By – Amar Yumnam
Imphal, Oct 28:
While we were young research scholars in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the various subjects in the Social Science were increasingly exploring ways to (a) establish exclusive approaches of research and appreciating the social realities; (b) explore paths for establishing exclusive distance from each other and inside-competitiveness for “superior” understanding of the society; (c) evolve exclusive explanations of the social realities; (d) claim greater comparative relevance by each; (e) maintain distance from the comparative approach and explanations of social issues; and (f) what not. The practitioners of each discipline felt pleased with these, and indeed took pride of the “original” contributions towards social understanding and advancement.
But by about the mid-1990s, various scholars started feeling the inadequacy of exclusive and singular understanding of any social issue; instead of keeping the other subjects at a distance, the need for appreciating the perspectives from the related subjects got increasing realisation. By the turn of the century – entry into the twenty-first century – this mutual appreciation has come a full circle. Two books published this year bear testimony to the irreversible convergence of the various branches in the Social Science – the book by Kaushik Basu is titled as Reason to Be Happy: Why Logical Thinking is the Key to a Better Life, and the one by Mary Murphy as Cultures of Growth: How the New Science of Mindset Can Transform Individuals, Teams and Organisations. These were unthinkable approaches and titles forty years back, given the specialised fields of the authors. Further, earlier the Social Science disciplines were imagining themselves to be key protagonists of individual values and enhancement of individual happiness. By the end of the 1980s, Economists started realising that their more or less sole preoccupation with quantitative dimensions was not leading the society ahead anywhere. This is how the Economists started increasingly studying the other sister-branches of Social Science. Similar experiences were felt by the scholars in all branches of Social Science. Today, the emphasis only on the individual-oriented interventions and outcomes is considered outdated for an individual has to be analysed within a context of society. The earlier well-being research is now oriented towards understanding the well-being within the scenario of the society at large. Further, the increasing emphasis on contextualisation to fully appreciate a social problem has also been a determining factor. Thus, the mid-1990s are a critical period for this. Today any Economic/Political/Social experience is a Social Experience, despite it having more of Economic component, political component and what not. There is now a strong convergence and interrelated approaches to appreciate, analyse and evolve relevant mechanisms among the various Social Science disciplines.
In the light of this global experience and international trend, I would like to emphasise that the necessity for this approach is all the more in the case of Manipur. The social cost of what Manipur has borne in the present crisis is both huge and unprepared; it is something Manipur had never thought of but now has happened. Manipur’s foundation for advancement and global participation in various activities is mainly qualitative in character and not quantitative. If it were quantitative, it would have been easier just to leave the place and engage in another area. But it cannot be so in the case of qualitative characters and qualitative strengths.
Further, the general quantitative strength being weak, the loss in time and activities in qualitative related dimensions – like education – are like a double-loss in the case of Manipur. Manipur cannot afford such a social crisis any longer and should explore ways to carry the people forward.
What Manipur needs today is immediate appreciation of the convergence in the various wings of the Social Science and understanding of policies as social policy. By the way, while we were students, the Department in Mumbai University was just Department of Economics, but today it is named as Department of Economics and Public Policy. Earlier, we used to view construction of roads as just an economic intervention, but today we must necessarily see it as a social intervention. The moment we adopt this approach, the other areas for intervention necessarily ask for identification and reconnect with linking intervention needs for social advancement; roads are important not just for themselves, but for the schools, health facilities, market participation, emergence of new economic activities, etc. All these are to be perceived simultaneously.
Manipur needs immediacy for the new realisation of viewing phenomena and interventions as Social and not just plain Economic, Political and Social; every issue is a social issue for humans live and interact within a society. Further, she cannot wait for the Seminar to end. Let me quote here Luigino Bruni and Pier Luigi Porta (2007) introducing a book on Economics of Happiness: “After Rome had caught fire, it was probably 65 AD, Emperor Nero engineered to restore his reeling popularity by staging, in a surviving amphitheatre (before the Colosseum even existed), an immense gathering to watch a group of poor Christians be eaten up by fierce lions. As the stage opened –so the story goes – very soon after the first roaring hungry beast had dashed into the arena, one of those poor Christians, quite unexpectedly, sprang up toward the lion and somehow managed to mutter a few words in the lion’s ear. Instantly the lion lost his mood, collapsed to the ground and lay still without any possible reaction. Breathless, the crowd looked at Nero. The Emperor immediately ordered a second lion, a fiercer one, to enter the stage. To no avail, however, and the same scene went on being repeated three or four times. The event definitely looked like a miracle. The Emperor, of course, was furious as the atmosphere was getting stormy. Two brutal soldiers got hold of the poor Christian, raised him to the Emperor’s stalls and threw him at His Majesty’s feet. ‘What the hell did you say’ – Nero raged – ‘in the lion’s ear?’. To which the man innocently replied ‘I just said to him: “There will be speeches after dinner!”
Let us not wait for the Dinner and the Post-Dinner Speech. Manipur should immediately have a powerful Committee of Experts to evolve a Social Policy.