By – Amar Yumnam
Imphal, September 1:
Time is critical. The criticality of time is very differentially significant from that of any other factor – living as well as non-living. For the living, the criticality of time is such that time passes and moves on non-stop for all. A person with no feeling to act on any action can never think of stopping the flow of time. In the same way, a very busy person with no time to count time would have the flow of time in the same way for the non-working one. Further again, time would not flow slower for the person fighting against time to complete a task.
This characteristic of time applies to all the other living life-forms (I shall avoid using the term animals looking at the behavioural transformations taking place on the views and relationships between them and humans). The shape and other non-explainable dynamics of non-living things also undergo changes over time.
Now the biggest significance of time lies in the fact that the collective and shared social behaviour of utilization of time decides the present, the future and the interactional dynamics of the evolution of any society. The characteristically differential manifestations of this utilization of time decides the fortune of any society.
Now the fate and the place of the social fortune are not indicators relevant only to the society concerned. While it could be thought like as an aloof picture thousands of years back, but it is never realistic and productively relevant for the society if it is not looked at from two contextual perspectives – the first perspective is only of the society itself while the second one has to do from the purview of the global perspective.
Here comes the relevance and significance of the government. Any society can now exist and sustain only with the presence of a government. We need not discuss in detail on this need of government, but let us admit on the need for this government. The quality of governance of this government would decide on the capability behaviour of individuals and the comparative sustenance of this society.
This unavoidable government must necessarily possess a sense of time on what, when and how the decisions are to be taken. This is how we hear so much about priority of taking decisions taken by the government. Depending on the context and on the ability for performance, the government has to definitively decide on how soon or how long a decision should be hang along before finalization. This is exactly where the issues of the model of governance and the coexistence of people are to be settled.
The urgency and the challenges of all these are wonderfully exposed in a book just published and written by Brant Menswar – Designing Momentum: A Big Goal Blueprint Transforming Everyday Moments. While talking of an individual, he writes: “Believe me, you are not alone in feeling this way. It’s easy to get caught up in a cycle of “activity,” where you sacrifice long-term success for urgent short-term demands. The problem is you are pursuing your big aspirations in the wrong way. Rather than getting distracted by the urgency of everyday moments, you should be using them to build the kind of momentum that moves you forward one moment at a time.” While talking of an individual this principle applies to the society as well, and in society the government has to play the role of arousing enthusiasm and controlling the unneeded inclinations.
Now the questions before all of us relating to Manipur have very little to do with the positive elements of individual and social advancements in Manipur but only with diversionary strategies for the last more than two years in particular. First, the maximum attempt is to divert the attention of the people from the urgency and compulsiveness of evolving policies the present social crisis. Second, this attempt to divert the public attention is not designed to evolve a shared collective behaviour towards a progressive society. It is rather oriented towards arousing as many divisive feelings and create a convenient atmosphere resembling the creation of geographic and administrative non-sharing administrative divisions. All these are creating a reversal of the social sector capabilities which were widely and productively shared till about the mid-1990s. I understand that the sharing orders could have been possessing areas needing addressal for enhancement for reasons of equity, justice and morality. This had not happened and today the diversionary tactics are in full political play. This is how we witness in large display the reversal in the development process in both the physical and the social angles.
A recent paper Democracy’s Surprising Resilience by Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way assert in the paper under the Project Muse of the John Hopkins University thus: “Democracy has proven surprisingly resilient in the twenty-first century. The extraordinary global democratic expansion of the late twentieth century has ended, and several prominent democracies, including those in Hungary, India, the Philippines, Thailand, Turkey, and Venezuela, have experienced backsliding or breakdown. But the vast majority of “third wave” democracies—regimes that became democracies between 1975 and 2000—endure.” We only pray that the ‘backsliding’ in India is reversed and Manipur in that process shares big such that the social losses of the last few years are more than recovered within less than a decade. The necessity is also emphasised for revising of present aptitude of mainland scholars and policy makers talking of India issues and studies in full exclusion of the Northeast and still talk of India studies and policies. Let me end with the conclusion of Ross Harrison in his book on Democracy: “Indeed, even if we try with full impartiality to go beyond our own parochial starting point, impartiality turns out to be one of democracy’s best defences. Impartially considered, democracy is a good. What we happen to have, we have good reason to hold.”
