saying they would remain calm as they have been. What then would the government do? Would it hold itself accountable for such an outcome? What it should be doing now is to firmly come clear and make the agitators on both sides understand that they cannot hold the entire state to ransom. This must be precisely by demonstrating the state can bring in provision for everybody and any form of prolonged blockades or strikes that indiscriminately make people, men and women, old and young alike suffer for no fault of theirs, would be broken up. In other words, ensure the highways are open although after convincing the agitators on both sides that justice as defined by the constitutional law of the country would be done. To give the devil its due however, we must also add that we give the benefit of the doubt to the committee looking into the matter that it would do what is just, but it must expedite its mission so that the agony of the state is not prolonged. In the meantime, let the government assure essential commodities do not run out from the markets.

If the government is unable to act on the matter then the available alternative of Presidents Rule must be resorted to. This is not altogether an indictment of the government for failing to act proactively on the matter. Nobody has any doubt in a state so badly fractured by ethnic divisions a decision on the SADAR hills will not be easy. Whichever way the decision goes, it will be cause for much bad blood and further challenges to the state’s authority. In other words the blockade is more than likely to stay inordinately. But this is just one dimension of the problem. The complex nature of the ethnic division in the state being such, darker ethnic motives, imaginary or otherwise, of the trouble being the caused by manipulation by the Valley dwellers would be attributed to whatever decision the government takes. Indications of this are already heard on many cacophonous discussion forums on the internet as well as delirious comments to web editions of newspapers from the state aimed at provoking anger, but more often than not inspire only laughter of ridicule. The limitation of the local government being such, it is not an altogether unreasonable conclusion that if at all it is unable bring an early end to the humanitarian crisis developing in the state, Central rule should fill in. Legitimate force used by the Central rule to ensure goods and passenger movements along the highway would not be interpreted as communally biased as so many would be waiting to jump to the conclusion if the state government did so. Likewise, a Central rule’s decision on whether the SADAR Hills district should be created and on what terms, would not be as prone to be smeared with communal colours by those for who have little other constructive things to do than read between the lines to discover non-existent, imaginary, sinister designs behind every political and economic development in the state. Our appeal is, let the government act immediately to ensure flow of goods into the state and in the longer term to settle the SADAR hills issue conclusively and in a manner satisfactory to all parties concerned.

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2011/09/devise-a-way-out-fast/