Democracy, People and Elections : Further debates

Amar Yumnam *

People do not die easily through some silly attempts of murder making it to look like natural death. I know for sure that above all there is God and false attempts cannot easily bypass the will of God to ensure continuance of life. I have been a person who has experienced (I would not term it as victim for I value life so strongly and love the existence of people in a society) recently the enlarging arena of the schema of violence in our society. Such acts cannot stop me from thinking about society and expressing my view on issues I have an opinion. Besides we cannot allow such behaviour to acquire deeper roots in society. It is at such a moment that the general elections have been held recently.

The Elections and The People:
One insightful analysis of the way in which the recent elections were treated by people of Manipur is the piece by Bhagat Oinam in the Poknapham on 7 February 2012. He rightly regrets the massive distribution to the electorate of high denomination notes. He also underlines the involvement of violence on a wide scale as regrettable. His main articulation is that the nurturing of democracy cannot be left only to the offices of the government, but the people have necessarily to play a major rule. It is here that he attacks the general lack of awareness and commitment of the people to a meaningful democracy, given the large scale acceptance of voting bribes from the candidates. This requires further debate for we are now passing through a very critical stage today.

The acceptance of currency distributions from the candidates acquired altogether a different dimension today. This time we saw voters accepting any amount from all the candidates while they would vote for the one they wanted. This is a new dimension of the morality of the voters. Here I would like to argue that there is evidence of path-dependence in all the features of the election process and there is need to look back for at least a few decades of our societal evolution for a meaningful appreciation of the recent events. This is how I would like to carry the debate initiated by Bhagat Oinam forward.

The Leaders and The People:
Let us look back to the socio-political scenario of Manipur till the end of the 1960s. We owe our schools and social mobilisation for education to the political leaders of those days. We should provide the credit for the movement of local clubs to provide a forum for social interaction and wider appreciation of social issues to the leaders of those days. Most of the local link roads for intra and inter-village came into existence due to the wonderful direction given by these leaders to the prevailing social capital of those days. In fact, Manipur would have been a society without any roots but for the efforts of these leaders.

But the attacks on these positive aspects of society started during the mid-1970s. The decline took very deep roots by about the mid-1980s. But the turn by the early-1990s has been very brutal. The mid-1970s and the 1980s witnessed the emergence of people who took the shrewd and mean route of personal aggrandisement by befooling the social capital and in connivance with the officials in decision-making centres of government. This somehow could not be put under cover for long and the public somehow came to know about the process even though they did not have any means to correct it.

But the damage has already been done and social capital was at least benumbed if not murdered fully. It was during this period that the State witnessed the insurgency movement gaining strength and popularity. The people felt on a large scale that the government had not been sincere. The ideal, idealism and credibility of the committed insurgent leaders and their followers emerged as certain kind of hope and rescue to the people. In any case, we had them as solace and saviours for people who had not been done justice by the government. So people had one force on which they can always fall back when they are in trouble. Fortunately, even if not strong, we still had on the other side a government which would somehow try to help people when troubled by any force.

But the unfolding of changes in attitude and governance became very terrible by the 1990s and this nature still continues. During this period the early ideal, idealism and credibility of the insurgent organisations became increasing corroded, and the renegade elements somehow became increasing agents of action. The earlier face of solace to the common people somehow disappeared during this period. Unfortunately for all of us, the decline in the quality of governance somehow became near complete during this period as well. The absence of a government committed to protect the common people became increasingly perfect during this period. On the other hand it became increasingly evident that the renegade forces of the insurgent groups and the negative elements in the government were becoming a powerful combined force.

Manipur is now in a situation when the insurgent organisations do not serve as solace for the people. Nor is the government a solace to the people. Instead, what has increasingly emerged as the final scenario is one where one would get killed if expressed reservations against the government (mind you in a democracy). One would still get murdered if work against the interests of renegade elements of the insurgent forces. Now the circle is complete where the people do not have any socio-political space and there is no agency to stand for them.

It is in this background that I do not agree with Bhagat when he criticises the people as lacking maturity in a democracy. For me, I would rather say that the people have been left with no choice but to gather whatsoever the candidates dole out on the eve of elections and forget democracy for the next five years.