Disorganized organisation as Democracy
- Manipur scenario -

Amar Yumnam *

While commenting on India's present scenario, Harvard economist Lant Pritchett characterises India as a flailing state. According to him, India is "a nation state in which the head, that is the elite institutions at the national (and in some States) level remain sound and functional but that this head is no longer reliably connected via nerves and sinews to its own limbs". This is a wonderfully apt description of India, and her States like Manipur.

Political Implications: This economic scenario of the country has lots of political-economic implications. The scenario brings out in full the implications of the literature on "democracy with adjectives" and "democracy without adjectives".

In the literature, we come across descriptions of variants of democracy crossing almost five hundred, or in other words, we have variants of democracy numbering more than the number of countries in the world. Well this is not our concern as of now; our concern is with the variant of democracy we have been living with in this part of the country vis-a-vis the lived experience in the country as a whole.

It is as if we cannot think of a single variant of democracy in this country. While India as a whole might give the impression of a living democracy with full democratic values and rights, the picture is quite different in this part of the country. We have had rather a kind 'democracy' with authoritarianism.

While examining democracy in Manipur, we should not be forgetting the implications of the two layers of the state, one at the Centre and another in the province. While the state in the Centre has been solely preoccupied with the so-called imperative of national security, the state in the province has rather been highly authoritarian in order to keep up with the Joneses in the Centre.

The former has sacrificed all the principles and requirements of nation building in a highly heterogeneous country like India; in fact, nation building is still an incomplete process in India. The fact of political togetherness does not necessarily ensure the existence of a vibrant and coherent nation.

When it comes to the relationship between the state in the Centre as manifested in the functioning of the Central government and the state in the province also as manifested in the functioning by the provincial government, there is very little spirit of nation building in it to write home about. The relationship more than warranted gets reduced to relationship within and or between political parties.

The interests of nation building, in other words, get sacrificed at the altar of political convenience. It is possible that such outcomes are to be expected in a democracy with electoral processes. What is most disturbing as well as damaging is the authoritarian manifestation of the relationship at the level of the provinces.

Such relationships between the two layers of the state only serve to nurture and foster authoritarianism in the highly peripheral provinces like Manipur. The authoritarian imposition of national security perspectives on the provinces while the nation is still in the formative stage plays havoc naturally with the emergence of democracy and democratic values in the province.

No doubt there are electoral processes and even governments might change, but all these would happen with all the authoritarian characteristics; what we have and what we enjoy is only democracy with adjectives. To be authoritarian in a province of a supposedly highly democratic country is a condition for substantial positive pay-offs for the political class. Besides, this is the safest and most paying route for the provincial politicians.

First, they can portray a kind of tough leader serving the cause of the larger nation. This makes them sealed from their being exposed on account of the harsh rents they enjoy in enforcing their dictum; the state in the Centre would pardon them of all their follies of corruption so long as they display a semblance of serving the Centre's perspective of national security.

In other words, the Centre's perspective of national security becomes a convenient cover for the provincial state, as manifested in the functioning of the provincial government, to indulge in exploring and exploiting every possible area for reaping unwarranted personal rents. The state in the province gets reduced to the exploits of a few individuals rather than fostering the democratic values for all. Now this completes the authoritarian expression of democracy in a province like Manipur.

Social Implications: The most unfortunate outcome of this prevalence of state behaviour over prolonged periods is the virtual death of democratic values in the social realm of the province. The society as it is today is highly authoritarian in character. We are experiencing this deterioration with increasing intensity by the years.

There is hardly any social debate occurring in our land without authoritarian streaks. The social and civil society organisations now increasingly utilise impositions and non-democratic threats as weapons to press for their views, demands and interactions. The parties having opposite views would also use the same weapon of impositions and non-democratic threats.

There is hardly any room for democratic debates and exchange of views. Views once held and announced become almost non-changeable for all the organisations. The authoritarian cycle is now complete as it covers both state and non-state spheres of socio-political existence.

The Upshot: The upshot of my argument is that we now live in a situation wherein authoritarianism is a rule rather than exception. In other words, what we have is a democracy with adjectives.

The struggle of the people today should be to do away with the adjectives as early as possible or otherwise these adjectives would eat all of us away one day.