By – Amar Yumnam
Imphal, June 30:
Economics started as a subject with the name as Political Economy, but today Political Economy bears a different and wider understanding. It is now understood as the means to “appreciate politics as the sum of activities—involving cooperation, conflict, and negotiation—that shape decisions touching the production, consumption, and transfer of scarce resources, irrespective of whether the activities are formal or informal, public or private, or a combination thereof… In summary, they analyze and explain the ways in which governments affect the allocation of scarce resources in society through laws and policies and, by the same token, the ways in which the nature of economic systems and the behavior of people acting on their economic interests impact governments and the laws and policies they formulate. Depending on the outlook, they can thereby, for example, bring a focus to bear on outcomes—practices might be a better term—such as inequality or exclusion.”
I could not help the imperative to recall the contemporary understanding of political economy looking at the many paradoxical practices for a social society needing rapid transformation. First, the richness of the inherited culture of Manipur is the avoidance of communal terms and communal articulations for social existence and practices. But for more than two years in a stretch communalization has been a ruling political practice with a vigour where the practitioners suppress any different articulation from open existence and practice. Second, the democratically formal representatives of the people have behaved as persons with no role in this newly emerging face of the society. Third, in a province of a country following federalism, the provincial authority exercising political authority withdrew herself from the exercise of the power as she could no longer control the unfolding scenario of communalization. Fourth, in this scenario, having no alternative, the union authority took over the authority to exercise power in the province. Fifth, the interesting scenario happens to be one where the union authority too displays – in functioning and performance – as not interested in exercising power to control and endeavour to reverse the decline in social beauty to one of share and co-existence. Sixth, the functioning practice of co-operation between the provincial non-functioning power authority and the union power authority looks like for ways to continue the social conflict.
Thus Manipur now is in a compulsive situation where “political economy analysis investigates the interaction of political and economic processes in a society; this entails comprehending… the power and authority of groups in society, counting the interests they hold and the incentives that drive them, in conducing particular outcomes; …the role that formal and informal institutions play in allocating scarce resources; …the influence that values and ideas, including culture, ideologies, and religion, have on shaping human relations and interaction.”
It is in atmospheres like this that the issue of moral responsibility arises. The province landed in a situation where individuals cannot practise a wide and deep moral responsibility which would be listened and followed by all. In cases where individual practices cannot be binding on the social manifestation of social practices that the role of the state necessarily arises. Manipur’s case happens to be one where the state at the provincial level surrendered to the union authority to exercise the federal authority such that the practice of peace is brought back in place in lieu of the overplay of communal practices.
This situation – surrendering the state at the federating unit to the union authority – has only manifested very unhealthy pictures. First, the union authority at the provincial level has least interest in practising approaches for positive unfolding of the potential social strength. Second, the manifestation of the role of political parties in a democracy has displayed the worst scenario one can see in the present context of Manipur. It is a case where the present members of the democratic representatives of the federating unit happens to be commanding majority with the powers at the union level are exercised by the same political party. Third, this case of commanding majority at both the levels could have been an opportunity to practise means for early return to social peace where communalisation has been allowed to have a free run for more than two years. What has been revealed have been the practices of politics. The members of the provincial members of the democratic representatives would be invited to the union level in divided numbers – individuals in most cases – for discussions. The appropriate approach should have been one where the totality is invited for shared deliberations on the interventions to resolve the social crisis. Since the discussions have been at unrevealed individual levels, the practice has been in which the democratic representatives would not talk about the crisis but about the restoration of the democratic government at the provincial level. Fourth, the people talk in massive non-open manner the existence and practices being indulged by civil society organisations sponsored by the democratic representatives of the ruling party. While this may or may not be true, the value of civil society organisations in sustaining the democratic health of the society gets highly compromised.
James Mill said in 1844 “Political Economy is to the State what domestic economy is to the family. …[Political economy] has two grand objects, the Consumption of the Community, and that Supply upon which the consumption depends.” What Manipur needs today is not the games of politicking being played by the democratic representatives of the political party in majority, but one where the strength of the Manipur as a society is discovered. This strength is to be sustained in a positive way, and identify the areas where strengthening is needed. Since the provincial unit is small in size – demographically and geographically – and given the present level of development, she would not have the resources to enhance the growth of the imperative sectors. It is the inherent and unavoidable responsibility of the power authority at the union level to play the role of financing the imperative needs of social transformation of the federal unit.
