Editor,
I have been thinking deeply about the state of our home, Arunachal. We call it the Land of the Rising Sun, but sometimes, looking at the way things work – or don’t work – it feels like we are walking through a long, administrative twilight.
There is a story a friend told me recently that hasn’t left my mind. It’s about his father, a retired extra assistant commissioner (EAC) who was posted in Likabali.
My friend, young and perhaps looking at the lavish lifestyles of others, once asked his father a pointed question: “Why don’t you allot land for yourself? Why don’t you take advantage of your position and become rich like the other officers?”
His father’s reply was a lesson in integrity that cuts through the noise of our current society. He said: “It is true that most officers and government officials are taking advantage. But if everyone becomes a grafter, the system will collapse. There are 5% who don’t do corruption. You should be proud to see your father among that 5% due to whom the system is alive and surviving.”
That statement is terrifyingly profound. It implies that 95% of the weight is being carried by just 5% of the pillars. If those few honest souls give up, the roof caves in on all of us.
You don’t have to look far to see the cracks in the system. Just take a walk around the capital region. Nothing seems to follow a system; everything feels makeshift.
A glaring example that defines our apathy is right in Vivek Vihar. There is a drain cover opposite the BJP office that has been broken for five or six years. Half a decade. It has never been replaced or repaired. The result? Every monsoon, the drain chokes, and the road floods with filthy water. We drive through it, we walk through it, and we ignore it.
It isn’t just drains. It’s our future and our survival:
Å Schools: Many are running in name only, failing to equip the next generation.
Å Hospitals: Our healthcare infrastructure is tragically inefficient. We are not equipped to handle critical diseases. The standard procedure for any major case is a referral to hospitals outside the state – Assam, Delhi, Vellore. If you get sick here, you pray you have the time and money to leave.
The scariest part isn’t the corruption itself; it is our reaction to it. We are not worrying.
We have become a society that has ‘adjusted’ to corruption. We have normalised the abnormal. We see a pothole, we drive around it. We see a bribe being taken, we look away. We accept that this is just how it is.
But as that wise EAC father said, consequences are coming. You cannot build a future on a foundation that is 95% rotten. Eventually, the adjustment period ends, and the collapse begins.
However, I cannot end this entry in total despair. I have to look for the light – that 5%.
We must take a moment to appreciate the officials who sit in their offices every day, refusing bribes, pushing files based on merit, and getting ridiculed for being ‘too honest’. They are the reason we still have roads to drive on and electricity in our lines, however sporadic.
And we must thank the voices that refuse to be silenced: people like Takam Sonia of Arunbhoomi media house, who dares to show the truth, and Sol Dodum, the social activist who fights battles that many of us are too afraid to fight. They are the antibodies fighting the infection in our system.
To the 5%: Thank you. You are the reason we are still standing.
To the rest of us: It is time to stop adjusting and start worrying.
Gedak Taipodia,
Kangku circle, Lower Siang