Since 15 October 1949, Manipur had gone through different phases of her journey towards democracy within the Indian frame of republic. Right from the status of Part C having no legislative power to Statehood with clipped wing, the Manipuri passed through. In these seven decades of democratic rule, the Manipuri neither could not develop a free individual having liberty in its real sense.
Even in the government formation after the election, the political mantra is not of federalism or people’s choice, rather the government is imposed on the people in the name of democracy. The political parties and their members’ commitment to the party ideology are of highest farce as their participation in the government formation is just like musical chairs. They run and sit in the tune for their personal gains rather than for people’s welfare or for their political ideologies. How many politicians of a particular political party are ones who had defected from arc rivalry party? Manipur had witnessed how die-hard socialist or communist leaders had transformed to ideologically opposite political parties. It is also seen in Manipur that many committed politicians could not work for the peoples because of numbers or constitutional limitations: a few good men could not do anything in a democratic government.
Manipur since the first day of democratic experience in Indian framework, had had many MLAs having degree of higher education, PhD in different academic fields. Many came from different walks of life; some from legal professions, some from academia while some from medical professions. Could they perform duties using their own consciences? Or did many other factors diluted their good will? We all know that the primary mantra of electoral politics is to win the election. In order to win the election, political parties employ various divisive techniques in order to create a false group consciousness for their political ends. On the other hand, the regional parties in Manipur, for various reasons failed to create a regional consciousness; nor they had a mass base or could not create it using regional ideology or historical necessities.
These days, as India has her own division of populations on the basis of caste and religion, sometimes linguistic affiliation, Manipur is struggling the division of peoples on the basis of ethnicity, religion or sometimes geographical base. These artificial bases are used by various politicians for their electoral gains. But, they left the division after the election without addressing the problems, developed out of the division. Pre-Election, during and post-election musical chair around the power does not promise any development or social welfare. The peoples of Manipur are so mesmerized by the political parties that their failure in governance is explained as peoples’ failing to elect their ideal leaders. The question here is not how an MLA would be elected; but how people should decide if the election fails in electing good MLAs.
Leader writer: Sh. Ajit
