Choosing a Leader!

By: Heisnam Lakeswar Singh
Head (Academic & Admin) JCRE Global College Babupara,Imphal
We heard of casting our votes for few thousands rupee. We claim it is the fault of those who are taking money and selling their rights. Selling ourselves just for two thousands, if it is calculated for five years it comes around ‘one rupee ten paisa’ per day only. We claim, how stupid we are, just for ‘one rupee ten paisa’, we are selling our rights. If it is followed by majority of our population, it makes serious problem. However, whenwe discussed and analyzed thoroughly about this problem, we find it is just a symptom; the actual problem lies somewhere.
Who takes money? Why they take money? Why their population is more in number than those who are against this system? What compel them to take this action? To answer this question, let me narrate a story, since election is coming up, our favorite topic for discussion is obviously election. In a locality tea stall, in my village, I heard people were discussing about election, in that discussion one lady expressed her opinion honestly, she will give her vote to the candidate who gives money. I told her, by doing that you are spoiling our society and because of this action, corruption rate is increasing in our society. Her reply was short and to the point, “ei ethantana faraga loina faradro”, and addition to this she continue, after winning election what will he/she do, instead of expecting from him, let’s get one thousand or two thousands rupee at the time of election. One or two thousands will not bring change to her life, within few days it will vanish from her pocket. She also understand this, we all understand this as you know our people are not that stupid.
One question comes to my mind, whether our people know the actual role and responsibility of an MLA. I asked to myself, I even don’t know and aware of it in details. If they are aware of it, probably they will not follow this system of short term benefit and long term loses. I think most of us do not understand what are the roles & responsibilities of an MLA; we think their roles are construction of road, building local community halls, distribution of rice and a best medium to enter into a government job etc. Actually speaking, those are not the actual role of an MLA.An MLA should be involved in making law to make our life better and our generation gets better with time. If they are into ruling party, their role is to make better law through legislative, their responsibilities is effectively utilizationof taxpayers’ money for the welfare of the people. If they are into opposition, they act as critics of the government, their responsibilities is to find the fault of the ruling party’s decision. We need to describe the role and responsibilities of an MLA so that every person of our society can understand.
We need educated leaders, not only in terms of certificates, a leader who can take decision, whocan understand pros and cons of his decision. At least he should able to appoint the qualifiedand educated advisor of him.
Education is the weapon of mass information; if we are aware of how to use this weapon we can achieve many great things. If we are succeeded in educating the mass voters regarding the roles and responsibilities of your MLA, many things will developed. I think their roles include formulation or amendment of our education policy, forming better irrigation system in Manipur, etc. For example, our leaders should act on providing an affordable education with best quality to all, which include rich, poor, urban and rural students, by developing governmental schools. If our irrigation is good, our unemployment rate will reduce drastically, most of our employment is generated through agriculture, but unfortunately it creates lots of seasonal unemployment. Most often we claim our poor economy is because of our laziness, but when rain comes at the times of ploughingand harvestingseason; we Manipuri’s are very hard workers. They woke up early and sleep late; they have to work in middle of the rainy night to see whether their plants are in good shapes. There are many issues we can solve using policy and implementation of it.
How to make this understand by the majority of our voters? It is where we can use weapons of mass instructions. We can utilize entertainment medium like Lila, drama, films, and songs to make them understand. We can use social sites to distribute this knowledge. It requires reinforcements, we can conduct quiz and debate program in school, colleges, and local clubs etc to educate the young minds. It may be slow; however,its effect will be lasting. One of my friends told me, if you want to bring change you have to be very rich like Ambani, our democracy is useless. My reply to him was, it is because our voters are not yet mature.
(Writer can be reached to:[email protected])