'Leikai-club' in the contemporary Meitei society

Ningthoujam Irina *

The socio-cultural space of a 'leikai' in a Meitei community become an organisational base where almost every struggle though triggered by some problem, gave rise to mobilization of leikai-club (neighbourhood association) aimed at dealing will all matters of everyday life, from water to electricity and to social security to popular celebration. In this connection, one needs to understand what role can leikai-club perform in this partnership form of participatory governance in Manipur?

In the following pages we would see that leikai-club has institutionalized participation to utilize the local resources and build up local capacity in terms of civic leadership, building trust, reduction of transaction cost, social volunteering, cultural development, etc, though, their participation and bridging with State formal governing process remain sceptical.

The multi-lineage Meitei local community is closely knit within its own kinship structure along with an ideal of collective life under its cultural system. A village/town consists of many leikais. Leikai doesn't have a legal aspect and it is an imagined space. The space of a leikai has a structural and behavioural value which can be understood through its system of kinship, social norms and ritual.

Another aspect of leikai space would be the kind of solidarity extended to a physical space for a pseudo kinship structure. For instance, a person is not supposed to get married within the same leikai. If an individual takes a spouse from within the same leikai, it often draws cynical comments as both the bride and the groom are considered belonging to a bigger family unit called leikai. In an informal understanding, five to six leikais or even more forms a village/town, taking Yum (house) as the smallest unit.

In every leikai, it is now a norm to form a leikai-club-a neighbourhood platform with its office building, library, halls, sport ground, etc. The space of a leikai-club is now made mandatory through the invocation of a consensus among the people and preserved for a specific leikai. It works on the norm of a bureaucratic structure-written rule, hierarchy, division of work, commitment and neutrality, yet flexible on social norms. It is the choice of adjoining families between two leikai to join any club while the services are always overlapping. Based on field observation, a club can cover up to 500 houses and a minimum of 100 houses.

The governing body of the club is democratically elected annually or biannually from the local people. Most of the executive members have the age average group of (28-35) years and the advisory committees are formed by the senior members of the community. If a leikai-club has executive members below this age group like in early twenties, the leikai club is seen to be in the lowest phase of functioning in its overall stages. It has a President, Secretary, executive committees with different portfolios and volunteers.

None of these members get paid for their work; all services are provided voluntarily by the community members. For organizing activities of the club, necessary funds are made through contributions and donations from the resident/community members. The amount of donation varies with the choice and capacity of the individual's income, family status and so forth. Besides, the leikai-club also organises charity or fund raising shows and events. Seeking funds from State authorities is very rare and negative in response at all.

Therefore leikai-club remains a generic term among the people, different from the western concept of club as a group who meet for social, sporting or leisure purposes or an organization offering benefit to its subscribers. One has to be very clear here in leikai-club the nature of function is delivering and helping the various needs which a State cannot provide to its citizens rather than as an entertainer of States.

The existence of leikai-club can be explained due to inherent Communitarian Value system among the Meiteis which is collective responsibility actions for the community to respond to their diverse historical legacies, diverse adaptation to internal and external pressures, differing interactions and relationships with the state in power. There are also every locality level traditional informal institutions (Lup) called Keirup, Shinglup and Leirup and the villagers are members of these organizations. We find even today shinglup takes care completely of the burial sites in every leikai, besides its financial assistance.

Leikai-club seems to be the modern evolutionary version of these traditional institutions with the emergence of modern democratic norms and its demands to gain legitimacy from the state. As of today these leikai-clubs are registered bodies under the Cooperative Societies Act though their establishments are done much earlier like Citizen Club in Soibam leikai was established in 1958 but registered in 1970. It has been observed that renewal of their registration has not been a necessary agenda for many of the clubs, as they still work independently with a notion of traditional authority.

The oldest registered club in the State has been the New Popular Club, Moirangkhom Makha Yumnam Leikai (Reg. No 8 dated 20.10.55). In Manipur, there are 3279 affiliated/registered/unregistered youth clubs or leikai-clubs of Nehru Yuva Kendra (NYK). In Imphal East and Imphal West district, there are 1041 leikai-clubs afflicted to NYK as on 9 September 2008.

Leikai-clubs in its small initiatives attempt to improve the socio-economic condition of the community by giving a source of income. They have built marketable spaces like shops which are rented out to the needy families to start small entrepreneurship and earn a living which in turn generate funds for the club as well. Through these funds, the leikai-club organises various cultural and social gathering annually for the leikai. In these events, community members take part voluntarily both in physical and monetary terms.

Involvement of community members in the activities mentioned above helps in the development of a strong community solidarity. Based on my interviews, this small informal interaction further becomes the basis to join network among women like Marup (micro saving credit system) among the leikai women to strengthen their financial aspect in time of need. Leikai-clubs executive members do have monitoring activities on the public distribution system of the leikai. This helps in effective and accountable delivery of the public basic food security.

On October 7, 2008, Dharmalaya Social welfare club, popularly known as Nahabam Club in Imphal East constituted a committee of 12 members to run and manage old thumbuthong water supply scheme installed near the leikai-club along with the Water supply department. This is the first of its kind in any urban area where the local social capital is being ultilised by the Manipur Government. It manages 383 household consumers and their function includes collection of water tax, control over the drilling of water pipe and fine over misuse of water. Besides this, many community ponds and water tanks are managed and control by leikai club to provide safe and clean water.

Leikai-clubs and their roles with regard to State schemes and programmesThe very nature of social roles which have been contributed by leikai-clubs reverberates as community representative in the delivery of services and hence given due roles as partnership in Sarva Siksha Abhiyan, Total Literacy Campaign of the National Literacy Mission, National Health Mission, Total Sanitation Campaign and Bharat Nirman initiated by the Government to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.

In the latter pages, this paper selectively examines and cautiously comments some of the social roles and social responsibility of leikai-club with regard to few of these above programmes.

Sarva Siksha Abhiyan and Total Literacy Campaign of the National Literacy Mission (Achieving universal primary education) : Leikai-clubs are involved in the construction of schools, libraries and play a healthy role in promoting adult and primary education. Under the 'Universal Elementary Education for all', community participation is given due emphasis. Recently, Dharamalaya Social Welfare Centre, locally known as Nahabam Club, located in Imphal East district, has constructed a primary school building for its community.

The idea was to avail formal education at a minimum distance. The initiative has been able to raise the level of enrollment of children from the community at the lower level of educational hierarchy. Such management of these schools has been taken over by the Government over a period of time. Example can be drawn from 'Junior Primary School' in Bhramapur Laljilakpa Leikai or the 'Primary School' near Citizen Club in Soibam Leikai and many more that were initially established by the efforts of leikai-club and later became a State managed educational institution.

In due recognition, two representatives of leikai-club are members of the 'National Programme of Nutritional Support to Primary Education' commonly known as Mid-Day Meal Scheme in two of its committees—Village Education Committee and School Development Management Committee.

However, based on my filed work the community members were least involved or fully aware of the details of the programmes. Similarly, in Sarva Siksha Abhiyan (SSA), the roles of organising of community awareness campaign are done in partnership with the leikai-Club members otherwise called as Club in the official paper of SSA which is only a one day affair.

A report on SSA concludes as — "Monitoring and supervision of the activities in the schools in their respective jurisdiction should be enhanced in order to provide accurate data. A transparent and pro-active system is needed for effective monitoring and evaluation of the schools, especially those in the interior parts of the State" 5.

National Health Mission The State of Manipur is among the worst affected by HIV/AIDS in India and has become a serious health emergency. It has a high incidence of drug addiction and HIV among its youth and at the same time, young boys and girls from the State win the highest number of medals in the National Games. The movements of sports through leikai-club have been a tool to control the drug users and motivate youth for a healthy and disciplined life style at the grass root level. It is unfair to ask youth to change their beliefs and behaviours without also providing community support for these changes. Especially when reproductive and sexual health issues are controversial and/or taboo, it is critical to bring other community members into the process so that they, too, can support healthy change.

However it is only this year 2010, village Health Action Plan was formed which also consists of leikai-club secretary7. Besides this, they are also included in community monitoring committee but which is yet to start.

Total Sanitation Campaign and Bharat Nirman 125 leikai-club were collaborating with the Imphal Municipal Council for the 'Zero Garbage Campaign' which start from August 24, 2010. Besides this, three leikai-club in a ward under the leadership of councilor and guidance of local MLA, an awareness meeting should be organized, house to house campaign by leikai-club and removal of litters from different locations from the ward with the assistance of leikai-club. However, this campaign is just for two months and the government has not widely published "The Manipur Municipalities (Cleanliness and sanitation) Model bye-law, 2009" in local papers.

Along with these there are more than ten leikai-club in a ward which these three leikai-club can't capture enough community audience in the meeting. While most of the responsibilities in the bye-law are given to the NGOs which are of profit motive rather than not-for profit motive, which could have been given the whole responsibility of garbage management to leikai-club members. Every leikai-club has an annual cleanliness and sanitation campaign which helps in keeping the communities' environment clean and free from communicable diseases.

Similarly, in Jawaharlal Nehru Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) under Bharat Nirman, a mandatory reform of Community participation bill 'Manipur Municipality Community participation Act, 2010' was passed by the state assembly without any debates in the public domain. Here the act reflects more of contracting with the private agencies rather than the community partnership. The act mentions to institute 'Ward Area Committee' which among other members includes two persons representing the civil society from the ward, nominated by the state Government. But here the explanation of the term 'civil society' is too broad.

Conclusions: The potential of leikai-clubs (social capital institution) as a mechanism for building a sustainable society in Manipur is not disputed. It is true that state has started recognizing its role in its policy framework but one has to understand that;

Community participation occurs when a community organizes itself and takes responsibility for managing its problems. Taking responsibility includes identifying the problems, developing actions, putting them into place, and following through8.

It can be said to be a failure of the state governance to fully equip the community with the information and tools of programmes and schemes of these policies. Therefore a challenge still remain in achieving the goals of these programmes until the gap of bridging these community through leikai-club takes place truly in the deeper sense of community participation.What role these leikai-clubs can play as partnership in governance and development and how they can relate to the other institutions of governance and public administration has to be clearly sorted out.

In fact, such existence of vibrant community institution which has control over local knowledge and legitimacy of the community can further strengthen its goals. Another important point that one would like to conclude is shrinking of this socio-cultural space is itself is threat to the identity of Meitei society.

References:

1 Based on the rough estimate of the number of households contributing help of any kind to the leikai-club
2 Keirup was a military organization for war and protection of village.
3 Shinglup helped the bereaved family with wood, money and labour
4 Leirup is in charge of developmental functions-building of roads and bridges, digging canals,etc.
5 Institute of Social Work and Research Manipur, REPORT ON 5% SAMPLE CHECKING OF DISE DATA, 2006-07(MANIPUR) submitted to The State Project Director, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, Manipur
6 National Games-2007 Guwahati Medal Tally
7 National Rural Health Mission Manipur, State Program Implementation Plan 2010-11 p-148 Cheetham, N., 2002. Community participation: What is it? Transitions, 14(3): 4.