Weapons of Last Resort
- Demise of Institutions in Manipur -

Amar Yumnam *

Growth and survival, decline and collapse, and just hanging on are features characterizing one society or another at any time and space. There are lessons to be learnt from the experiences of all the societies now thriving, now extinct, or now just struggling.

One Lesson: One keen lesson emerging from the recent but rich literature on deep determinants of development needs recalling at this moment of Manipur's trajectory. Economists now agree, with deviations of course on the relative primacy, on the significance of institutions in explaining whether a society thrives or gets into oblivion.

The quality and relevance of the institutions and the ability of a society to evolve relevant, effective and purposeful institutions explains as to which category of societies it grows into ultimately. But what are 'institutions' after all? Without going into the technicalities of it, we may explain it as the system of mechanisms and order a society evolves for conducting the myriads of business, individual, familial and social.

One requirement of the institutions in order to enable them play the societal role is the need not to put them under unnecessary strain. I do not imply that institutions do not undergo change; they do of course and we need to continuously evaluate the effectiveness of existing institutions and necessity for evolving new ones. But this does not by any means suggest that we should be putting institutions to test repeatedly and for the sake of it.

At This Point: It is at this point that the ongoing 'general strike' comes handy as the instant case for examining institutional related issues thronging our land. I have no intention to get into the case for and against of the ongoing strike. Whatever the case, the ongoing scenario has made all of us to collectively ponder over the relevance of such strikes, effectiveness of these and the level to which this as an institution has been put to test.

The survival and effectiveness of institutions for social interaction demand that the Government and the governed work in tandem respecting the sublimity and supremacy of the institutions. If the governed excessively resort to the strength of the institutions to score a point over the Government, and if the Government continually play deaf to such institutions, the institutions themselves would die out.

But the society itself would be left without institutions. The result would be a very violent atmosphere where the Government would exercise its own untampered free will, and the citizens on their part would be virulently succumbing to the laws of nature, which were prevalent before any modern institution developed on this planet.

We simply would not like ourselves to get sunk into scenario of Gaza Strip and the way bandhs have played havoc there. In the Friday (July 17) edition of The New York Times, there is a report which quotes a businessman who speaks of a scenario wherein a ten year old would run down the street shouting bandh, bandh and the whole business would come to a grinding halt. No we cannot allow such a situation stalking our land.

Similarly, the time has also come when we need to rethink the future and forte of two of our other institutions, the Meira Paibis and the JACs. We understand that these institutions have emerged to respond to the call of the times and to establish certain order and accountability in the society of ours.

We also know that the Government of the times have made the emergence of such institutions absolutely inevitable, given the resilience and innovativeness of the people of the land. Over time, however, the instances are getting multiplied when the effectiveness of these powerful institutions are about to become their undoing. Examples are emerging where these social institutions are being pressed into service for events and outcomes having little to do with the society as a whole.

Don't Blame the Institutions: No we cannot blame the institutions, nor should we ever think of doing so. We are yet to go a long way and many social promises to keep for proving our societal existence to the rest of the world, and we are not yet in a situation of alternative effective institutions emerging.

Well, we do understand that prolonged Government apathy coupled by the powerful in the society to abuse power for personal ends have led us into the contemporary mess. But this should not be allowed to become the effective ploy for all the institutions to get killed. If this turns out to be the result, the demise of our own society is inevitable.

Well, we all love our own society, our own people and our own land. But there would be left nothing of our own if the society perishes in the quick sands of time.

In order to save us from this dreadful outcome, we need to be careful ourselves so that we do not stretch out powerful institutions too much while at the same time expecting the Government to be responsibly responsive to the needs of orderly social existence.