By- Schindler Potsangbam
For someone like me who spent a n incredibly less amount o f time in Manipur, I used to think we as a whole community were very educated and developed.
One o f my uncles sends me Manipuri English newspapers everyday and it is deeply distressing to look at them page by page .There is a specific kind of heartbreak in seeing a community that once prided itself on its sophistications be reduced to the bleak headlines of a daily newspaper. For a moment I thought it was all over and things were getting normal, but I was wrong, very wrong.
This is not the end, the thing we used to fear has already ended, this is the beginning of a new evil. This is the beginning of the end.
The last few days’ protests have been a lot about the government itself and very less about the communal tension, although the trigger point was the infamous Tronglaobi bomb blast, which became a reason for not only grief but also a living concern for the state security apparatus to
be complacent. Well it’s always been about nuances to understand my state.
“The heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to b e ruled by someone inferior to yourself” – Plato
In the midst o f a state grappling to hold itself, a government o n the verge of collapse, this quote b y Plato resonates with me with a haunting clarity.
To the generation of educated Manipuri youths, who have long stayed on the sidelines of politics, this is not the time to silently endorse the decline o f ourselves. This is the time to recognise and address the political apathy in our backyard.
The elephant in the room here is the vacuum which is to b e filled by the educated youths and experts of our state.
Plato’s penalty here comes in the form of internet shutdowns, curfews, strategic complacencies and somehow a government that responds to a tragedy with ex-gratia payments rather than systemic security.
For this concern, I’ve handpicked some of the contemporary examples and ideologies that have emerged over the years to tackle the changing times: the technocracy and the technocrats, Francis Fukuya ma ’s ve to cracy and its solution in regards to ‘Political Order and Political Decay’ and State Capacity Building.
To understand the word technocracy, let’s take a look at current Nepal, a country 2 years ago that was in a somewhat similar situation as ours. Political distress, a chain of aging and entrenched political rulers, hollow economy, corruption, unemployment, youth dissatisfaction, victims of brain drain, inflation and what not. But this year it all changed or at least we can say they are going the right way.
The sitting Prime Minister Bale n Shah is a structural engineer and a popular rapper running a country of zero tolerance for VIP culture.
The Home Minister, Sadan Gurun g is DJ, and a prominent activist who rose from his humanitarian NGO (Hami Nepal). The Health Minister, Nisha Mehta is a graduate from AIIMS, Delhi. The Finance Minister, Dr. Swarnim Wagle is a world-renowned economist and former senior official at the World Bank and UNDP. The Law Minister, Sobita Gauta m is a legal expert and former journalist, and they are all under 5 0 years of age or even younger and the list goes on . This is technocracy, meaning a system of government or social management where decision-making power is vested in experts, such a s scientists, engineers, and economists, rather than elected politicians. I would love to talk more about this another time.
But the matter o f the fact is why can’t we d o this in Manipur? Some might say because o f our central and state federal structure which is intrinsically different from that of Nepal’s but the core message here remains the same, and that is, competence is the only neutraliser for communal chaos.
Communal chaos thrives o n the perception o f bias. When a government is “inferior” o r partisan, every action is seen through a n ethnic lens. So here comes the educated and experts’ argument, if the technocrats work for the system rather than “one community” the ethnic grievances lose their power because it tackles the ground root problems where the unrest roots its cause and delivers the state with all the redistributive measures, welfare measures and soon .
A very intriguing concept here is the State capacity building where meritocracy and bureaucratic autonomy is encouraged where the people running the department are shielded from political and ethnic pressure directly linking it to technocracy. And most importantly it focuses o n the deliverance of services to the common people.
To this I would like to introduce the idea of Repatromonialisation by Francis Fukuya ma which describes a process where people in power naturally favor their own “kin and cronies” rather than hiring based on merit. A classic example of reciprocal a ltruism. This is a loop which can also b e noticed in Manipur.
He argues that to stop this political decay, a state has to move from a patrimonial state to an impersonal and modern state.
“Political decay occurs when institutions fail to adapt to a changing environment… The struggle for political order is a struggle to build a state that is both powerful and impersonal.” — Francis Fukuya ma
So as I scroll past the digital newspaper my uncle sent me , it becomes heavier and heavier to my eyes day b y day because for too long our youth has been relegated to a status of a passive observer using our complexity as an excuse for our stagnation. Reading about the Tronglaobi tragedy as if it was a n inevitable act and not a human failure.
This is a profound turmoil and the penalty is currently being paid in the form o f the stolen futures of our children. But the price o f leadership, the cost o f stepping up is finally becoming cheaper than the cost o f our silence. Human agency is far superior than what we think it is. So it is time to stop mourning the Manipur we thought we knew and start building the one we deserve.
Nothing is apolitical, and everything is political.
