Increase Spending on Road Connectivity

If the state government employs more people, more money would be utilised to pay salary to the employees. With less number of employees, the government would have more money to spend in other areas. Since public good like roadways and sewerage system are essential to sustainable development, with more money available government can increase spending in these areas. Given this simple arithmetic, government should not employ more than what it requires to run the administration.

One of the twists to the arguments is that those who are responsible to run the administration benefit privately when more people are employed as government servants. Such overcrowding in government departments harm the people in general, yet those responsible for the recruitment get far richer than they used to be. The income of the officials through bribery runs in terms of several millions for many of the recruitment programmes into government service. The rate is 'fixed' for a constable or for a Sub Inspector for the police department and even for a primary teacher or for a graduate teacher in schools. Since private companies hardly invest in the state, and government employment is the considered the only source of stable and decent income, educated unemployed are coerced into paying bribes to get employed. Given the massive amount of money involved in such day-light robbery', those in responsible position are tempted to recruit more than the required number. (This is day-light robbery because it is taking what ought not to be taken during the day as opposed to robbers taking what ought not to be taken during the night.) But this overcrowding of government departments results in harming the larger community. This is a practice that should come to an immediate halt.

Government employment is not the answer to solving the economic bottleneck facing the state. A government employee can at the most sustain his or her family. Since government will never be in a position to provide each individual in a family a job in its different departments, it has to expand its vision beyond providing jobs in the tertiary sector or the service sector. Even when private companies come in, white collar job will never be sufficiently available nor can tertiary sector alone sustains the economy.

To provide jobs in the secondary and the primary sector, and induce overall economic growth in the state, state government in the North East region, notably Manipur, has to increase spending on road connectivity. With proper roadways, those in the hills can provide agricultural produce to those in towns and city at a much cheaper rate. This will benefit both the parties – dwellers in the rural area as well as dwellers in the urban areas. Healthcare providers and teachers will find it much easier to provide services to far flung villages when road connectivity is in place. Inefficient service sector plaguing the rural area is largely due to bad roads. As of today, most cases of medical emergency require dashing off to the state capital. When a patient from a village has to be carried on bamboo stretcher specially during rainy season till pucca road, which for certain villages will be for half a day's walk, it may be too late. To think that a corrupt politician is responsible for the death of such patients every year is haunting! For states like Manipur, Nagaland or Mizoram which is largely composed of rugged hilly terrain, unless government spends in massive amount for road connectivity, much of the hilly terrain will remain cut off from the outside world. Thus, ensuring development and healthcare largely rest with government machinery. This spending can come only from the government; no private individuals will have money big enough to effect change in this respect unlike one can do so in education and healthcare.

A democratic state exists on certain moral principles. And it is a moral obligation of the state that public good such as proper road connectivity is provided to all the villages in the state. More important than employment in the public sector is road connectivity to ensure overall development in the state. For too long government has failed to live up to its moral obligation. To fulfilling this moral obligation, it is high time that government increases its spending on roadway programmes. 

( The Hornbill Express, 29th December, 2014)