Absence of continuum and the behaviour of State: Manipur's case

Amar Yumnam *

If one looks at the successful and not-so-successful countries of the world today, a sharp picture bearing on the form of Government would come up. The successful countries happen to be ones where the reform of the political arrangements in the old nation for modernity was an endogenous process. In fact, the issues of tackling the problems of transition from the old order to the new order had been historically more tractable in cases where the process had been endogenous rather than otherwise. The American civil war can itself be seen as a process to evolve the endogeneity.

The Continuum: It is because of this endogenous nature of the evolution of institutions that even in modern democracies, the paradigmatic elements of the earlier king and his council are rampant. All kings and dictators have had one form of council or advisors. Similarly all democracies have an executive branch headed by a single agent, for instance, the bureaucracy headed by the Chief Secretary in a State in India.

The king or the dictator had necessarily to have a council to address the informational problems he inherently suffers. He had to evolve a mechanism to reward efficiency in information provision and accuracy of advice provided to him by any member.

It is a reformed paradigm of this king and council that we have in modern democracy. It is of course true that the information flows and networks are much more intense and wider-based in modern democracy than in the old paradigm. Whatever the case the endogenous nature of the transition has been a very important factor in explaining the contemporary position of any country or region.

Manipur's Case: The case of Manipur has been anything other than endogenous. The introduction of democracy in Manipur has no contextual grounding and we are yet to fully apply our mind to the crises generated by this.

But it is these because of these crises that the Indian state and its manifestations in Manipur need to be extraordinarily careful in attending to the requirements of developmental administration in the State.

At the cost of being hasty, let me point out emphatically that what Manipur needs is the best form of a developmental state or at least a state which continuously endeavours to project its developmental face. Unfortunately this is exactly what has been lacking in the State.

Given the fact of exogenous origin of the paradigm of government, the state should have tried, and there is no alternative to this, to make development and developmental governance the guiding principle of every intervention in Manipur. This alone could have addressed the crises caused and to be caused by the abrupt transition from the old regime to the new paradigm. It is the lack of this principle that we saw the emergence of and flourishing of so many organisations challenging the very authority of the state.

Now this emergence of agents challenging the very authority of the present state adds a new rationale reinforcing the need extraordinary cautiousness in administering Manipur. The state should have realised long back, and the sooner it realises it the better, that only governance attuned to the unique calls of the time and place which can address the challenges.

An Otherwise Response: But as I have been emphasising continuously in my inputs in this column and elsewhere, on can find a government and a manifestation of the Indian state satisfying conditions just contrary to the needs of the time and place.

In fact, one cannot help wondering if Manipur is the laboratory for all political testing by the state. In recent years, the people of Manipur have started developing a little disillusionment with the commitment to causes and the appropriateness of the methods the various organisations questioning the authority of the present state manifestly possess.

Now there is no sign of any effort by the present state to capitalise on this, and bring back the entire population to her side. Instead we see evidences day in and day out of the agents of the state indulging in activities seriously jeopardising the legitimacy of the present state. The absolute absence of any semblance of governance by the State Government is something of common knowledge. What really make the situation much murkier are incidents like the army or para-military forces stopping the entire flow of traffic demanding satisfaction of personal greed of a few in command of the organisation at certain locations. Even more sickening and evidence of lack of spine of the democracy in the State is the absolutely weak-kneed response of the Sate administration to the crises caused by such incidents.

In the end, we are really sorry that the portends indicate the continuance of the predicament of Manipur for a long time to come. Would we not be ever fortunate to have a state in the real sense of the term?