The Information and Public Relations (IPR) Day has been shelved this year, thank to Chief Minister Okram Ibobi Singh who also holds the ‘crucial’ but most neglected department. We understand that the Chief Minister Okram Ibobi Singh is too preoccupied with the surfacing of Loktak Lake scam besides the Manipur assembly controversy and the Union Home Minister’s pressure with regard to the upcoming ‘solution’ of the Naga problem. His personal integrity is at stake as regards the Loktak scam as he also happens to be the Chairman of Loktak Development Authority (LDA) which had facilitated undue favours to an unknown firm besides violating CPWD norms. The assembly controversy is a headache while he has no ideas on how to deal with the newly emerged scenario in the Government of India – NSCN IM talks. But, IPR Day is a yearly routine celebrated every year on November 1. The Department of Information and Public Relations (DIPR), Manipur, which started as a mere Publicity Office on November 1, 1949 has come a long way. The celebrated journalist of yester years R K Maipaksana was the first Publicity Officer of the state. The office was eventually upgraded to a Directorate in March 1974. TC Tiankham, IAS, was the first IPR Director. The Directorate was expanded in 1975 with the opening of District Information Offices. Its basic functions are to inform and educate people about the welfare and development activities undertaken by the Government and enlist their willing participation in the programmes of the Government, and also to provide feedback to the Government about the opinion of the people and their reaction to the policy, programmes and activities of the Government. Till lately, it has not been fulfilling most of these functions. And the Directorate has been functioning on borrowed time. It has not been able to pay bills regularly. The department currently works from the MSTRC complex at Moirangkhom since the last four years (2009) after its office building located in between the Chief Minister Bungalow and state police headquarters was dismantled citing security considerations.
Though construction of many government infrastructures were completed in and around the city, the construction of the department`s new building at Keishampat next to Electricity department has been very slow. The Directorate of Information which is purportedly well established with its offices at the headquarters of all the nine districts with the District Information Officer each, functions without sufficient staff. Many employees have retired on superannuation and the vacancies are not filled up. Service extension of employees on contract basis are not renewed which also hampers the working of the department at large. And now it has reached such a stage that it cannot even celebrate its own foundation day due to financial constraints. For years, IPR Day was an event which served as a forum for senior editors and journalists to deliberate on the problems faced by the state journalist fraternity and that of IPR which serves as an interface between the government and the journalists. On this day, journalists were honoured with awards in recognition of their contributions. This year, the awards have also become uncertain. Various stakeholders have been demanding the upgradation of IPR as a major department and for transforming it into a 100 percent professional department by appointing a media professional as the Director. Many a Chief Minister and IPR Minister had gone by without fulfilling the promise while the functioning of the directorate has been deteriorating day by day. To be very honest, it is not really our outlook as to whether the IPR directorate functions properly or professionally. An ineffective state media agency is advantageous to the private media organisations. Even then, we would certainly like a worthy adversary.