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No Way Out
(November 1)
The ongoing strike by the Manipur government employees is building up tempo, much to the dread of everybody in the state and not just the government. Even the employees in some of the essential services have halted work and there is every possibility that the trend will have a domino effect, and before anybody realize it, the state would once again be paralyzed, with health, power, water and other services grinding to a halt.
The fear is all the more because this time around, there does not seem to be any solution in sight. The government, as we understand it, is totally broke and even if it wanted to, there is no way it can concede to the demands of the striking employees, most of which entail huge financial involvement. We have no reason to disbelieve this claim as it was for all to see that the government has not been even able to pay salaries and pensions of its employees in time for the last two years or so.
On the average salaries payments have been piled up for two months at a time and sometimes for much longer periods. Government corporations and other government-aided institutes have been forced into much tighter corners.
All of us roughly know the genesis of the problem more or less. As it has been cited time and again, the main dent in the government exchequer is being caused by the inflated salary bills for the equally inflated government employees strength.
Our politicians, in their moments of generosity took liberty with public money and policy and indulged in appeasement policies, aimed, we have no doubt, at buttressing their own electoral futures. The worst casualty we are witnessing today is the state. So, much for governmental policy shortsightedness.
The assumption of our political big shots at the time was one typical of a pampered and irresponsible beggar state -- just agree to make the extra expenditures and keep the electoral happy, the Center will have to take care of the rest. They are finding out how wrong they were now. But so what. The problem they created is not their problem any longer.
However, it would be unfair to put the blame on our politicians alone. The demand for a blanket hike salaries in 1998, in the pattern of the Fifth Pay Commission's recommendations for Central government employees was very much an arm-twisting exercise. For weeks without end, the state had to do without electricity, water, hospital service, as a matter of fact, practically the entire government establishment became nonfunctional.
Only the strongest of leadership would have been able to independently think in terms of long-term public benefits. Anybody lesser would have had only escaping the present in mind. Then of course there is the Central government. It should have realized that.
(The
Imphal Free Press Journal)
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