Then Two Actors, Now So Many Splinters
- Manipur in articulo mortis -

Amar Yumnam *

In articulo mortis is a Latin phrase meaning at the point of death. One cannot find a phrase which better defines the contemporary situation of Manipur. Each morning one would be disheartened by the reports of serial happenings in the land. This situation is one we cannot afford to let continue for long. We need a collective engagement on this concern.

Civilisation as Bubble: In order to better appreciate the criticality of our present scenario, it would be relevant to recall the global experience of civilisations.

The world has been told by a classic book on the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. We need to look more than this account in order to appreciate that any civilisation is a fragile one. Here I would like to mention three recent works.

First, there is the work of Kenneth Pomeranz on the 'Great Divergence: China, Europe and the Making of the Modern World Economy' wherein he analyses how Europe went ahead with modern industrialisation processes whereas China had until about 1800 more or less suitable socio-economic milieu for the modern industrialisation process to emerge from there. Rest is world history.

Secondly, there is the recent work of Jared Diamond from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) on 'Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed'. In this work, Diamond tells us an analytical story of how some civilisations remind us of the lines of great poet Shelley in "Ozymandias": "Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair". He cites the modern collapses like in Somalia and Rwanda as well.

Pondering over the contemporary world scenario, he cautions us that "more likely than a doomsday scenario involving human extinction or an apocalyptic collapse of industrial civilisation would be "just" a future of significantly lower living standards, chronically higher risks, and the undermining of what we now consider some of our key values.

Such a collapse could assume various forms......If this reasoning is correct, then our efforts today will determine the state of the world in which the current generation of children and young adults lives out their middle and late years."

Third, we have a result from the Experimental Economics Laboratory of California Institute of Technology (Caltech). In a stock selling and buying experiment, price bubbles came up as results. Stocks would hit unrealistic high prices, and then for no fully logical reasons a few low bids would produce deeply lower bids. These showed the inevitability of collapse.

I have cited these two studies and one experiment to emphasise that every civilisation has the potential to collapse as well as to sustain. A few right steps would lead it further forwards while a few negative moments would sink it permanently. So the success or collapse of civilisations is almost like a bubble; it is catastrophe if we are to use the term of Krugman.

Manipur Scenario: Manipur cannot claim to have reached the stage of civilisations the examples of which Diamond has cited. The collapses happened in many cases without the society trying to demolish itself. But look at today's Manipur. We are yet to reach a stage of a vibrant society whatsoever one may claim about the "rich heritage", while at the same there are visible and salient signs of self-demolition.

Earlier we had two major players acting out on their relative supremacy. One is the state and the other is the group of major non-state actors promising and working for an independent Manipur. For a few years, we could feel the relative tug of war between the two to appropriate legitimacy through some positive endeavours despite the presence of some negative ones as well. But it has not taken long for both to traverse the paths of decay.

The state has shown no sign of modernisation whereas it has shown signs of acquiring all the elements of a state of a collapsing society. The other group of main actors too now shows signals of having faltered somewhere and having compromised on the avowed objectives with which the group emerged.

The resultant scenario today is one where so many splinter groups start playing havoc with the social fabric. The common ethos on which our society was built has now been largely damaged, witness for instance the capturing of family members for ransom (forcible extraction of the amount demanded).

The modern sectors of development, particularly education and health sectors, have also been deeply invaded. As Zardari recently admitted of the CIA and the ISI having been jointly responsible for the creation of Taliban, the two major actors of Manipur cannot escape the responsibility of having created the splinters.

Now that the splinters have started dominating the scene and dictating terms at will, it is now the responsibility of the two actors to effectively account for their existence and play out their role. In the otherwise case, the collapse of our society would be sooner than later, and there would be nothing left to fight for.