The Government of Manipur has recently issued an appeal-cum-threat to the people relating to the bandhs and general strikes. Through it the government intends to pass on a message to the people of the State that appropriate legal action would be taken against the persons responsible for such disturbances to the economy.

The interesting aspect of the appeal is the use of economic logic to drive home the point that such disturbances cost the economy heavily. This is a welcome orientation to the usual application of mind of the State government.

But: But what is relevant for public discussion is the cynicism the appeal has created. What one would have expected is a public response reflecting disgust with the damages caused by the strikes and bandhs.

While we need not deny the transitory talk the information has generated among some concerned citizens, it needs to be emphasized that the appeal and the threat contained in it are received with cynicism by the population in general. It is this cynicism which needs examination now rather than the appeal and the threat for legal action.

The questions to be asked would centre around whether the fault lies with the public or with the civil administration. I would not like to see this as a law and order problem. I would rather see this as a deep political economic problem resulting from massive administrative lapses.

Public Mindset: The mindset of the public in any society is a product of lived historical experiences and the futuristic perceptions of the present. So it would be wrong on the part of any analyst if any attempt at leveling the public as particularly cynical or otherwise.

It is in this context that we need to search for the political economic reasons leading to the present cynical view of the appeal and threat issued by the government.

While any strike or bandh imposes costs on the people, the perception and analysis of it has to be done in the context of the nature of employment of the people and their use of time. As an economy expands, we expect certain things to occur in so far as the use of time is concerned.

First, we expect people to be devoting more time to market oriented activities. Secondly, we expect the duration of hours of work to decline and then rise. Thirdly, we expect the general daily wage of the larger section of population to rise.

Now when these conditions have occurred, there develops a network of political economic relationships and a hierarchy of networks. In such circumstances, general strikes or bandhs are very costly and affects more or less the entire population as the pay-offs of efforts are generalized.

In such circumstances the imposition of controls and legal sanctions are easier for there has emerged a certain kind of linearity in the networks.

Manipur Context: It is in the light of the above that we need to examine the reaction of the public to the recent appeal of the government. The State has not witnessed a generalized rise in the pay-off to efforts.

What we have witnessed is a rather massive rise to the returns of few rent-seekers. Secondly, the long hours of work of the general population remain to be as long as before without a rise in their returns. Thirdly, there has not been a marked rise in the density market oriented activities in the State.

It is in these circumstances that we witness frequent bandhs and general strikes. These have also been accompanied by an absolutely incompetent and vision-less civil administration for all these years.

If we examine the per-capita loss figures (the conceptual questionability of loss figures with reduction figures is beside the point), the picture comes out very gallingly. The aggregate loss to the economy may be considered as substantial, the per capita loss is not.

Besides this per capital loss is not more or less equally shared by the general population; it is borne mainly by those who have joined somehow the formal market based networks of the economy.

In other words, the logic of aggregate loss gets collapsed at the individual levels. Further, the networks in Manipur are definitely not linear as they are, e.g., in the case of Kerala.

It would be unrealistic, impractical and plain impossible to apply the linear threat of legal action in the context of Manipur, and the people are damn aware of it. This is the reason why the public have reacted with cynicism to the latest government appeal.

Governance: This takes me to my pet theme of quality of governance in the State. As I have been repeatedly emphasizing, the appropriate response to strikes and bandhs in the context of Manipur lies in improvement in governance and development interventions alive to the realities of Manipur.

The multiple non-linearities in Manipur are to be addressed before we think of taking care of strikes through linear legal actions.