Development and its political economy
- Manipur context -

Amar Yumnam *

Development is always a serious business anywhere and anytime. It never allows casualness. It invariably demands conscientiousness and sustained directed policy interventions. While in the prehistoric times and when regression was a routine characterising every civilisation, it was considered that development had a boundary limit.

It was also considered to be an absolutely zero-sum game, which implies in common parlance looting of property of other civilisations and social groups and accumulating gold. Since looting could be inflicted upon in alternate retaliation depending upon the convenient circumstances, development was considered and accepted at best as transitory.

Recent Realities: But particularly after the advent of Industrial Revolution in England, and the consequent longevity of civilisations, the earlier perspective of transitoriness of development has now been replaced by the possibility of sustaining it. In fact, the present global preoccupation academically as well as policy-wise is with devising interventions for sustaining development.

While talking of sustaining development, we are not talking of the present preoccupation with environmental issues but of sustaining the growth path of a country. While in the pre-historic period views of development were very limited both in terms of time perspective as well as in terms of conflicts with other societies, the present perspective is very different.

Now development is no longer considered to be limited, but continual. The earlier perspective of development has now been replaced by a perspective of shifting boundaries. There is no limit to development possibilities; once a particular level has been reached, there arise new targets to be aimed for.

This targeting of shifting boundaries can be possible only when certain conditions are in place. First, it is now accepted among economists the need for evolving institutions alive to the contextual realities wherein we are targeting the moving frontier. Further, this development of institutions has to be endogenous in the sense that these should evolve from within and not from without.

However, this issue is not what we intend to take up today. We have had quite many discussions on this in this very column earlier, and I am sure I would be indulging more in the future as well. Today I would rather be concentrating myself on areas more technical and quantitative.

One such area is the role of knowledge and innovations in the growth trajectory of a society. While in the earlier periods, growth could be generated and sustained through the efforts of unskilled personnel, it is no longer realistic to follow this route.

We have continually to shift our paradigm of development to one where knowledge density in all our undertakings keeps rising. Still further in the earlier phase of contemporary version of development, generalists could serve the developmental needs. But this is no longer so. The world is now moving into an increasingly specialist-based equilibrium scenario.

This increasing dependence on specialists for further progression towards targeting the moving development frontier has a logic of its own. Now development has to be necessarily founded on innovation. But innovation is something demanding the intelligence of specialists. Besides this interaction of specialists, innovations has a characteristic of getting faster in societies and areas where the interaction is not only among specialists but also more intense.

This is the reason why we have been observing, for instance, the emergence of specialist hospitals in cities like Mumbai or Delhi at a rate faster than in other areas of the country.

Market and State: The increasing significance of knowledge and specialists in pursuing the shifting boundaries is no longer challenged among economists. The debate today is about the relative role of the market and the state. While the competitiveness instilled by the market is appreciated, it is at the same time agreed that market alone cannot provide the kind of milieu for the development of foundations for knowledge development and innovation enhancements.

This is the reason why every state, read government, everywhere values the efforts towards three things. First, it invariably endeavours to evolve first-rate institutions of knowledge creation. Secondly, it consistently and perpetually tries to adequately attract and reward specialists. At the least, it tries to create an atmosphere for adequate rewarding of specialists. Thirdly, it also sees to it that the interaction among specialists is increasingly intensified.

Manipur Scenario: I have explained in a longish way the role of knowledge and specialists in the development process so that we are aroused to examining the scenario of the land we are living in. In Manipur, the earlier phase of production of generalists for initiating the development process was well served by the state in the 1950s and 1960s. Though the state itself did not undertake the activities, it did create and sustained an atmosphere wherein knowledge development and creation could be facilitated.

But it stopped at that. As we have said earlier, the target of development is marked by a shifting frontier. The earlier efforts for generation of generalists should have been followed by another more intense policy of generating specialists and creating an atmosphere wherein they could be more meaningfully interacted. But this is exactly what has not happened to Manipur.

One can look at any sector of the land, health, education and what not. During the last three decades or so, what the state in Manipur has consistently devalued and derided is the role and position of specialists. But there is no example in the globe today wherein development has been sustained without specialists playing the key role in all matters of social existence.