By – Amar Yumnam
Imphal, Nov 25:
In the beginning it was a plain administrative issue to be addressed by governance intervention mechanisms. But it has now become a full-blown social (inclusive of economic and political dimensions) crisis. In a very disturbing way, the happenings have started eating into the inherited robust social ethos of the Manipur Nation. It must be invariably remembered that the inherited social ethos of a nation is not something which fell from the sky. Manipur’s social ethos was evolved through practices and shared community acceptance over centuries – starting from the pre-historic days. Now these are getting increasingly eroded within and without. This is a cost no vibrant society can think of incurring, and ipso facto more so Manipur.
Further, the democratic characteristic of the polity is almost seriously injured; violence has become the distinguishing characteristic of both instrumental and expressive dimensions of political feelings. This has only reinforced the increasing distance between the government and the citizens. In other words, what Manipur sees today is a rising disbelief on the government. Even further, what we see today is degraded scenario of absence of political debates. In a democracy, it is paramount that the political debates should thrive at both public and private levels. The government formed through the democratic procedures should absorb the key issues and core points of these social discussions – this is exactly where the health or otherwise of the relationship between government and the citizens becomes important.
But this is something which is increasingly seen as a private benefit-sharing relationship between some citizens and the powers that be in Manipur today. This immediately erodes the social mechanism of pushing for shared public agenda. The Manipur government is now conceived as more for pushing private agenda and not for attending to the shared demands of the public.
Now these are very serious and dangerous scenarios for Manipur. The moment inevitably demands that the government manifests her full serious commitment to the cause, vitality and continual thriving of Manipur with vibrant inner strengths. But we are witnessing something else getting revealed in who cares manner.
Under Dictatorship, whatever the Dictator thinks is right; whatever he does is right; whatever he announces is a policy the state has necessarily to follow. There is no scope for public or private debate on anything announced by a Dictator. But it is altogether a different picture in a Democracy and in a definitely robust manner. In a democracy, the government increasingly invites public and private deliberations on what she intends or initiated. Besides this, the government does not hesitate to invite any expert for discussions on any field which demands expertise. Under dictatorship, the cost of lack of engagement of expertise on any issue is borne by the society collectively by underperformance. In a democracy, this cost need not be incurred at all but must increasingly see to it that social justice is a sure accompaniment of every achievement.
Now the question is: How to orient the government to achieve this objective of performing with knowledge in a democracy? Unlike under dictatorship, in a democracy the Head of the People does not by any means incur any loss in social prestige and stature while going for a continual exchange of ideas with the experts of the concerned fields as dictated by the needs of the moment. This engagement with the experts can be both institutional and informal. But this engagement is paramount for the ultimate actions of the government have to be based on policy/policies. But it would be too much to expect the political leader in power to be conversant with every issue where policy is awaited.
We understand that Manipur Government now have a Security Advisor. But it would be an extremely faulty wishfulness if we expect him to advise the government on Social, Development and related issues in addition to his involvement on security concerns. Let us remember here the concept of Capability of our great thinker, Amartya Sen. The indulgence of the Experts is crucial in a democratic system is both systemic need and paramount. This is because policy in a democracy is for a goal of shared social advancement and is not like pursual of personal enrichment under dictatorship.
The immediacy for appreciating what a policy is like has come from two recent statements of Head of the People and an elected person from the Kuki. While the killings within and the accompanying decline in social ethos is approaching two years, the head of the people of Manipur has just made a statement that an effort would be put in place to identify foreigners. Now, given Manipur’s scenario today, this can beat most only be a sub-component of a policy. Further, any policy should be something which is immediately put in place the way things are in Manipur today. Secondly, we all know that, among the six recently killed in Jiribam, there were three babies of which one eight-year-old girl and an eight months old child were there. In the post-mortem report it was also revealed that all the abdominal bonds of the eight years old baby-girl were all broken; you cannot even imagine what must the girl must have gone through. Despite these, a democratically elected Kuki from Churachandpur rationalized the killings – height of irrationality, inhumanity and nonsense.
Now what is Policy? Let me quote Edward Page here: “Insofar as they arise from conscious reflection and deliberation, policies may reflect a variety of intentions and ideas: some vague, some specific, some conflicting, some unarticulated. They can…even be the unintended or undeliberated consequences of professional practices or bureaucratic routines. Such intentions, practices, and ideas can in turn be shaped by a vast array of different environmental circumstances, ranging from an immediate specific cue or impetus to a more general spirit of the time or even a belief in a self-evident universal truth. How can we talk about the origins of something as diverse as policy? …. Policies first come into being through being put on an agenda—a notional list of topics that people involved in policy making are interested in, and which they seek to address through developing, or exploring the possibility of developing, policies. … The value of the notion of agendas is that it provides a framework that allows one to outline the proximate causes that lead to attention being devoted to an issue: how an issue comes to emerge from relative obscurity to becoming something that is being discussed as a serious contender for legislation or some other policy measure. …As Kingdon (1995, 76) points out: A complex combination of factors is generally responsible for the movement of a given item into agenda prominence. For a number of reasons a combination of sources is virtually always responsible. One reason is the general fragmentation of the system. The founders deliberately designed a constitutional system to be fragmented, incapable of being dominated by any one actor. They succeeded. Thus a combination of people is required to bring an idea to policy fruition.”(Page, Edward, “The Origins of Policy”, in Moran, Michael, Martin Rein and Robert E. Goodin, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Public Policy, OUP, 2006, pp. 207-208). Manipur needs POLICY.
