By: Amar Yumnam
Imphal, Mar 11:
Manipur has been visited by a series of Shradh for the last nearly one year, and Anniversaries (Phirois) are under preparation. Simultaneously, many families have been suffering difficult to bear disturbances to household livelihoods.
The Indian state have been rather preoccupied with other business and have not found time to enquire about the multiple Shradhs and household troubles happening in Manipur. Instead of the enquiry, the Indian state have offered the people of Manipur to rather enjoy life with promises from an unreachable distance fishes and pork. Remember, the quality of these fishes and pork is something the people cannot be sure about yet. No region anywhere in the world today would be in a situation with comparable precariousness to Manipur. Even further, the political economic – in both national and international perspectives – challenges Manipur faces today are invariably more difficult than those of any other province in India.
In the context of the continuation of Shradhs for the past nearly one year, it would be relevant to recall big the responsibility of the state – whether in the Manipur or the Indian sense; I would not take time here to define what a state is but in plain language let us understand that there are people, land and government adequately defined and empowered to perform responsibilities: “The state, for better or worse: mobilizes populations in defence of its realm; regulates, monitors and polices conduct within civil society; intervenes (whether we think we like it or not)within the economy; and regulates (and in some instances controls) the flow of information within the public sphere, to detail merely some of its more obvious activities. Few then would deny the ubiquity or pervasiveness of the influence of the state within modern societies.”
It is true that everyone of us is responsible individually as well as collectively. But there are areas where only the state can perform responsibly, meaningfully and effectively. Here let me quote an expert, Robert Goodin – to avoid looking like a biased opinion – from his Protecting the Vulnerable (1985): “our responsibilities for protecting [vulnerable]… others are strictly analogous to our responsibilities for protecting persons with whom we have any of the standard “special” relationships.
These additional responsibilities…… first and foremost an argument in favour of the welfare state. That institution is the principal mechanism through which we discharge our collective responsibilities to protect our vulnerable compatriots…The social assistance programmes of the welfare state are best seen as devices to protect vulnerable and dependent beneficiaries. That is at one and same time their intention, their effect and their justification.”
It is exactly in these areas of intention, effect and justification for existence that the state – whether in the sense of Manipur at the lower level or India at the uppermost level – have failed terribly and continue to be so during the last one year. Further even more painfully, the top exemplar of the Indian state has not even bothered to utter even a single word on this responsibility for the intention of the state, effect of the social crisis and justification for the absence of intervention by the state. The rationale for these inactions and the use of implausible languages rather to distract public attention reminds me of Joshua Gert (1984}: “And even when we, or they, offer reasons in place of principles, it is reasonable to think of such arguments as shorthand for appeals to principles. For no one would advocate an action simply because there was some reason in its favour, if it were clear that there were compelling reasons against performing it. Thus when reasons are cited in arguments, there is some idea that all the relevant reasons, taken together, support the action. This implies that there is some principle in the background that produces overall verdicts based on all those reasons: perhaps it is the simple principle ‘perform the action supported by the most reasons’, or perhaps it is some more complicated principle. One cites particular reasons in order to suggest that those reasons are sufficient to determine the outcome of the application of such a principle. The very plausible idea that two actions to which the same reasons are relevant must have the same rational status also suggests that reason-based arguments are backed by a unique principle: a principle that takes those reasons as in put and yields the status of the action as output.”
This establishes that the inaction by the provincial government and the non-bothering by the Indian state to the Manipur social crisis mean in a big way the non-application of the standard Reasoning and Rationality capabilities of a state. This raises the next question of whether such an approach to the sufferings and vulnerabilities of the people as the opportunity to provide promised fishes and pork in a virtual way is Moral or otherwise. The question gets even trickier if the state adopts this approach. For reasons of space, I would take up this issue in the next week’s column.
