Opening Roads

By: Akendra Sana


It is difficult not to think about roads whenever Manipur is mentioned in recent times. It is a difficult terrain in the best of times. Landslides and mudslides on the arterial highways are most common in the long rainy season the region experiences. It has thus always been man with nature, with nature asserting itself of its dynamics on many a rainy season. The difficulties have therefore been seasonal. But for more than a decade now difficulties have been more manmade and adding to the already known hardships caused by nature. And they have become more unpredictable for most road-users. The difficulties can no longer be said to be seasonal. Geo-politics have now taken over.

“Build a road to get rich”, Chinese leader Deng Xiao Ping had said. For China however to grow and get rich from the very depressed and impoverished China when Deng was rehabilitated in 1977 and subsequently rose to the supreme power a lot more than roads must have been needed. And indeed, roads and other infrastructure developments are some of the things for which Deng is remembered. The economic growth of present-day China owes a lot to this leader, the 1989 Tianniamen Square crackdown notwithstanding. However, the most significant contribution of Deng can be said to be of lifting more people out of poverty than any other world leader anytime, anywhere.

We, in our circumstances certainly as well know that roads mean much more. So what are roads after all? Should they not lead to destinations? And does not one destination lead to another? For the British Raj, the railway was the unifier in India. For landlocked Manipur and no railways, only roads connect its various parts. And as of now the roads between Imphal and Dimapur and Guwahati, Imphal and Moreh and Imphal and Silchar are there as effectively physically connecting to the outside world, although airlink is the other means.

Even though many roads, including sections of our highways are little more than flattened dirt tracks which turn into mud after heavy rain and to dust clouds in the dry season, all the stakeholders, the road-users and the habitats along them know what they can deliver.

Driving a car from Imphal to Mao or from Imphal to Moreh is common for many. But rarely anyone must have driven from Mao to Moreh at a stretch, a distance of a little over two hundred kilometers via Imphal unless one is a commercial vehicle driver and in very compelling circumstances. This drive is bound to enrich any sensitive person and would enable one to experience better the cultural mosaic that is Manipur. Imagine the sheer number of communities you are likely to come across on this route. There are the Maos, Poumais, Marams, Thangals, Kukis, Meiteis, Monsangs, Marings among many others on the way until you reach Moreh filled with Tamils, Kukis and Meiteis among several others.

And is it not ironical that while very few must have done the shorter Mao-Moreh stretch, many of us have driven the Imphal Guwahati road of about six hundred kilometers at a stretch in a day passing through Mao in Manipur, Kohima and Dimapur in Nagaland, Shilonijan, Numaligarh, Bokakhat, Nagaon in Assam among many other townships before reaching Guwahati?

A straight drive from Mao to Moreh, starting at about five o’clock in the morning at Mao can mean morning tea at Lairou Ching. You can get the best tea, made with the very fresh milk here. Breakfast, or should we call it the first meal, can be at Pallel and then on to reach Moreh at about noon. From there on you may enter Tamu for a good Chinese lunch. But unfortunately you cannot think of all these possibilities together in these parts of the world. This is because the two hundred odd kilometers drive from Mao to Moreh can never be made at the time of your choosing, what with checks and convoy formation at Pallel, and can therefore not be made in six to seven hours, even if you do not think of all the other possible disturbances, sometimes of the most heinous kind on this highway.

Road travel has its own magic. It always conjures up images- both the pleasant and the ugly. One now wonders what kind of images the highway from Mao to Moreh in Manipur brings to a road traveller. The Imphal-Mao section saw a lot of action in the past during the Second World War. And then of the present whether it is on the Imphal Mao section or the Imphal Moreh portion we are all too familiar of the difficulties, both seasonal and non seasonal. The images unfortunately are largely of these difficulties.

And as we traverse our roads, we also need to remind ourselves that there are other infrastructure matters we need to take equal care – the airport(s), the communication channels, the telephone lines, the transmission towers to open ourselves for freer flow of goods and information and above all to be able to share our concerns with others. These are as important as much as opening roads because they will help us at opening minds to get rich and much more as much as the Chinese wanted under Deng.