Manipur is now caught in an almost Janus-like situation.

Sex without romance (prostitution) is now riddled with risks to life itself in addition to the usual risks ban supporters advance in terms of dangers to the prostitutes themselves and indirectly on others, while it is not absolutely sure if the demand for such is zero.

Similarly, drug trading is fraught with the loss of life while those looking for the lucrative returns from this do not seem to have substantially declined.

Still further, trading in liquor can probably lead to heavy losses if 'caught' while at the same time the number of those drinking does not show any sign of reduction. These scenarios now extend to tobacco products.

Assessment: While there can never be two opinions on the ill effects of these various indulgences, we need to periodically conduct assessments of bans in order to
(1) evaluate the effectiveness of the ban regime;
(2) the effects of the bans themselves across differentiated population groups;
(3) to examine the areas where appropriate accompanying policies may be evolved by the state.

In trying to conduct a contextual analysis of the situation we need to appreciate the political economic background of Manipur.

A failure by both the central and the State political leaders to value the contextual regional realities had in the past and till today led to the adoption of policies unreal to the situation here.

These naturally have led to the emergence of many crises as conflicts and not as crises as a prelude to movement to the next higher stage of societal evolution. At the economic front, the resultant outcome has been very non-inclusionary in character.

The political economic impact of this non-inclusionarity of developmental outcomes has been the emergence of corruption (either by brute force or by incentives) as the only means to have a share in the economic cake.

Since corruption itself requires certain pre-conditions for the indulgent population to be fruitful in the sense of yielding the expected benefits, many were naturally left out of the system. These population who have been left out equally have the legitimacy to wish for the kind of life-style the 'included' were privy.

Now all these were happening in an economy where the employment opportunities were shrinking and the economy was not displaying any momentum for expansion.

These naturally made the people realize that the best and surest pathway to get a share of the economic cake was to be performed within as short a period as possible. Such a means turned out to be the ones we despise.

What is even more unfortunate is that even in such activities, the 'included' are exploiting the 'excluded'.

The Dilemma and the Need: The issue before us is that prohibitionary acts are not like the ones the State had recently witnessed in terms of putting a halt to the use of unfair means in the examinations.

In the latter case, the outcome and payoffs are absolutely positive both for the individuals and the society. This is not necessarily so in the case of the various types of prohibitions we have in place now in our society; there are so many trade-offs.

Having said this, I would not say that the prohibitions should be immediately lifted. My approach is rather different. Now that we have a movement in the State for reducing the menace of the prohibited activities, it is exactly the time for the State should step in; what is the state for otherwise.

Whenever anything positive happens and any force emerges in a society, it is the responsibility of the state to garner this force for enhancing the benefits to the society of the movement while at the same time mitigating the negative impacts.

As mentioned above, we have political economic background and some unmitigated effects on those 'excluded from development' in so far as these prohibited activities are concerned.

These being so, the state should now apply its mind and evolve policies so that the payoffs from these movements are maximized in terms of a permanent and sustainable reduction in the prevalence of these activities, while at the same time evolving other developmental programmes addressing the critical livelihood issues of the general population.

It is an inclusionary development alone which would address the harms of the activities we hate in a sustainable way, and not otherwise.