Manipur Opportunity: From Social Crisis To Social Policy For Development

By – Amar Yumnam
Imphal, July 7:
The way changes are taking place in Manipur manifest two sharp features. First, there are visible signals for return to an atmosphere of social peace from one of social crisis. Second, the government displays readiness for action instead of silence and indifference to the social crisis in Manipur. When I say government, I mean particularly the Union Government of India. This is because the Indian Federalism has a strong deficiency in Morality and Justice on relationships between the Union and the Federating Units; there is no institution for equality of expression and exercise of influence across the uniting units irrespective of size of demography and geography. Thus, States like Manipur – comparatively small in both territory and population – do not have much influence on the country’s policy, and have rather to be agents of implementation of what the Centre perceives and desires. So after sustained pressures, the Union Government has felt after more than two years (remember inter alia the United States of America has advised her citizens to avoid visiting Manipur very recently) the imperative and urgency to initiate interventions for a return to an atmosphere of peace in Manipur. The recent pronouncements for rehabilitation of displaced persons and complete the process by the end of the present year and the recoveries of weapons from various places deserve appreciation; these are positive signals for commitment from the government for determined response to the crisis.
Here I would like to give my attention to the rehabilitation of homes for enabling the returns of the displaced families to their original places. This is good, but I would definitely like to emphasize that there is a need to go beyond. To begin with Manipur is not a developed province, and in fact, and recently it stopped being a developing one either. But I am proud to highlight that the inherent strength of the people to be competitive at the global level is very robust as is evident from the rising dominance of Manipuri boys and girls in Indian sports and coupling it by proving the capability at the global level. This rich capability is manifested at the individual levels while the issues and crises are at the social level.
Further this province with declining social capability for development has had to undergo a social crisis for more than two years. While the overall development has suffered, the costs borne by the displaced people are both multifold (not just houses) and difficult to restore their initial capability to share in the social functioning. In other words, the gaps between the haves and these displaced people have only got widened. This rise in inequality in the social dynamics has to be addressed. Besides, the social and local administrative capability of Manipur has definitely borne a very heavy beating.
All these imply that the capability of Manipur – in the sense of both social and administrative strength – to address the rising social inequality consequent upon huge negative impact on development performance due to the still unresolved social crisis would take time and meaningful level of investment. The development trajectory being seen and experienced around the globe are such that Manipur may, on her own, never be able to recover the development loss being experienced now. It is exactly in this connection that the expected and necessary responsiveness of Federalism should now come up to fully undertake the responsibility of the needed and expected development performance in Manipur.
The restorations of the crumbled houses are, as good as they are, are not enough to address issues of retardation in development and stall the rising inequality policy. This is where the necessity of a Social Policy arises. Till about the 1980s, policies were being talked about in exclusive sectoral ways: Economic Policy was different from Education Policy, Roads Policy was Different from that of Railways and things like this. But from the mid-1990s this way of looking at policies has been increasingly abandoned. Certain features are very critical today. First, contextualization is now considered as inevitable – Manipur’s development interventions should be based on her social realities and not on the experiences of like Gujarat. Second, the Ethics underlying behind the Policy should be well defined. Third, Morality and Justice are essential qualitative components of any policy. Fourth, the multi-dimensionality of the policy should be simultaneously taken care of.
As Manipur has certainly been compelled to run behind and as it is inevitable that the present approach to Welfare State has to be certainly inclusive, she needs a Social Policy in the contemporary sense where “Interventions have become more targeted and tailored to meet the specific economic and social needs of diverse groups. At the same time, development planners have become increasingly aware of the need to systematically integrate social analysis and social policy into the mainstream of development policy design and implementation. There is a growing consensus that inclusion of the social dimension, while no panacea for the above problems, is one of the major prerequisites for more successful development. Reflecting this evolution, development institutions at both domestic and international levels have begun to incorporate and institutionalize social policy, social planning and social development into their mainstream activities.” (Anthony Hall and Midgley James, 2004) This Social Policy should possess “[m]orality [which] is not an end we pursue purely for its own sake. It is a means to ends beyond itself. But because it is an indispensable means we value it also for its own sake.” (Henry Hazlitt, 2004) Let me conclude emphasising once again that Manipur needs a Robust Social Policy and the social timing makes it inevitable.