The Ongoing as Seminar
Need for collective learning

Amar Yumnam *

Towards the beginning of this year, I had written in this very column and in the piece titled "Time for An Academic State : Manipur's need of the hour" thus: "That Manipur has long been plagued by intractable problems for long-longer than necessary and warrantable-is known to all.

We have been facing crises of underdevelopment, developmental exclusion, fractionalisation along ethnic lines, groups unwilling to be citizens of the newly created Indian State, and consequent conflict situations. The response of the State to all these crises has never been a structured one. In all it has been marked by ad-hocism and in some by one of indifferent attitude, thereby allowing the crises to acquire new turns and with more serious socio-political aggravations.

The atmosphere has become so deleterious that a powerful vested network and groups have emerged in both State and non-State sectors thriving in these situations. We have people in power, we also have power brokers, and people who sycophant on them and indulge in absolute rent seeking in every sphere of socio-politico-economic activity. This can now be seen in both State and non-State sectors.

The even more dangerous emerging scenario is the seeming synergy and networking by the actors across the sectors. This itself is worse enough scenario requiring a firm action by at least some rational and dedicated powers to reverse the trend. Historically around the world, we find instances of certain powers that be to try to reverse such a situation so that history would erase the bad precedents and project them in good light. Unfortunately, that does not seem to be happening in Manipur."

Non Learning State and Equal Non-State : I have indulged in self-quotation extensively for my social worries are getting aggravated by the day instead of otherwise. It is no time for us to feel relaxed and enjoy nonsense refreshments.

The kind of situation where General Strikes of the non-State take turns with the Curfews of the State in order stay put the economic cycle of the land for days continuously demands compulsively for all of us to sit up and ponder over not only the contemporary scenario but also the medium term potential outcomes of the present realities.

As I have been hinting at repeatedly, the socio-economic consequences of General Strikes and Curfews are injudicious. While the compelling reasons of the two might be different, the impact is more or less similar. We know pretty well that, being a non-industrialised society, the social division of demography is mainly along two lines, the salaried class and the daily earners.

The readiness with which people would go to any extent to purchase a Government job tells the story of the increasingly widening socio-economic distance between the salaried and the non-salaried.

To begin with, the salaried class has an obvious initial advantage. But superimposing General Strikes and Curfews for an extensive period has the unavoidable result of widening the pre-existing economic distance. While a General Strike of a day or two might be unavoidable to press home a point, but using it as a follow up response to State-imposed Curfews is hard to digest.

We need to explore our ingenuity a little more to innovate ways of conveying our grievances other than just General Strikes. Employing this means so repeatedly forfeits our right to oppose the Curfews imposed by the state to cling to power by hook or crook.

Besides, locking out our land for days together is a very costly indulgence in this period of globalised competition based on the power of knowledge a society possesses individually and collectively. The sacrifices we are making in terms of loss of networks, education hours, and knowledge acquisition are too high a price to be incurred.

Ongoing as Seminar : We understand that the elected representatives might be naturally preoccupied with the recovery of the expenses they were made to incur during the election process. So they might be imagining that issues are unimportant but personal aggrandisement is.

But we must accept that to begin with the citizens themselves might be expecting very little from them, hence the need to purchase voters. However, we must also be clear of the possibility of unwarranted and unwanted events catching up with the people, and the people learning lessons from the unfolding events.

It is in this context that two realities come up out of the continuing mess arising out of fake-encounter killing of a youth and a pregnant woman in the heart of the political as well as commercial capital of the land.

First, looking at the kind of deafening silence by the Centre, one cannot help feeling that India has now taken nation-building for granted and the country no longer has any national visionary. Unfortunately, this is happening at a time when China is increasingly vocal of its global presence and India admittedly is far behind her militarily as well as economically.

The second point relates to the non-learning or rather dogged refusal of the "leaders" of the land to learn lessons from the social happenings, and thus endeavour to evolve appropriate policies. While this might be transitorily beneficial to them at the personal level, the medium and long term social cost would be very harsh on the society as whole.

Well, the society now looks for someone like Ashraf Ghani who is now making waves in the ongoing Presidential campaign in Afghanistan. Talking of the processes in which he has consulted and listened to a cross-section of people on the realities marking the country, he says: "It has been the largest seminar in my life and I have been the sole student.

I connect back to the people because I have heard them, and I have heard some very harsh things." When such leaders emerge, which is likely to be sooner than later, the contemporary leaders would go by the wayside and genuine efforts would emerge for addressing the woes of the people. We should rather be busy for such an outcome rather than competing with the State on the power to lock out.

As Ludwig von Mises said in his Theory and History: "In the long run even the most despotic governments with all their brutality and cruelty are no match for ideas. Eventually the ideology that has won the support of the majority will prevail and cut the ground from under the tyrants feet. Then the oppressed many will rise in rebellion and overthrow their masters."