By – Amar Yumnam
Imphal, Sept 9:
We all know that – particularly for the last nearly two years – Manipur has been in the news; continuously at that. But this way of being in the news has not been for reasons of positive performance on the development front, given the longing imperative for a good score here. On the contrary, it has been for an unprecedented, anti-historical and unhealthy inter-ethnic clashes costing lives, livelihoods and property. Since no society, and particularly the active members of the society, would like to be recorded by other societies around the globe for elongated periods and for reasons never to be wished for, the same outlook has been visible and socially talked about in Manipur too for more than a year. The individuals and the people have been questioning on the whys of the absence of response of the government to these inter-ethnic clashes; these clashes have cost the State heavily on political, social and economic fronts.
It is natural that the kind of events Manipur has been facing during the last one and a half years would definitely involve heavy social, political and economic costs to the collective and in quite many cases at the disaggregated levels as well. The government should come to the non-delayed response to such events in order to reduce the collective as well as individual costs. But policies do not emerge from a vacuum; these naturally should be the outcome of the understanding of the issues involved. Here lies the catch. The understanding of an event and the issues involved can be meaningfully done only within a contextualized framework. This contextualized understanding in turn requires certain capabilities to appreciate the circumstances and the issues. Capability is the capacity to analyse a context (social, political and economic), evaluate the key needs of that context, and put measures in place to achieve certain objectives, given the contexts. This function, including the social, has to be performed by the government of the place. While talking of the context, we may recall what Niraja Gopal Jayal has written in Representing India : ethnic diversity and the governance of public institutions (2006): “Modern Indian nationhood was arguably a creation of the movement for freedom from British colonial rule. The geographical boundaries of 1India today bear little resemblance to those of British India, which was both more and less than what India is today: more in the sense that the erstwhile princely states which were outside the territorial jurisdiction of British rule are today part of India, and less in that the territories of modern Pakistan and Bangladesh were, at the time, part of British India. However, India’s vastness and diversity lies not only in its geographical spread but equally in the cultures that inhabit it. British colonial rule had contributed to the shaping of cultural identity, sometimes in divisive ways, and when the sun did finally set on the British Empire in India, it was partitioned into the two independent nations of India and Pakistan (which was subsequently also partitioned to create Bangladesh). India’s cultural diversity, and the politics of mobilization (along lines of caste and religious community) that it had spawned, with official encouragement in the colonial era, informed the social agenda of the movement for freedom, as also the constitutional design that was proposed for the new republic.”
The government has to understand this complexity and perform her governance functions.
But then what is GOVERNANCE? Governance is an issue where values, culture, morality, diversity, cooperation between the government and the public, forms of government and evolving theories of the social sciences are all brought in the discussions. The complexity of governance is today very highly brought into debates for policies and interactions. For a short-cut to appreciate the scenario today, we may refer to the 2001 document of the OECD titled Governance in the 21st Century. It is put very clearly that history over the centuries has shown how societies have transformed from steering the society by chieftain/king towards a broader based forms of leadership wherein elected representatives, interest groups, bureaucracy, specialized agencies, etc. are to play their roles. This transition has been non-linear and the degree has been determined by the initial contextual complexities. Evolution of policies and programmes are dependent upon the degree of effectiveness of governance functions.
Now the issue in Manipur today is a widespread and deep resentment among the people of the failure of the government to evolve policies for long-term achievements and programmes for short-term performance. In other words, what we find in Manipur today is a case of the capability failure of the government to understand the contextual realities; the government has failed to display the possession of social knowledge and link it up with governance functions. Further, the government’s failure to appreciate the context would certainly result in the inability to apply mind on appropriate policies.
So Manipur today experiences the inability of the government to appreciate the context and this capability-lapse has resulted to the poverty of policies. There is no visible sign of the government applying mind on these weaknesses even.
