When politics has finished both State & Society
- Time to evolve way out -

Amar Yumnam *

For any group of human population, the best scenario for collective survival is when both the institutions of society and state thrive.

The general health of these two moves in tandem in most circumstances. When one of these institutions gets highly devalued and damaged, we have to find routes for recovery through the other institution retaining its health more or less intact.

When a society decays, it is the responsibility of the state to play its role for reviving the social health. When the state devalues itself, the society has to emerge from below to reinvent the sanctity of the state.

Manipur's Emerging Scenario: We may recall the following real life situations.
First, a police station gets completely ransacked by the public.
Second, once socially legitimate and powerful Joint Action Committees for establishment of justice get their command for social respect absolutely compromised.
Third, an otherwise positive move by the state, like the imposition for wearing of helmets, becomes a laughing stock in the eyes of the public.
Fourth, residences of once dreaded members of organizations suffer complete dismantling if the public suspect involvements in killing of innocents.

A common thread runs through all such incidents. In other words, all these events point towards the decay of both social and state institutions. The state has lost a large part of its legitimacy and is fast losing the remaining portions.

But quite unfortunately for all of us, the non-state actors and the societal institutions are equally losing their legitimacy and relevance in equal measure. In other words, a situation of both societal and social decay now befalls the land and people of Manipur.

The presence of the federal agencies here is not helping in improving the situation either; they have as well become collaborative players in the game of decay as witnessed by the most recent incident of unwarranted arrest of a man by the local law enforcing agency, but produced by a central para-military force when the issue fast catches up its haziness. This fact remains despite a recent paternalistic statement of a public face of a central para-military force which has the tag of a North Eastern State in its name.

How Politics Enters: At this point we may ask as to what has led to this demise of both societal and state institutions. We would squarely put the blame at the door of politics. We can start our application of mind from the decay of villages in Manipur. If we look back to the fifties and sixties of the last century, the villages and localities were the centres of social innovation and activities.

These were the period when the social capital of the land was at its best. But come the seventies, all these were fast getting eroded. The earlier social purpose of functionings was fast replaced by politics of convenience and connivance for personal aggrandisement.

It was during this period that the earlier role of local schools as centres of social and progressive thinking and activity was soon replaced by collusion of politicians and some local opportunists for generating familial and election advantages.

From these kind of situations, it did not take long for the present village scenarios to emerge and take roots. We have heard of elite capturing of village level initiatives, but the elites in Manipur are of a different kind.

In Manipur, it has become a qualification if one has ever been arrested under the National Security Act. This person would buy his way out of the clutches of the law. He would then buy his way into village leadership. Now the rest is for anybody to imagine.

It would never be possible for the village to evolve sustainably. Such villages would continue its downward slide even in the face of so many State-wide organisations for social advancement and the state.

Once these become the picture of villages, the non-state organisations have to follow suit naturally. In fact, this seems to be so. So at one go, we have both the society and the non-state forces declining in institutional relevance.

The picture is no better, and indeed it is worse, when we come the functioning of the state. The politics in the land has so long been oriented without shame towards exploitation of the legitimacy of use of power enshrined in any functioning of the state for familial and personal monetary benefits. This naturally has led over a period of time the very decline of the legitimacy of the state itself.

The Way Out: Well, we cannot afford to remain lamenting over spilt milk. The time at our disposal is rather limited. The reform for better has and must start from the local level. The public at large must rise to the occasion and say enough is enough to the present thieves-turned-elites now leading the village level bodies.

People who have all their life been engaged in official thievery should now be completely banned from social engagements. We arise collectively now or we are doomed collectively.

The choice is for us now.