Violence of the other kind
- Developmental violence -

Amar Yumnam *

Violence is a very commonly used term in Manipur today. The politicians utter this word as often as they occur and chant for peace as tastelessly as they could. The public bear the brunt of whatever violence they are subject to. But time has now come to fully reconceptualise the meaning of violence in the contextual realities of Manipur.

First The Visible: First, let us be clear of the violence we have been used to talking. This is the visible violence involving the capacity to injure or kill, and the enactment of this capacity. This kind of violence is bad indeed.

In the context of this violence, we can talk of violence/peace and progress as separate entities. This relates to the issue of rights and privileges entitles to members of a polity.

However,The Unarticulated: However, there is another kind of violence not yet appreciated. This is the violence of a development principle whereby the possibility of addressing the first type of violence in a sustainable becomes unfeasible. One fundamental principle for development, which satisfies the requirements of justice, is that any policy, programme or project should address the interests of the most downtrodden of the downtrodden.

But this principle is violently violated in our land of the jewels. We now have so many villages having no access to water supply. There are still so many villages having no connection to power supply. We still have so many villages with proper roads.

These villages do not get any benefit of the public distribution system; they are yet to hear of that. The children of these villages do not have the luck to have access to the various childhood vaccines, except polio.

Well, we find children suffering from tuberculosis naturally. Well, are not these criminally violent manifestations of the so-called development process we are affecting?

We can forget, and in fact we have been forgetting very conveniently, the developmental violence in these areas. These areas do not have access to the centres of articulation as well as to the centres of information. Hence their realities remain unknown to the larger population and their own representatives do not bother to articulate their problems either. Hence they suffer in silence from the developmental violence without ever knowing that they are suffering from this violence.

These areas come into contact with the rest of the country only during the dry season and it is only during this season that they can send their children to the nearest district of block headquarters for education. This sending of children for education involves transportation of one year's ration of them during this dry period only.

Not all the parents in these villages have the capacity to send the required ration. Consequently in these villages at least thirty percent of the children drop out of schools by the time they have to attend classes three or so. Is not this again a developmental violence?

Women in these villages have to get married early and get aged sooner. They have to take the entire brunt of lack of water supply system in the difficult mountainous terrains. Further they do not have access to even the minimal medical facilities for consulting on their commonest of diseases. Are not these developmental violence.

Sustained Peace: In this case of developmental violence, we cannot think of peace and development as separate entities. Development should possess an inherent quality of peace in itself such that the interests of the most downtrodden of the downtrodden are spontaneously taken care of.

While the visible violence may be addressed and dialogued, we may have the transitory vision that peace is in the horizon. But no solution to the visible violence would be sustainable unless the developmental violence has been taken care of. Temporarily we may get an impression of peace, but the areas now subject to developmental violence would emerge sooner or later as areas marked by visible violence.

Removing the developmental violence, on the other hand, has the capability to address the issues of visible violence. Further this incorporation of peace as a component of development can make the resultant healthy atmosphere sustainable. The sustenance of this atmosphere would in due course reduce the scope for visible violence.