Manipur: Evolutionary Process Stopped, New Development Process Uncertain

By – Amar Yumnam
Imphal, Oct 14:

I ended my last piece on Ethnic Geography and Ethnic Polity thus: “What has been the most unfortunate thing in contemporary Manipur is the attempt to bypass the inevitable evolutionary foundations of history for social emergence, geographic space and ethnic polity by dynamisms founded on exogeneity and short-cuts to the desired objectives. Since this is not the natural process of evolution, Manipur has been forced into an atmosphere of violence. The time is already too late for the government to prove that she can exercise governance. Meaningful and successful exercise of governance by the state is paramount to stop the compromises emerging in societal development. The development suffering today is not something Manipur can afford both endogenously and exogenously.”
Indeed, four biggest sufferings of Manipur today are: A. The people have mostly given up expectations from the prevailing governance of the democratic polity. This is a very unfortunate scenario for, in such contexts, the power in governance can get away with pretensions as the people do not expect anything positively significant outcome for the society from its performance. B. In such contexts, opportunities for work and livelihood would shrink. Naturally deepening of socio-economic inequality would be a natural outcome as happening in Manipur today. C. Morality is now a big political issue. D. In the atmosphere of absence of socio-economic fostering governance, we are to expect heightened tensions among relatives and friends replacing the usual atmosphere of cooperation for social enhancement.
The present contextual picture of Manipur reminds us of the ‘Song of the English’ by Rudyard Kipling – an English journalist, novelist, poet and short story writer born in 1865 and left the world in 1936 (by the way, this was a year under the Great Depression and John Maynard Keynes presented to the world his path-breaking book titled General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money):

The strength, beauty and global appeal of Manipur has been the existence in a secluded corner of the world of a civilisation founded on principles of socio-politico-economic justice, social cooperation and universalism in approach.
Given the quantitative size, the social interactions for continuous evolution have been oriented more towards a qualitative enhancement of the socio-politico-economic existence. This is how we witness rich contributions to the global scenario from this small land and people in qualitative aspects of human existence.
But today, the socio-politico universalism in Manipur is suffering a daily hammering and it has become much thinner if not dead. While one may expect and experience thinning down of universalism of democratic principles in the context of global interactions but experiencing this in Manipur is both unexpected and needs to immediately attend to Kiplings’ call for ‘swiftness in all obedience.’ In the unfolding global picture and Indian polity scenario, the firm and swiftness of governance response to the halting of the evolutionary socio-politico-economic process and reviving a firm development evolution are paramount.
Let us be very clear that a key foundation of Manipur’s evolutionary development process has been the social capital with unique cultural foundations; it has not been physical capital or financial capital. In other words, the cultural foundation of Manipur’s evolutionary development has been robust and unique. It is exactly this which is getting jeopardised and we are not sure when will the governance response of reverting this would come. Let me quote here John Rawls from his Theory of Justice: “Now that all the parts of the theory of justice are before us, the argument for congruence can be completed. It suffices to tie together the various aspects of a well-ordered society and to see them in the appropriate context. The concepts of justice and goodness are linked with distinct principles and the question of congruence is whether these two families of criteria fit together. More precisely, each concept with its associated principles defines a point of view from which institutions, actions, and plans of life can be assessed. A sense of justice is an effective desire to apply and to act from the principles of justice and so from the point of view of justice. Thus what is to be established is that it is rational (as defined by the thin theory of the good) for those in a well-ordered society to affirm their sense of justice as regulative of their plan of life. It remains to be shown that this disposition to take up and to be guided by the standpoint of justice accords with the individual’s good.”
In the background of the above, let me end with what Robert Sugden writes in The Economics of Rights, Co-operation, and Welfare(2005): “a rule is likely to acquire moral force if it satisfies two conditions Everyone (or almost everyone) in the relevant community follows the rule.2 If any individual follows the rule, it is in his interest that his opponents – that is, the people with whom he deals – follow it too. Any rule that is a convention necessarily satisfies a third condition:3 Provided that his opponents follow the rule, it is in each individual’s interest to follow it.”