While lightning is “untamed” electricity, the state of electricity supply in Manipur is progressively drifting back to a supply frequency almost comparable to its primitive untamed form. Come the rainy months and lightning might just turn out to be more dependable for your lighting and other electrical power requirements. In the absence of reliable power supply, dependence on Kerosene oil for lighting is high, especially so in rural areas. Kerosene is a PDS item scarce at the PDS outlets but Easily available at high prices in shops that have arrangements with PDS agents. The poor rural folk are forced to buy from such shops at market prices while the government subsidy gets absorbed by the unscrupulous intermediaries like PDS agents, sleazy bureaucrats, wily politicians and other greedy “powerful” people. Does the state care? Or does it promote such nexus? Guesses might not differ much here as mere clerks in PDS departments in the state live much
more comfortable lives than honest IAS officers. The measure of good governance is not in the quantum of budgetary allocations; it is the measure of the effectiveness and efficiency of delivery mechanisms ensuring that the people get their due, however meager, in full measure.

The state officials are often heard barking on how irregular payment of fees lead to irregular supply and blame the people. Assuming it is such, it is also the duty of the government department to ensure proper and timely collection of fees and, or enforce timely disconnections to defaulters. Besides, the privatized arrangements in cities like Delhi where private power companies distribute power reveal that the public are also more responsive to private entities when it comes toutility bills. The option could be experimented here as well, or the department can be ramped up to jealously collect fees like the private companies with some incentives. A modern government can no longer afford to make excuses and continue to misgovern.

When the leadership has lost all moral and ethical moorings, the prospects of reforming the executing babudom to rise above the temptations of corruption is bleak. Reliable rumor has it that the recent final list of primary teachers for the District Council schools was finalized in a closed room negotiation between the CM, Ministers and MLAs where each of them bartered and bargained to include as many of their candidates in the
final list. It would not be a surprise if some tribal MLAs received more “share” to go with the government on the ADC polls. Merit as a criterion for selecting capable Teachers would have flown out of that window and haunt the state education scenario with its absence for at least a score and ten years.

As for the ones finally selected, it would be some years before they could recover the average of several lakhs rumored to be spent by most “successful” candidates to secure their names in the finalist. Even after they join the service, surprise and shock will await any genuine teacher, assuming there is a couple at least, once they proceed to join and teach. Many village chiefs are reported to force new recruits not to join duty but to shell out a certain percentage of their salary to engage a local/nominated candidate in their place. This tendency perhaps arises from the lack of infrastructure such as school building, staff quarters, etc. which invariably got constructed on paper only. Also, the chieftains are earning a cut from the contract, besides providing some form of sub-state employment to the chief’s near and dears.

How do the forthright minority cope with such scale of misgovernment? Guesstimates suggest that they are on the verge of extinction with most upright youngsters with good education and exposure also getting lured into the sleaze by a conveniently false interpretation of “act like a roman when in Rome”. The challenge lies in daring to not congratulate an undeserving teacher, daring to slap a clerk or section officer who demands a bribe, daring to not accept tithe from incomes coming from purchased jobs (for churches), daring to not pray and praise God for those who “successfully” purchased a job or cornered it from a “powerful” friend of family or relative, daring to stop buying PDS kerosene at high prices from shops, daring to challenge the chief if he cuts any wage earned through NREGS, daring to call a spade a spade wherever one might be. The solution also lies in recognizing the TRUTH that easy money or bread earned against the scriptural method of “you shall eat the fruits of your sweat” never really does any good to anyone.