Online for Inner Line Permit: Redefining ‘global village’

    14-Feb-2020
Online. This should redefine the understanding of ‘global village’. Just how much the internet has impacted on the lives of the people can be easily gauged from the fact that now students and parents do not need to walk from one college to the other to submit their admission form come admission time once the Class XII results are announced. In other words students, parents and guardians just have to click open the computer, go online and submit the admission form to the college or university of their choice sitting in the comfort of their home or in any internet cafe opened all over the place. Students from Manipur must be particularly familiar of how they can now apply to the course and university/college of their choice once they receive their Class XII examination results. This is a marked difference from the days when students and their parents and guardians had to walk from one college to the other while applying for admission for example at Delhi University in the hot Delhi summer. Same is the case while buying flight tickets, rail tickets etc and clearly the term ‘global village’ can be better understood within this context. So are the online entrance tests that are being conducted by some universities across the world today and clearly the revolution that information technology has brought about is immense. It is along this line that the launch of the online portal to get the Inner Line Permit System to enter Manipur should be understood.
Now that the Inner Line Permit System has been enforced in Manipur, non-locals will now need to get the permit to enter the State fulfilling a long standing demand of the people to regulate the influx of non-locals into the State. The online mode should make the task of getting the ILP much more convenient and easier for the many non-locals who visit the State regularly. Regulate the inflow, keep a check and make sure that getting the permit is not a complicated process. This is what should be read in the launch of the online portal for ILP. The Government has done the right thing in making plans to make the online facility available at Mao, Moreh, Jiribam, Jessami, Behiang, Sinzawl and at Bir Tikendrajit airport at Imphal. Not only would this make the task less cumbersome but also go a long way in making the system more effective. Hopefully this arrangement will also address the apprehensions aired by the people and civil society organisations over the effective implementation of the system. Altogether 33,995 permits issued from January 1 this year and in the process collecting a sum of about Rs 1 crore as revenue by way of handing out the permit and the huge amount earned in just a little over a month should tell two significant stories. One, a huge amount of money has been collected and two this reflects the huge number of non-locals coming to Manipur. This is where the people need to continue asking why Manipur continues to attract so many non-locals to ply their trade here.