By – Amar Yumnam
Imphal, May 5:
Today I am sharing some questions for there are quite a few I once supposed to have understood but, in quite a contrary, I have learnt that all the real happenings are different (I mean the actual occurrences do not stand by what I understood). The land and the people are real, but consequent upon my failure to appreciate the Principles, Order and Incidences are contradictory to the little learning I have had, it would be wrong on my end to mention any of these. The place and the people merged with a big country in 1949, and with both claiming to possessing supposedly dynamics – social-politico-economic – but I stop myself from mentioning the name of the one merged in 1949; the place and the people I mean today are comparatively so small in both quantitative and qualitative terms. This smallness has made the Big one to be unconcerned with what have been happening the last two years in the comparatively much smaller one merged in 1949. I had seen in magic displays of the rabbit being pulled out of the hat by an individual only, but what I am talking is of the rabbit being pulled out of the social hat by groups and organisations.
We were required to understand the emerging subject and its implications by the time we had just finished even the so-called studentship as research scholars. We had claimed bigness even by just mentioning John Hicks and Harold Laski. I am talking of Governance since Government had been there for long when we became smart bachelors with some education. As Benda-Beckman and others wrote (2009): “The vastly expanding group of NGOs, ranging from transnational to very local organizations, has acquired a firm place in the line-up of governance players. In some states they have become more resourceful and sometimes more powerful than the state bureaucracy. So the sheer number of actors involved, their character, as well asthe global networks they are each involved in, are of a different scale than previous constellations of plural governance. Moreover, the normativity that shapes their relations has been transformed through international law, transnational legal norms and international conventions. These are all contested in their interpretation and application.”
While struggling to digest the meanings of the new statements of the great scholars, Amihai Glazer and Lawrence S. Rothenberg starts their book Why Government Fails and Why It Succeeds (2001) thus: “1. A policy succeeds only if government officials really want a program to attain its stated goals.
Policy fails when the goals of politicians differ from those formally stated. The intent behind pork barrel projects, for example, may be to spend money in a legislative district, rather than to control floods.. or to protect the environment. 2. Interest groups mould policy in ways that defeat the purpose of the program originally proposed.” One conclusion in the final chapter is particularly interesting: “Blaming policy failures mostly on the behaviour of venal, misleading, or ill-informed politicians, or on the efforts of self-aggrandizing special interests, is incorrect. Attributing policy successes solely to the good behaviour of elected officials, bureaucrats, or interest groups is also wrong.” I take this as interesting because the place and the people I am talking of follows federalism under which inter alia the ruling government at the lower (small) level can be abolished by the government at the larger (higher level). In the case of the later, the administrators posted by the higher as well as bigger government are supposed to practise governance at the lower level. This is exactly to be so as we had learnt as students, but this is exactly what has not been: govern and do not govern.
We have been taught by many that there are officers with designated names and positions whose orders are binding and mandatory to be followed by all within a specified area. But very recently in a location of the small place, this person’s orders were not followed despite the visible manifestation of the state (in the conceptual sense). Three questions I asked myself: A. Is there a new definition of governance? B. Is Gun given a new definition not included within firearm and others? C. Is Uniform something anybody can wear and defined in any form?
The officers governing or running an administration are said to be members of what is called bureaucracy. Since I do not know anything about this term, let me end with some interesting quotations on the behavioural natures of bureaucracy. Jeffrey Tucker in his 2010 book titled Bourbon for Breakfast: Living Outside the Statist Quo writes: “Some years ago, the head of the local bureaucracy in charge of the distribution of water was quoted in the newspaper along these lines: “If these conditions persist, rationing will certainly become necessary.” If these conditions persist? That’s quite the assumption. We could say during the next rainfall: “If these conditions persist, it will become necessary for everyone to build an ark.” Conditions never persist. They change. Bureaucrats really hate that.
“One suspects that these same people love droughts. Droughts give them power, not just over the aggregate use of water. They enjoy pressing people on the smallest details of life. They get to tell you that you must take short showers. They tell you that you must flush less. They impose a profound sense of guilt on your for watering the basil growing in your window box. Droughts can turn the most innocent public employee into the moral equivalent of a Gestapo agent, issuing dictates and imposing fines, ferreting out the water thieves, all in the name of the public interest. Droughts turn neighbour against neighbour, and force the whole of everyone into the criminal class, reduced to sneaking around at night to water tomato plants. Droughts make everyone feel dependent on the state. We must read their rules, such as, “Even-numbered houses may water their lawns from 4 a.m. to 6 a.m., Monday, Thursday, and Sunday.”So rain, rain, go away. That’s their theme.
“Bureaucrat International has a common feature: loathing of “consumerism.” Whereas people want to have choice over how they spend their money, bureaucrats want us to suffer constantly, and be intensely aware of what we use, not trusting the price system to determine our consumption patterns but rather obeying regulations and strictures.”
