By Amar Yumnam
In the aftermath of the recent Hurricane Sandy in the United States, which affected the New York region worst, I sent mails to a few colleagues based in New York and Los Angeles universities sharing the sorrows and pains of the affected American population. One strand of response struck me and shook me to immediately ponder on our comparative position. Almost all the American friends expressed the understanding that our people here had gone through more difficult times more than once as compared to the Americans. Further, the New Yorkers would and should find a way to recover from the damages caused by the highly destructive storm. This kind of response establishes at least two fundamental strengths. First, the Americans have a strong belief that they have institutions in place which can take care of the proximate, ultimate, light and difficult needs. Secondly, they have a strong belief that the capability of the people is such as to find a positive way out of the mess and difficulties caused by the super storm.
This kind of trust in the institutions and the capability of the people is something absolutely absent in Manipur. The current debates in the United States around orientation, preparedness and efficacy of institutions in the wake of the Sandy are very different from the kind of debates we encounter in Manipur in connection with any societal issue. The debates, issues raised and proposals which have come up in the context of Manipur in recent months all prove absence of appropriate institutions to address the societal issues and the absolute lack of preparedness of the existing ones (including state as it manifests in Manipur) to take care of the polity-wide problems.
Here it may be in place to recall the meaning and importance of institutions so profoundly put forth by Douglas North, a Nobel Prize winner for this contribution. Institutions are the foundations for economic change. They give the foundations for dynamics of an economy while simultaneously serving as enhancing factors for constraining, fostering and channelling social change at the same time. They are the reasoning and motivational strategies that channelize human behaviour and providing the rules for interactions and exchange as well as the motivations to behave in an assured way. Since they constrain human behaviour and thus individual choices, the number of alternative actions gets limited. This is how institutions address the fear of uncertainty in social interactions and economic behaviour. The possible impact of idiosyncratic behaviour and preferences is naturally taken care of. The state is also a form of institution. The significance of institutions as a framework of analysis and understanding lies in the fundamental notion of them as endogenous rules of the game for addressing individual and collective problems, and ensure dynamics for social progress.
Now let us look at Manipur in recent months. The NSCN-IM and Indian government talks have definitely had the predictable impact and concerns aroused. But these have not induced the emergence of a framework for addressing the separate and the collective issues. Now comes the issue again of another group raising the demand of a separate territory for the group. This too has provoked the kind of reactions anticipated and common.
All these bring to the forth the contemporary and highly contextual issues of the absence of institutions for addressing the hard problems of the land. Almost all the parties involved project and pursue their interests along ethnic lines. But there is no proposal coming forth which displays institutions at the ethnic levels for addressing the problems of social and economic dynamics even of the particular ethnic group concerned. There is no sign of any effort for evolving institutions cutting across the ethnicities of the land. In other words, at the societal level, there are no institutions serving the polity-wide and economy-wide interests.
The tragedy gets coupled if we look at the behaviour of the government of Manipur. The government here represents the state and it should commit itself to protect and project the long term interests of the land without in any way looking as succumbing to any pressure of any group. This should be the ultimate institution which evolves, establishes and ensures the prevalence of the rules of the game as suitable to the land. This should be involved, committed and capable of reducing, relaxing and ultimately eliminate the polity-wide and economy-wide tensions of the land. This should establish the framework for explanatory relevance of the issues which now plaque the land. This should forever endeavour to find a set of institutions endogenous and capable of addressing the issues of the land.
But in contrast to all these expectations and compulsions, we find the government of Manipur highly elusive and evasive in all her engagements. As the problem deepens, we find the government acquiring greater evasiveness. There are no signs of endogenising and indigenising the character of the government such that an institution gets ultimately established with polity-wide involvement. On the other hand, we are living with a government which expects that somebody else would address the problems of the land but harbours benefits at the personal levels. These are not characters of a state which can address hard issues. The recurrence of highway blockades as means for pressure on the state for certain demands reflects the long term failure of the state in Manipur to mature and make herself relevant to the people of Manipur.