By – Amar Yumnam
Imphal, August 11:
It is a tragedy that in this time of the end of first quarter of the twenty-first century, Manipur has to rethink on (i) what a society is, (ii) what a co-existence of ethnicities over centuries is, (iii) what has been the historical roots of these, (iv) what has been the way government has evolved from kingship to the present one, (v) what is the characteristic outlook and functioning of the present government, and (vi) what is the social future is going to be like.
A society is a collection of people. An individual will not constitute a society. A collection of relatives will not constitute a society – it may just be a family. A collection of families will not constitute a society. A society is one where there are a large number of families coupled by still larger number of relatives. The relatives will still be larger than a solitary family but variants of families will constitute a society. It is unthinkable to have a single choice exercised and shared by all the variant families. Since existing and working for survival in more or less geographic areas, there would naturally emerge a kind of ways of sharing and agreed to by the members of the larger collection. This is called Public Choice and the principles being followed by all for peaceful co-existence in the exercise of choice is what we know as Social Norms. Every society would experience the presence of people pretending to follow the norms but generally indulge in violence and violation of these.
With the rise in the number of population, it would be difficult for a few individuals to control this violence and violations. This is natural as over time the number of villages would increase and interactions and exchanges would multiply. This is how the institution of Government was established as the innovative agency for executing the functions of observance, control and facilitation such that the collective welfare of the people is enhanced. The core foundation principle of establishing government as an agency of the people is for the continuation and enhancement of shared prosperity; the clarity of conscience and consciousness of the few performing the functions of government is of paramount importance. The policing function of the government is to ensure the control of the expansion of violations of this shared prosperity and enable the prosperity path with least disturbance if any.
What India follows is to have “The Government of the people, by the people and for the people.” People are the core for the conscience, consciousness and performance of the agency working on behalf of the people, for the convenience of the people and for the continuance of the welfare of the people.
While performing the functions, it is fundamental that the government knows the society and the geography of the place where the duties are being conducted. This is what is being emphasized as contextualization of performance in contemporary studies for more complete understanding. In these studies, it is important that the functioning is alive to the time. The logic for this is that untimely performance cannot be carried on for long. The performance of the government has not only be alive to the realities of the present but also in full conscience to ensure a consequential brighter future of the society as a whole.
Two present happenings in Manipur have particularly aroused my conscience and consciousness of my place of birth, to which I have always returned despite opportunities to live in places of greater development in Europe or America. While America and Europe were the main attractions as destinations of our youth till about the first decade of this century, but today South East Asia and East Asia have also emerged as good attractions. The youths of courageous engagement and competitive spirits are increasingly leaving Manipur for all these places. This implies the weakening of social capital – in plain words, the shared capability to perform is getting weakened in Manipur; this can never be a rationale for social existence. All these outcomes necessarily contain some elements of government failure to perform the role rightly.
The two happenings I have mentioned in the previous para are: A. The dismantling of shops and small vendors on the footpath as something like a great performance. B. The confinement of people endeavouring in engagements for restoration of social peace in Manipur.
Now I would be asked as to why I am raising questions on these two. For the first one, we all know that for more than two years by now, the people have been so collectively disturbed to earn livelihood and very badly at that. With all my conscience and the lessons I have learnt from my core subject Economics and related disciplines, I would definitely argue that the restoration of peace is of priority rather than dismantling. Once social peace gets restored and the livelihood opportunities get revived, dismantling the vendors is a simple task of policing. The issue I am raising is of the fundamentality to see the timing of activities to at least ensure no further reversal of the welfare of the people. The timing also happens to be one where people do not have the option of going out of their places of general residence.
The second question relates to an issue – a very costly social one – where diversity of ethnicity has been of a crisis for more than two years and with no sign of visible government action to resolve the infliction to the welfare of the people. Here we should remember that historically Manipur has been enjoying the diversity. But unfortunately the level and pace of development are already low. In such contexts of the invisibility of the state to resolve the contemporary crisis and restore the path towards shared social welfare, some people belonging to an ethnic group with historical share in the evolution of Manipur took the courage to come to the capital of the province to engage in discussions for restoring social welfare. Here again policing has got the upper hand in the functioning of the government. These engagements in discussions for restoring social peace is exactly the moment for the government to actively apply mind to evolve policies for long term restoration of peace and make the people feel the beauty of sharing welfare once again. Here we need to recall Foucault for the significance attached to appreciate the “problematic of government in general” (2007) where “governmentalization of the state” need to be understood with “history of the subject” in which “tricky combination in the same political structures of individualization techniques and of totalization procedures.” As Anne Phillips (1993) puts it: what is needed is “politics that can recognise and legitimate group difference while resisting fragmentation into discrete and local identities, and the kind of solidarity that becomes possible if we give up on the presumption of an undifferentiated humanity.” This is what Manipur has been historically.
