The recent Imphal Times report titled “Dialysis patients lose hope as PMJAY and CMHT funds remain unreleased” reveals a painful truth about the state of governance in Manipur — that the bureaucracy, entrusted with implementing the most vital social welfare schemes, has become the weakest link in the chain. The failure to release funds under the Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PMJAY) and the Chief Minister’s Health for All (CMHT) has left hundreds patients particularly the kidney patients in need of dialysis stranded, their lives hanging by a thread.
This is not merely administrative delay — it is a betrayal of purpose, a humiliation of leadership, and a mockery of the very ideals of governance. When hospitals stop providing dialysis to poor patients because the government has not cleared their dues, it is not the Prime Minister’s vision that has failed. It is the bureaucracy that has chosen to bury that vision under files, signatures, and indifference.
PMJAY, launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a revolutionary step toward universal health coverage, was meant to provide dignity and access to healthcare for the poorest. In Manipur, the Chief Minister’s Health for All (CMHT) was designed to complement this national mission, ensuring that no family was left untreated due to poverty. Yet, despite these noble intentions, both schemes have collapsed into stagnation. Private hospitals have announced they will begin charging patients directly because the government has not released the funds. Dialysis, a lifeline for those with failing kidneys, now becomes an unaffordable luxury for families already living on the edge of survival.
What greater insult could there be to the Prime Minister’s flagship programme than to see it dishonoured in practice? The bureaucratic system that was supposed to execute the vision has instead strangled it. The files remain on desks, approvals wait for signatures, and life-saving payments are trapped in procedural webs. The government machinery, rather than serving the poor, has turned into a machine of delay and denial.
This systemic failure cannot be brushed aside as a technical glitch. It is symptomatic of a deeper decay — where bureaucrats, shielded by rules and red tape, forget that policies exist to serve people, not paperwork. When governance fails to reach the sick and the dying, when the poor are told to wait for a payment file to move, then the system itself becomes inhumane. The Prime Minister’s credibility is tarnished not by the opposition but by the very machinery that was meant to uphold his promise of “Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas.”
The Imphal Times report reflects the voices of despair — patients who say, “I want to live, but now I feel I will die soon because I cannot afford dialysis.” Such words should shake any government into action. Yet the silence of the bureaucracy continues. No explanation, no apology, no urgency. Only the poor continue to pay the price of official apathy.
It was a wise and visionary decision to launch PMJAY and CMHT. But good policies die when those implementing them lack accountability. Bureaucratic inertia has reduced these programmes to symbolic gestures — banners on walls and speeches on stages. The poor, meanwhile, are left to pray to what can only be called the “lesser gods” of file clerks and section officers who decide, through their inaction, who gets to live and who does not.
If governance is measured by how the state treats its weakest, then this failure is an indictment of the entire administrative structure. The Prime Minister and the Chief Minister have done their part in creating the framework. It is now the bureaucracy that must answer for why these schemes have been rendered lifeless.
This is not good governance. This is bureaucratic betrayal — an insult to leadership, a disservice to the poor, and a blot on the very spirit of democracy. Unless accountability is enforced and officials are made answerable for their negligence, flagship schemes like PMJAY and CMHT will remain only on paper, while the poor continue to die waiting for the system to act.