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Social Crisis, Governance and Time Frame: Manipur Tragedy

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Social Crisis, Governance and Time Frame: Manipur Tragedy

By – Amar Yumnam
Imphal, Jan 20:

Governance has been a key point of discussion in the ongoing social crisis of Manipur. I have myself expressed many reservations on the manner and visible signs of governance in the present context. While we talk of Governance, we necessarily assume that there is Government. The Government has to practice her Governance to be contemporaneous with the society. This necessarily implies the necessity of understanding what is Governance about. To be relevant to the contemporary context, it calls for understanding the society. The appreciation of the present social scenario does not imply forgetting history; the significance of appreciating history is paramount. Understanding the present scenario does include appreciating the future implications of the present happenings and the potential outcomes for future of present actions. Thus, Governance in the present necessarily imply the mastery of the Past and adequate anticipation of the Future implications while addressing Present issues. Social ridiculing cannot by any means a quality of an intervention for addressing social crisis in a democracy. I am making this statement particularly in the context of what an experienced Cabinet Minister of Manipur recently put in the public domain. We have been witness to the various statements to divert the attention of the people from the ongoing social crisis by the Head of the People in Manipur. The recent statement by a Senior Minister in the Manipur Government was about emphasizing the main Opposition Party wanting the social crisis to linger till the next general elections. I do not know if he wanted to fool the people of Manipur, but he had failed terribly. Or is it that he wanted to ridicule the Opposition Party, but the timing and social context only establish that he was ridiculing himself.
I would like to mention two main news items in the January 19, 2025 Hyderabad edition of The Hindu. The first one relates to an intervention to successfully participate in the ongoing competition for incorporating digital technology in the daily functioning: “The ST Telemedia Global Data Centres India Private Limited (STT GDC India), a leading provider of data centre solutions, on Saturday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the State government to establish a state-of-the art data centre campus at Mucheria in Hyderabad. The AI-ready data centre, to be established at an investment of Rs. 3,500 crore, will have a targeted capacity of up to 100 MW, along with ample scalability for future growth, making it one of the largest data centre projects in the country.” The second one relates to addressing the problems caused by street dogs: “Mumbai and Bengaluru are getting it right with WhatsApp groups, collars with QR codes, and a symbiotic relationship between dog lovers and local authorities.”
The first news item brings to focus the contemporary imperative to incorporate digital components (Artificial Intelligence being the latest one with unlimited and unprecedented implications) in the educational, social and governance functioning of the day. A recent report of the McKinsey Global Institute asserts on the ongoing digital evolution particularly of AI: “Business leaders and policy makers will face critical choices on how much to embrace technological change and investment while training and redeploying workers into the jobs of the future.” The second news item makes it very clear that digital technology is already applied in endeavouring to evolve successful social policies to resolve even historically continuing social issues in States in India.
So while the world is already moving towards application of digital components in social functioning and policy evolution, Manipur has a case of social conflict on which no serious talk is emerging from the Government for solution. Naturally Manipur now – collectively as well as individually – faces a kind of existence in vacuum. It would be rewarding to recall what Ali Farazmand (2004) had said: “One of the most important issues of the contemporary world is the rapidly changing nature and role of government, and the process of governance and administration, in the age of accelerated globalization, however defined. The traditional, historical role of state and government has changed, causing a major alteration in the nature of government under accelerating globalization. This changing nature of government has also altered the nature of the governance and administration processes worldwide. The result is a profound transformation of governance and public administration processes, as well as the institutional foundations of governments everywhere in the contemporary world.” But in the case of Manipur, the very style of functioning is such that the people feel it very repressive. As the very Governance does not make a serious application of mind to evolve policies for social evolution, there is no collective application of mind to address the social crises. But simultaneously the land and people of Manipur now face a kind of the problem which socio-political thinkers have been emphasising as significant for social advancement. People do not feel to enjoy the freedom of right which enabled scholars, like Descartes, Hobbes, Hume, Reid, Kant and Locke, to indulge in atomistic social thoughts (Intellectual Individualism) and absolutely evolving path-breaking thoughts at that for further enriching democracy. Further, with the increasing application of digital technology and approaches to now indefinite areas of analysis, thinking and application of policies, the stand-alone approaches are now increasingly replaced by the coupling of both Inductive and Deductive Approaches. Governance in Manipur now functions absolutely unaware of this emerging development; this is despite the fact that one will find the global presence of youths with origins in Manipur and thriving in knowledge centres around the world. Manipur today is now rich in DISCONNECTS only.

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