Leader Writer: Svoboba Kangleicha
“Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures, the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge, has marked the upward surge of mankind.” These are the immortal words of Michael Douglas’ Gordon Gekko in the 1987 film ‘Wall Street’ which pretty much describe the zeitgeist of the last three decades before the global financial meltdown compel people to question the rationale of giving the free market, true to its name, a free rein.
Having said that and despite the lessons being learnt, we live in an epoch where capitalist consumption is promoted as an ideal or the summit of human civilization. We now live in a time where subliminal advertising compels us to buy products we don’t need. Suggestible young people now live beyond their means to keep up with the Joneses in an era where the latest cell phone in town becomes dated within days of its launch. We want to hoard or amass wealth by any means whatsoever.
The post liberalisation generation of the nineties who were bombarded with audio-visuals images of an alien culture on MTV or Channel V took everything they saw on television as the gospel truth. If the theory about a graffiti revealing a lot about a place is true then one can’t help being concerned when someone has written in a retaining wall along the main drag of the state capital that westernisation is the only way to practical democracy. Westernization as the general understanding goes among many people in the state is simply aping the west in dress, consumption and culture. A superficial understanding of westernisation is one of the main reasons behind some of the ever increasing crimes against women.
Equally thought provoking is the ribbon development along many major thoroughfares in Imphal by demolishing older buildings. Such demolition are sometimes tragic-comic as it only brings out the shallowness of those who own these buildings because many newly-built houses are being demolished for road widening purposes. Many of these buildings sprouting up in many places are not green buildings. The traditional brick and mortar buildings accounts for 8 percent of carbon emissions in the world. We are told that the state has double digit growth propelled by the construction sector which accounts for 25 percent of this growth. A new breed of benighted upstarts who are the major beneficiaries of the construction boom own most of these buildings and are more than willing to show it to the whole wide world that they have arrived.
Now, a few words on the acute shortage of water that the state is reeling under, more so in the state capital, which could only worsen if there are no heavy rainfall within the next couple of days. The situation wouldn’t have been this bleak if those who are in the helm of affairs had taken some proactive measures instead of living it to the rain gods; because it is not for the first time that the state is facing a water scarcity problem as it has persisted for many years now. A callous indifference reminiscent of Marie Antoinette’s let them eat cake attitude is there for all to see as there are many eyewitness accounts of how many high ranking PHED officials ferried water from government run water reservoirs to their houses by using private water suppliers. Isn’t it ironic that the present water scarcity problem is partially caused by the unchecked growth of private water suppliers?