By – Amar Yumnam
Imphal, Oct 21:
Manipur has been in a deep crisis. This crisis is rushing forward to complete two years. It started as a socio-political crisis and now it has become a huge socio-politico-economic crisis where the population in the lower economic strata are made to face economic, health, education, familial, social, locational and what not burdens. The population in the middle-socio-economic category are under huge existential pressures from groups endeavouring to address the existential crises through more or less faulty means.
The qualitative dimension of Manipur is commendable. She has got a rich history of civilisation. She has given the world the game of polo besides cultural wealth. After merger with India in 1949, her contribution to the sports scenario of the country has been absolutely commendable. She has produced boys and girls portraying the diversity and the strength of India to the world. To be communal and act communally are behavioural manifestations foreign to her till very recently. But the world knows pretty well that the size of the land and the number of population are small in absolute terms. It is the qualitative property, however, that has shadowed this smallness.
It is in such a social context that the present crisis has emerged. The necessity and the expectation of the people in the first round of responses to the emergence of the crisis has been one where the provincial government would come out with meaningful and effective interventions. It is now expressed by all that there is no administration whatsoever coming out from the provincial government. In the Indian system of governance, it was expected that this provincial level of government should explore and implement policies to address the crisis; the government at the level of the State is a first line of governance in more or less province-wide issues. While there are visible signs of the people in government manifesting all-knowledgeable about the issues coming out of the crisis, it is global experience that it would be only folly for any government to behave so. The government should have explored the opinions of the knowledgeable personnel in the State on the issues involved and the key areas needing priority response. Well, nothing of this kind has happened and the government pretends to be performing on areas unconnected with the crisis. A person under heart-attack is being treated for ankle-pain! The government as the agency representing the people for governance at the provincial level has not delivered.
The second line of response and performance was needed and expected at the regional level. The North East part of India is talked and mentioned as a sharp portion which can be reasonably identified as Region. In fact, we have been seeing a kind of knowledge and entrepreneurship creation for the region in a holistic way. We have also been seeing a kind of regional social capital within and without for the region. This has been the case in quite many other dimensions, though not in a sharp way thanks to the absence of supporting governance policies. But the North East Perspective has already emerged as sharp and becoming healthier over time. We must also recall the creation of the North Eastern Council marking the adoption of the concept of region in the development administration of the country. Very unfortunately, however, the concept and the practice have completely disappeared while it is needed most.
The failures at the provincial and the regional levels should not be seen as the finale of collapse of Manipur under the present crisis. As Ann Ward and Lee Ward (2009) put: “From classical and biblical antiquity to the contemporary world, federalism has been and remains a permanent political possibility for the arrangement of human society. …(I)t is hard to think of many important political thinkers who did not at some stage in their careers reflect seriously upon the virtues and defects of federalism. …From the loose confederations of independent city-states in antiquity, to the complex relations of secular and religious institutions in the Bible, and the Catholic and Reformation thinking derived from this tradition, we see federalism in its various diverse forms mold and shape beliefs about the nature of a good society.
In early-modern Europe we see a new and distinctively modern idea of federalism emerge from a colossal intellectual struggle with the predominant theory of unitary sovereignty that is absolute and indivisible. The early American Republic presented this new idea of modern federalism in its most ambitious form up to that point in time with the creation of a modern liberal democratic state based on the principle of constitutional federalism. Whereas America profoundly clarified the distinction between confederation and a new idea of the federal state, a distinction present but often implicit in early modern European thought, nineteenth- and twentieth-century European federal theory and practice established the outlines of a restored or refurbished version of the older idea of federation, this time adapted to the complex political realities of modern Europe. Contemporary federal theory and practice are, then, both the inheritors of a rich legacy of federal experience and at the same time sources of constant innovation in the federalist tradition…… Despite the considerable developments in federalism over the centuries, the claims put forth as to the superiority, or at least the value, of federalism as a model for political society have remained remarkably stable for a very long time.
Federalism has, and continues to be, praised for its ability to provide for common defence and security, to protect civil and religious liberty, to promote an ideal of self-government consistent with cultural, ethnic, linguistic, and regional distinctiveness, and its capacity to institutionalize efficient administration, especially in large complex nations. These claims reflect both an empirical and a normative dimension of the various phenomena described by the concept of federalism. Or to put it another way, …federalism includes an instrumental element relating to structures and processes, in addition to representing an end in itself.” India also follows a system of federalism where the Union Government is the last resort and ultimate authority for any issue in the country. But, unfortunately, the final authority has shown a tardy and half-hearted preparation to respond to the socio-politico-economic crisis Manipur has been facing.
