Democracy, Diversity and Decision-Making: What Manipur Needs

By – Amar Yumnam
Imphal, February 23:
The recent Judgement of the US Supreme Court on the willy-nilly decisions of the country’s President – Donald Trump – is a very significant one for any democratic country. It says very loudly that no Leader should imagine that he is the ultimate in anything and other Constitutional Institutions can be taken for granted. In a book titled The Bold Leader: Decide What Matters and Deliver What Counts and just published this month, Leigh Burgess writes: “Bold leadership is far more than a role you step into or a title you earn, it’s the choice you consciously make, over and over, day after day. It’s waking up each morning and deciding to lead with intention, clarity, and unwavering courage, even when the path ahead feels uncertain or intimidating. As we conclude our journey together, I want to remind you of something deeply important; your boldness doesn’t come from a place of perfect confidence or the absence of fear. Boldness lives precisely in those moments when you feel the tug of hesitation, uncertainty, or discomfort, yet you choose to step forward anyway. It’s in your everyday decisions, your interactions, and how you respond to life’s inevitable setbacks.” This is exactly in this context that I want to look at the new Chief Minister of Manipur.
The State Assembly is there, but nevertheless the decision he has taken to appoint Advisors in his decision-making process is a very positive one. But given the social crisis Manipur still goes through, I would like to make two comments at least. First, the demographic diversity should have been taken care of. Second, the appointments should have been done at one go and not the sporadic way it has followed; this way the potential perspective of the committee of Advisors would have been more clear.
While policy formulation and successfully implement it are talked of often, certain contextual issues are to be fully aware of. Given the time available to the present administrative authority, one can only think of short-term policies. Here my comment would be that the attention should rather be of short-term interventions and not policies. This is because the crisis Manipur has been facing and expecting to resolve is a social crisis. If the government had taken enough care and put in place interventions to resolve the problem before becoming a social crisis, the story would have been very different. The character of any social crisis is that it certainly needs a long-term policy, and shared commitment by the diverse population groups if the demographic diversity characterises the society; evolving and establishing a collectively shared trust of each other is necessarily a time-consuming process.
Given these realities, the attention has to be the application of mind on how to evolve short-term functional programmes to pave a way for restoration of trust.
Further, as stated above, what Manipur has faced is a social crisis. A social crisis cannot be addressed by personal inclinations; the relative inclinations of the diverse groups are to be digested. This does by no means imply allowing any specific group’s desires be necessarily fulfilled. As stated above, the time available for evolution and attend to its implementation of a long-term policy is simply out of the question. While the violence involved in the crisis should be brough to an end, we require strong attention on three issues. First, the society does not have time to waste further to have a deeper understanding of the factors behind the crisis. Second, we must be sure of the fact that it has been a social crisis. Third, there is no time available to evolve and implement a social policy.
Given the above realities, the attention should necessarily be on two issues. First, the resort to violence by any group should be stopped. This is where governance matters.As Chhotray and Stoker put in their book – Governance Theory and Practice: “Accommodation is achieved in a variety of ways: sometimes by mutual understanding driven by deliberation but more often through hard bargaining, vague specification of outcomes, divide-and-rule, obfuscation, the use of rituals and symbols and the exercise of hegemonic influence. Politics is driven not by mutual admiration but rather by the necessity of pursuing a common direction in an interconnected world where one cannot choose one’s neighbours.” This perspective is significant in the context of Manipur where the population diversity is coupled by geographic diversity; this diversity calls for the policies to be contextually divergent while the interrelationships are being strengthened. This strengthening of interrelationships can be done by acknowledging the traditional mutual appreciation and interactions of social norms.
These call for the attention to be given to the evolution of a framework for social policy rather than policies themselves. The longevity of any policy evolved and implemented today would be short, but the framework can have a long-term life. The present governance can concentrate on leaving a legacy of framework for social policy such that the future governments can only indulge in strengthening it for enhancing the social interactions for a shared development journey for Manipur.