Despite all the present turmoil, those with a vision of what Manipur should be after the storm, have a bounden duty to campaign, advocate or else work for in whatever capacity they are in to ensure certain basics remain intact to rebuild the place. The most important of these is human resource, and hence to ensure that the plateau of skills and knowledge remain high enough and competitive, at a par with the world outside must be considered vital. If the powers that be are open to suggestions from the ground, they would treat this advice extremely seriously and urgently. Action on this front will entail making government schools first, and then its colleges, not only functional, but achieve competitive standards of the times. A bit of this is being done with the introduction of a few model government schools, but nothing much for colleges. The way to go is to recruit only the best and most committed to the teaching profession. This can be best done by eliminating corruption in the recruitment process. The teaching profession is not just a job, but a vocation, or even a mission, if you like. The shape of Manipur’s future will be determined by how this sector is able to live up to the challenges of the times. Those already in the profession must also be made to treat their profession as full-time engagements, physical and mental, and not just as an anchor to their personal security, so that they can indulge in other trades and ventures (like government contract works) elsewhere, or else prospect a career in politics while the teaching job guarantees the family hearth is kept burning. In any case, their personal fortunes will not matter if the place as a whole were to sink. History is replete with examples of this kind.
Most parents, even those marginally above the poverty line, today send their children to private schools, because government schools have more or less become defunct everywhere. If there were private colleges, the same pattern would become a foregone conclusion, as indeed it has virtually happened in the case of the intermediate classes of Class 11 and 12. While we are thankful to the private institutions for salvaging at least something of what would already have been unredeemable, we are still worried because it is only the government schools, run on public money as they are, which can subsidise education and make it affordable to the larger majority of less than affluent. It would be a proud day for the state if those who send their children to private schools, and even schools outside the state, sometimes spending more than their comfortable means, can see no difference between having their children educated in private or government schools at home. It would be even more an ideal situation if this important choice of parents begins basically to depend by factors like the proximity of the schools to their residences and other neutral considerations, and not the difference in quality of education imparted at different schools. Only the improvement of government educational institutions can also arrest and bridge the ever widening divide between the rich and poor, included and excluded, effectively. In this sense, such an effort now would be an act of defusing predictable future crises of unimaginable proportion.
Two other very important conditions that must have to remain intact for the society’s own survival, as and when Manipur opens a new chapter, are, a healthy, well-nourished population, and basic communication infrastructures. Both these are also on a downhill spiral today. The trajectory of the health sector has been somewhat a parallel to the status of education in the state. Some excellent private health facilities have sprung up, but almost proportionally, government health facilities have plummeted. The cost of health services in the private facilities being prohibitive for the lower strata of the society, the government hospitals will always remain vital. Here too, let the private enterprises prosper and in fact receive statutory encouragements like easy credit facilities in acquisition of state-of-the-art equipment and infrastructure etc, but this must not be made to be at the cost of government hospitals and health centres. Why for instance are X-Ray, and CT-Scan, MRI equipment seldom working in government hospitals, forcing patients, even those with little means, to rush to private facilities? Why cannot government and private health institutions be made to flourish alongside each other? Most in the state have been for too long preoccupied with grand issues of territory, nationalism, identity etc. While this is understandable, it is also time to spare time to study the consequences of the issues that are seemingly mundane, but in fact can and do profoundly impact our lives, and indeed the shape of Manipur’s future.