Avian-flu epidemic is right now gripping the mind of the State. While the efficiency, or rather lack of it, of the concerned departments in responding to the crisis contrasts poorly with the pre-emptive approaches of the State police chief to Senapati, Moreh and script issues, the crisis remains fundamentally a short-run problem.

The response to the present crisis should be a learning process for the State, I am rather disturbed by the manifestation of two longer-run dimensions confronting the social fabric of the land.

Two Issues:
Two recent controversies reveal the nature of the social state in Manipur as of today. One is the hullabaloo against urbanisation in the mountains, and the other is the grudge for not addressing as “honourable” by a representative of the people.

Urbanisation:
The greatest divide in the State today is the gap in scientific and technical capability between the valley and the mountains; the valley now stands at a much stronger position vis-à-vis the mountains in so far as scientific and technical levels of the general populace is concerned. As a corollary the knowledge base of the valley is much sounder than that of the mountains.

It is this gap in science, technology and knowledge base that we all should try to bridge sooner than later for various reasons. First, without a strong base in these three, no society can ever have a sustainable development experience.

Secondly, without strong bases in these three, the mountains cannot evolve and articulate a feasible development agenda. Third, given the unfolding globalisation scenario, the mountains need to be prepared on a war footing for a strong foundation in these three for facing and capitalising on the emerging challenges.

Now it is in these circumstances that we now find community based articulations being extended to the issue of urbanisation. This is nothing but a farfetched extension of logic by a few to continue their articulative dominance in the name of community interests – a sort of pseudo logic.

It must be emphasised right at the outset that urbanisation is never a communal phenomenon. It is only that the wise and articulated would be rewarded better by the process rather than the foolish. This does not by any means imply that the process should be stopped for in that case there would be no development of the skills required for capitalising on urbanisation.

Besides these, there are other economically more significant implications of urbanisation. These are implications globally accepted as true as exemplified by the development history of nations. Urbanisation is considered as the best medium through which knowledge and technological spill-overs take place.

It is the phenomenon which makes innovation possible and rewarding. The social and technological interaction in an urban context is very intense, and so advancement relatively faster. This is the reason why almost all the modern technological and knowledge advancements are basically urban-based and urban oriented.

In this background of global experience and contextual realities, the present voices against urbanisation in the mountain areas betrays lack of knowledge of development compulsions, and implies wrongful extension of community based articulations to an economic phenomenon.

The "Honourables": In the backdrop of a recent insult to a minister by an ordinary and ill-behaved army officer and the equally childish response to it by the former, we now have another hullabaloo by a representative of the people that he was not addressed as ‘honourable’ in his absence.

This reminds me of a case involving a professor of the Delhi School of Economics and a minister wherein the court upheld the argument that being a minister does not necessarily give a right of precedence on others in traffic. By the same logic, we would like to accentuate that a representative of the people does not necessarily make one an ‘honourable’, but one has to work for making oneself worthy of it.

Given the present standing and respect the ministers and other representatives enjoy among the public, raising a noise over the issue of mentioning ‘honourable’ or not is just plain noise. After a long time, we now have a pro-active head of police organisation whose precautionary approaches to Senapati, Moreh and script issues have been wonderful.

I have fundamentally argued for two things in this small intervention this Sunday.

First, urbanisation is a necessary condition for development anywhere in the world, including Manipur. In this context, raising protests against urbanisation goes against the logic of development, past and present, howsoever based the argument maybe on ethnic logic.

Secondly, though the overall quality of population in Manipur has been competitive, the State unfortunately has not thrown up representatives worthy of ‘honouring’ unlike the State of Meghalaya.

So we do not like to hear protests regarding ‘honourableness’ from our representatives both for the provincial and national houses; we like all of them to work for it.