By – Amar Yumnam
I read in the 10th April edition of The New York Times a piece titled “The Trump Administration Is in a Psychotic State” written by Jonathan Rauch and Peter Wehner in which we find: “It has been clear for a long time that President Trump is a person with a disorganized mind and a disordered personality. What the past few months and especially the past few weeks have brought into focus is how his pathologies have cascaded downward and outward through his administration. They have become institutionalized. The reason the administration so often does not act coherently is that it cannot. The world faces something new and baffling and frightening in Mr. Trump’s second term: a psychotic state…….The issue is that the administration as a whole lacks a consistent attachment to reality and the ability to organize its thinking coherently. Mr. Trump’s grandiosity, impulsivity, inconsistency and outright breaks with reality have become state policy.” The moment I came upon the term ‘psychotic state’, I could not help feeling if I was reading about Manipur.
In a Democracy, the moment a government comes into place, the relationship with the Party is replaced by a Larger and Coherent relationship with the Nation. The relationship with the party would of course be expectedly there for consultations and never for calculative demeanours. But it is the later feature which has become predominant. Naturally, the Nation goes background and the Country comes to the forefront – this is exactly what is happening in India today.But it should be emphasised that a diverse and big country can be held together by a shared concept of Nation only and never be imprisoned by an imposing notion of a country whatever slogan one imposes.
It is this perspective and the operating mechanisms that have tried hard to convert Manipur into a psychotic atmosphere in recent years by the internal forces of India. The external forces are aware of this scenario and naturally endeavouring to capitalise on it. A. The closeness of the Centre to a new migrant group is not something below the carpet and none knows about. B. This closeness is now coupled by a changed attitude among the Indian security forces. I am making this statement not as an illiterate but as someone who has been so closely associated with fairly high-level officers of the Indian army for over three decades. What I loved most was their clear closeness to the government of the day and unquestioned commitment to protect the country; there had been many instances when I used very scolding comments on their actions which they took in their moments. But today they seem to have taken a different route of closing to the Party rather than government and for reasons of personal benefits. This is definitely a behavioural change unmindful of the cost to the Nation. This is a Very Huge Psychotic Cost to the Nation.
Very disturbingly, this behavioural deterioration is now being made natural and increasingly widespread. Look at the information media of Manipur where “the Chief Minister has been called by the Home Minister of India” is put as something very significant and to be proud of. The politicians and the people have been made to forget that the Chief Minister of any province is of the same rank as any Cabinet Minister of India; in fact, in many cases the Chief Ministership has been a more preferred and more dignified position than that of any Cabinet Minister in the Centre.
This can be called the beginning of a success of the efforts of the Centre to eliminate the anciently-rooted pride and strength of Manipuris for their inherited history of civilisation and the rooted strength in social and scientific areas despite the relative smallness in population numbers and territorial size. The Head of the People of India has completely put aside Manipur from his thinking mind, but instead the Centre free-riding on the crises of the province is a recent reality; the further inducement for indulging in this game is the unlikelihood of return to power in Manipur in the next elections. By the way, free-riding is a concept in Economics wherein some people stealthily harvest benefits while some other people put in labour in some activities. This is a sure way to completely destroy both Federalism and Democracy. Whatever, Manipur cannot be finished. Look at even the children coming out against the militaristic suppressions to the extent of killing three months old child.
