By – Amar Yumnam
Imphal, Aug 12:
During the last half a decade and particularly during the last two years Manipur has faced a very critical problem relating with the presence or otherwise of governance; I have been expressing my views on this in quite a few instances. The problem is so critical that the social dilemma Manipur faces today is: Should we put any belief in the government?
Commanding the Belief of the People is a big challenge for any government and a major issue to any society, particularly in periods of transition. To appropriately appreciate the issue, we may recall the tremendous application of mind and knowledge on this in the Post-Second World War in Western Europe and particularly how the the Government and Law Committee of the Economic and Social Research Council of the UK(ESRC) together with the Standing Committee for the Social Sciences(SCSS) of the European Science Foundation (ESF) did during the 1980s and 1990s. “Millions of deaths, the atrocities of the holocaust, and the expulsion of countless people from their homes and communities have sharpened the desire of scholars, politicians, and the public to search for conditions that would prevent the repetition of such things. Though challenged by the Cold War, the West has held firmly to its liberal belief that pluralist democracy, in the form of a Rechtsstaat (legal state), is the best guarantee. This view was widely though not universally accepted, while a reversion to authoritarian or totalitarian rule in the West was not entirely discounted either… Democracy is not to be taken for granted. As a consequence, it is important to study why democracy may fail … and, no less important, why most nations of Western Europe have stabilized themselves institutionally and maintained at least an acceptable level of public support.” I would call Accelerating India’s Development: A State-Led Roadmap for Effective Governance by Karthik Muralidharan as one the best books published this year (2024). He writes: “When the state promises more than it can deliver, it is often forced to break some promises, which contributes to a trust deficit between citizens and the government. Trust deficits further weaken state effectiveness by limiting the state’s ability to negotiate policy changes with stakeholders.” What has happened in Manipur is a case where it is never clear whether the state has promised anything or otherwise. Manipur’s case is one of “[g]ood policies often create concentrated costs and diffused benefits, which can explain weak political incentives for implementing them.”
Given the global lesson and what Manipur has been experiencing in these few years, Manipur needs a complete rethinking on the Capabilities of the Government and the relationship between the Government and the Public.
The urgency for this rethinking is emphasised by the dynamics of ethnic thinking happening right now. She is right now in a situation where the Government perceives her existence is more than enough and what happens with the governance dimensions on the societal front is of little relevance if any. This is why we observe the manifestation of massive incoherence and inconsistency in the public statements of the leading actors in the government despite the social crisis Manipur faces today; it could as well be that the thinking capabilities of the government are below par. Here it would be of relevance to recall what Ralf-Eckhard Turke wrote in 2008 in his book Governance: Systemic Foundation and Framework: “explicit representations [are] also static, since they must be assembled and therefore cannot capture the much more complex reality always immanent in moment-to-moment interpersonal interactions. They can address specific topics and support the actors’ intentionality and contextuality, e.g. to create a common language among participants by making apparent distinctions so far not recognised or shared by them. But explicit representations cannot depict the complete true aspects of any issue, simply because they are static, which means they inherently entail the problem of sequencing….” While this is a general issue, the challenge in the case of Manipur has appeared to be accompanied by intentional designs from the top for causing failures and damages in governance. There is an absolute necessity for a self-referential structure to make the system viable.”Actors cannot appraise neutrally the viability of a °system° notion whether they are actively engaged in it or not. Their perspective is necessarily biased, evolving from their specific individual °system° notion (determined by their role, etc.).They cannot see it from a holistic independent perspective because they have only their individual transducers to apply (see chapter 3.4) and structural conditions under which they access the °system° notion. Therefore, the only way to legitimately assign the property ‘viable’ to a °system° notion is to establish a self-referential meta-structure that ensures continuously that the °system° structures are kept viable. A social °system° that establishes such a structure can then be referred to as “viable”. Viability is nothing that can be designed once for all, rather it is something that must be triggered continuously by facilitating it.”
While talking of this issue of viability, let us first accept the fact that the Government as it prevails today would be unable to evolve a mechanism to sustain viability with a longer-term perspective. Such a feeling comes out from the visible government failures to apply mind and appreciate the issues surrounding the political, economic, social and the technological dimensions facing Manipur today in her needed endeavours for transition.
Now what is to be done for the land and her people cannot afford this failure to last for long? Prof Kaushik Basu as a prelude to his Prof. N. R. Kamath Distinguished Institute Lecture on ‘India’s Unemployment Problem: Some Lessons From Economic Theory” to be delivered at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay on 12 August 2024 has put this prelude in the ‘X’: “India has a huge unemployment problem. It can be solved but piecemeal interventions won’t do. We need to tap the nation’s professional talent (scientists, economists, IAS, IES…) to draw up a strategy.” This approach to evolve a strategy is exactly what Manipur needs today as well – constitute a committee of diversified experts to frame a development strategy for the State.
