By- Amar Yumnam
Imphal, Feb 19:
We all know and have heard about the Olympics but we also know that these do have Rules and Regulations governing each play and each game. The following of these norms are so fundamental that aware, informed and decisive persons are engaged to ensure the following for sure. Otherwise, there would be no Olympics. Similarly, across the societies around the world have governments which are responsible like the Umpires in the Olympics for the following of the established norms to ensure peaceful conduct of life by the members of the society. Besides daily matters like cooking of food for eating, these governments evolve policies to achieve objectives for a longer term unlike cooking and eating daily. It is unimaginable today that there could be government which does not think anything about policy whatever the compulsiveness the environment (both social and natural) prevailing in the society might dictate; well, it looks like one existing right with the society of Manipur.
It is the prevalence of a government, which is aware of what a policy is like, that will ensure the evolution of policy-induced programmes to bring the risks and uncertainties usually associated with an unruly world. This is how the people are attracted to engage in socially progressive activities; for the government in existence today in Manipur – the meaning of progressiveness is the possibility of people conducting activities that will lead to less crime and more peaceful atmosphere for working looking forward to access to more and better things. In other words, the prevailing government needs to realise, accept and adopt the understanding that any policy has a social purpose – the social implies a context in which all the members of the society feel the risks and uncertainties of their life decreasing over time and scope for better living enhanced. This atmosphere should be for all and not just for the so-called Very Important Persons – at least the meaning of this would not be required to be explained to the government.
For the convenience and easy understanding of the present government I would like to point out that the social risk I am talking about is much broader and deeper than the one person found dead inside the DM University campus the other day. In a society where the livelihood of the people is fairly well-ensured, the ‘Safety Principle’ of “Better Safe Than Sorry” can be conveniently followed. But this definitely is not so in the case of Manipur. Here the relationship between the opportunities for survival and the scope for nature-dependent activities is still robust; the relationship has not transformed for a much larger majority of the population to the modern technology and livelihood relationships.
In fairly well-advanced societies, there definitely has been transformation of the care for risk and uncertainties towards Privatisation (hope the present government in Manipur knows the meaning of this term), but in the case of Manipur that stage is still long way to go; the social role of government policy is still very large and just is in the beginning stage. Speaking of the time when there were masters and slaves, Aristotle (here too I hope the present Manipur government has at least heard of him) observed a long time back in his A Treatise on Government thus: “to govern ill is disadvantageous to both; for the same thing is useful to the part and to the whole, to the body and to the soul; but the slave is as it were a part of the master, as if he were an animated part of his body, though separate. For which reason a mutual utility and friendship may subsist between the master and the slave, I mean when they are placed by nature in that relation to each other, for the contrary takes place amongst those who are reduced to slavery by the law, or by conquest.” I would leave the modern understanding of this wonderful paragraph to the members of the present government if they at all read.
While Postmodernism is now the global debate, Manipur is now in a very critical transition period in which Modernism is still incomplete, but Postmodernism elements have started showing presence. Further all these are happening in a context where government has shown no application of mind to meaningful governance. We understand that “emergence and institutionalization of a political order designed to safeguard individual rights of freedom and equality is epitomized in the modern democratic state.” But what has been happening in Manipur for the last nearly a year? People dying and killing each other for months together with widespread negative social impacts are not even routine concerns for the government which is busy elsewhere – God only knows. While formal and informal social organisations are agencies for deep and wide social transformations around the globe, in Manipur they are now filling up the absence of government.
