Knowledge, Market and Governance in Manipur: Outdated but no renewal efforts

Amar Yumnam *

Government itself may be incompetent. It may lack capability, poor in knowledge stock and may not have adequate financial capital. But it should at least have the commitment to endeavour to converge with the prevailing global and national level orientations in governance efforts and the international dynamics. In other words, it should put in place a system and a policy to move the society towards convergence with the neighbouring and global capabilities.

I am talking of government in a society less developed than the globally respected scenario, needing to transform from the prevailing scenario and requiring to generalise the benefits of any expansion to the less well-to-do sections of the population; the picture would be for sustenance of the prevailing speed and direction in the case of a more developed region.

If the government in such a context tries to live up to the expected orientation and interventions despite the low level of competence, we may call it Good Incompetence. Though incompetent at present, it would become competent in due course for heaven helps those who help themselves. There can be another kind of incompetence where the government is characterised by not endeavouring to improve its capability by acquiring and incorporating knowledge in functioning.

It is a scenario where incompetence is coupled by absence of efforts to get out of the prevailing position. This is Bad Incompetence. There is still another kind of incompetence.

In this third kind, the government is not only incompetent and non-committal, but rather the people in government indulge in activities to take advantage of the incompetence for absolute personal aggrandisement. This type is the Worst Incompetence. The people of Manipur know for sure, empirically and pragmatically, the government they have been blessed with is incompetent.

Now the question is the type of incompetence the Government of Manipur belongs to. In order to answer this question, we need to look at the prevailing scenario of knowledge creation, generalisation of advancement of benefits and orientation of governance in Manipur. Looking at the knowledge creation sector, a few words on the significance of knowledge today.

The global reality today is of one of increasing density of knowledge and technology in every functioning, which is coupled by the shortening of the recess period of any knowledge and technology. Look at how the launching of Reliance Jio has caused so much damage to the market share of other telecom firms, including the most arrogant Airtel; for BSNL it remains as incorrigible as ever. The life-span of any new knowledge and technology in engineering, management and medicine today is now only about two years.

It is this global reality which we should keep in mind while evaluating the Manipur scenario. The school education scenario is in complete shambles characterised by rising costs, shunting out of the poorer sections of the population and deepening the social divide.

The latest example of a school student being murdered by the school authorities for non-payment of fees and the deafening silence of the government on this is something which should cause the heart of any individual shiver. This establishes the complete reversal of the social strength of 1950s and 1960s for judicious and inclusive school education and emergence of the sector as medium for social inequality.

But who cares! The households at the margin should never dream of giving/enabling their children access to meaningful school education. Then comes the college level scenario.

Let us look back to the period before 1980 when there was wonderful competition among the colleges for excellence. During this period, all the colleges endeavoured to converge to the level of competence of DM College. But today the picture is of absolutely another kind where DM College has converged to the level of the least competitive college.

This has come about because of the conversion of the initial intentions of government to enhance the capabilities of the colleges into opportunities for personal aggrandisement by the people in government. Now even more unfortunate! ly, the highest seat of learning in Manipur has terribly failed to provide the intellectual leadership to give direction and commitment to this college education sector.

Even worse is the reality that the affiliating University does not even understand her role as one where the colleges are affiliated and thus necessitating the evolution of a shared perspective for strengthening the sector. Academics is the casualty in all this in a context where the world increasingly demands speedier innovation in knowledge and technology.

There are no visible signs of addressing these weaknesses though there are definite indicators of continuous personal aggrandisement efforts by the people involved in decision-making here. The same scenario prevails in the access to the health sector as well. It is in this prevailing regional and global reality that the Government of Manipur is now in institution-establishing spree.

The life-cycle of any new knowledge and technology is increasingly shrinking globally while the governance and institutional capability in Manipur have been characterised by declining trend. There is no signal of the market expanding for absorbing the graduates produced in situ. This means the unemployed youths would not find themselves increasingly competitive in the world’s labour market even with the degrees from these institutes and the domestic market does not expand to absorb them.

The term market immediately takes us to the only market prevailing in Manipur in so far as employment is concerned. Let us look at the social disturbance relating to the recruitment of constables. The market we are aware of is the usual one where norms exist, regulatory framework applies and legal system covers it.

But the employment market as exemplified by the constable recruitment imbroglio is one where all these do not apply. It is a kind of market where something is sold illegally but the legal system is made ineffective. It is a market where even the purchase made cannot be enforced. It is also a market where the households at the margin are made to bear the transaction costs in a way much more than the better-offs.

It is a market where the worse-off sections of the population are incapacitated to go for any redressal in case of failure to honour the commitments of sale – purchase.

Manipur is now in this scenario of market failures and governance collapses coupled by efforts to compromise in knowledge and technology sector performances. The land is under government of the Worst Incompetent variant.