By – Amar Yumnam
Imphal, Jan 7:
In the new Governor, Manipur has got an active Head of the State. He has a vast bureaucratic experience in the Indian administration. He has manifested enthusiasm in working on actions. On the very second day of his assuming office, he convened a meeting of the Unified Command of Manipur to discuss policy issues and policy actions. Here it would be relevant to mention some points to enable us a proper assessment of the outcome of the meeting as reported in the various news media. First, for nearly two years Manipur has been under acute social stress because of conflict between two ethnic groups. Second, during this entire period, it has been as if the Elected Governments – both at the Centre and the Province – have not bothered to apply their mind to how to understand, analyse and resolve the crisis of ethnic killing. The non-concern of the Union Government, as manifested by the absolute non-concern by the Prime Minister, has been noted widely. As regards the Provincial Government, the less said the better. Besides the long non-activity, the emerging report of changing the Head of the People in the province has caused the potential candidates utter jocular statements. One Cabinet Minister in the present Government has uttered in the public domain that the construction of a FIFA Standard Soccer Stadium would be happening in Manipur; should it be the point of attraction today is absolutely questionable. Similar things are coming up with construction of houses as well.
Third, of late, it has been increasingly looking like a tussle between the Central Security Forces and the Provincial Security Forces; they seem to be struggling for dominance with each other rather than controlling the ethnic crisis. The social message of this scenario has not been missed by the general public and it serves no democratic purpose.
It is in this background that the meeting convened by the new Head of the State of Manipur is widely reported in the news media; The Hindu headlines of 5 January 2025 read as: “New Governor suggests use of NSA in Manipur: At his first security review meeting, Ajay Kumar Bhalla calls for employment opportunities for ‘misguided’ youth; top officials attended the meeting but Chief Minister did not participate.” While the enthusiasm is visible, one critical feature seems to be the Head of the State displaying over-enthusiasm to give policy directions; if this is the case, Federalism would be the casualty. Leaving this case aside, two points I would certainly like to highlight. First, of the nine persons – other than the Governor chairing the meeting – as visible in the photograph in the newspaper, five are in Full Security Uniform; the uniformed security personnel discussing on policy to be adopted in Manipur! Second, the recommendation for operationalisation of the National Security Act is not to be taken lightly.
While pondering over the haste, the composition of the personnel attending the meeting and the potential social implications of the likely deliberations as guessed from the newspaper reports, I cannot help quoting the opening lines of Jenny Stewart in her 2009 book titled Public Policy Values: “The belief that governments should make a positive difference to our lives remains as strong as ever, even if there is a veritable industry of books about how they are getting it wrong. Governments (we are told)are the captives of large corporations; they are enslaved by simplistic ideologies about market forces; they subvert true democracy; they are not to be trusted; their bureaucracies are incompetent. Every day, even(or perhaps especially) in countries that are blessed with relatively stable and competent governments, the media bring out stories of regulators that did not do their jobs properly, of services poorly delivered, of the weak and vulnerable left unprotected. If citizens did not believe that governments should do better, they would simply accept these shortcomings as inevitable. The fact that the public face of government is about trying to do better suggests that for many, perhaps most of us, governance is a values-based activity. If public policy is, as Thomas Dye defined it, what governments choose to do or not to do.., it is of enormous importance whether they choose to do good things or bad things.”
While discussing the NSA suggestion and the designing of policy with security forces as the pivot, I would like to stress two points very clearly. First, the security forces could have been the sole agent and focus of policy evolution if the killings were only a few weeks or at most two-three months old. But now they need to enforce stopping the inter-ethnic killings by their presence and interventions only. Since the attacks and the killings have run into nearly two years by now, the impact has already been spread into various social dimensions, like education and infrastructure. Second, the mention of NSA is very unfortunate. Manipur happens to be a province with very bad widespread and highly generalised individual experiences under the operation of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA). This has naturally imbibed a social disdain for such laws and public distrust of the Security Forces when it comes to these. In fact, the moment the announcement of the operation of the NSA comes, there would naturally arise a huge social cry against it; Manipur cannot and should not afford such public outcries again. As Jan-Werner Muller puts (2021): “more specific to our age is Tony Judt’s observation that we have become extremely skilful at teaching the lessons of history but probably quite bad at teaching actual history.”
My argument is that what Manipur needs today is the framing of a Social Policy; Manipur has land and people constituting the presence of society in situ. When it comes to the conceptualisation and framing of social policy, it goes much beyond the occupational and moral capability of the security forces. In this, we need to fully analyse and appreciate the behavioural characteristics and dynamics underway today at both the individual and the social interface levels. In all this, the place of morality and justice need to be explored such that appropriate policy interventions are evolved. Policy-making is serious business.
