The Sangai Festival has come to an end. It is difficult to imagine so much could have been packed into 10 days. The spirit of carnival was unmistakable, and as expected, and certainly within understandable limits, the festival did have hiccups as newspaper readers would be aware of the many complaints. One of the most serious of these complaints was that of the festival organisers being insensitive to the needs of differently-abled people. In truth, the authorities may have transgressed the law if this was actually true, for it is today mandatory for all public facilities and functions to have provisions that cater to the needs of disabled to ensure they are not put at any unnecessary inconveniences. If someone had taken the legal recourse, this neglect would probably have attracted penalty. At the least, there should have been a separate entrance, one or two separate ticket counters and a few special wash rooms that can take care of the needs of, say somebody on wheelchair. Fortunately for the organisers, there were no such challenges. Either disabled visitors to the festival were generous or else they stayed away from it, knowing well the insulting neglect and hardship they would be subjected to. But as they say, all`™s well that ends well. For in the end, it must be said, it was a job fairly well done.
Probably this year`™s edition of the festival had record number of visitors, if the teeming sea of people at the Hatta Kangjeibung, the festival venue, each day of the 10 days, and the perennial long winding queues outside practically all of the many entry ticket counters are anything to go by. The traffic volume on the approach roads to the venue was also unprecedented, and once the officially designated parking spaces were filled to capacity, vehicles were seen lining up on the sides of the roads for miles in every direction. The congestion was even more acute because the construction work at Sanjenthong, the main bridge connecting Imphal West and East, remained incomplete and therefore not open to traffic. Yet the authorities put in extra effort and exercised rare imagination to ensure things did not descend into total chaos, though it could very well have. This is a note for optimism for the future, for it says given the will and imagination of the authorities, Imphal`™s generally unruly traffic can be disciplined to make our roads more orderly and safe, and that this disciplining is neither impossible nor would be resisted and discarded by the public. There would always be a selfish few who insist on breaking public norms in the belief this is to their private advantage, but they are few, and can easily be sorted out and penalised under the law. But if the law is made to be seen as absent, such selfishness would become the rule rather than exception, and sadly this had been allowed to be the case so far.
The din of the festival having now died down, as the dust settles, let the government take stock of what has been. Let this event not be reduced to just a case of an annual flash of brilliance, but also a case study of what new norms in crowd and traffic management actually work for the place. It would be unrealistic to expect the same level of energy that went into making this year`™s Sangai Festival remain for all times to come, but let at least some of the lessons learnt be incorporated into everyday moderation of our streets. Some of the one-way as well as parking norms that ensured there were no traffic bottlenecks during the festival, for instance, could throw vital lights on how everyday Imphal traffic can be tamed and made more efficient.
Leader Writer: Pradip Phanjoubam