The manner in which the contentious issue of introducing the Inner Line Permit System, ILPS, progressed in the past few months since a public agitation was launched demanding the extension of this regulation to Manipur, has exposed once again the embarrassing failure of the Manipur intelligentsia. Months after the government decided to engage the matter in a proactive way, appointing a political committee to follow up the issue and determine possible ways of accommodating the popular demand, the matter seems not to have made much headway. The committee went ahead to consult intellectuals from the Manipur University, well known practitioners of law and other familiar public intellectuals, besides holding several all political party meetings, to get to the roots of the problem as well as suggestions on the way forward. The government for a while seemed confident there would be light at the end of the tunnel, but now it seems to have lost its way in the maze. It had promised the report of the committee would be tabled in the Winter Session of the Manipur Assembly, and even talked about introducing a Bill to initiate a legislation to make the ILPS applicable in the state. This mood, unfortunately, has completely altered, and a few days ago, the government had come out with a statement that the report of the committee is unlikely to be put up for discussion in the House or made public. The promised Bill too would have to wait.
Just what happened? How or why did the government suddenly develop cold feet? These are a few of the questions in the minds of the confounded public today. They are also understandably worried what might be the immediate consequences on their lives if those spearheading the demand were to come into confrontation with the government again. Would bandhs and blockades follow? Would schools and colleges have to shut down? Would the pitiable sights of bewildered school children in uniform being paraded on the streets in the name of the agitation haunt guardians again? Would there be serious casualties during street confrontations? Manipur`™s tragedy is, none of these apprehensions are farfetched and can overnight become its nightmare. So then, what exactly happened? Is the report too immature and naively confrontational? Does it lack in substance, moderation, statesmanship? All these are very likely too, considering the intellectual tradition in the state of passing off clairvoyance and other variants of crystal gazing as acceptable research methodology. In the face of abject failures to assess and size up current problems intellectually, experts here have often had to resort to citing predictions in ancient scriptures as prescriptions.
Till very recently the minutes of every consultative meeting of the committee were made public through the press. From the proceedings of these meetings, it had somewhat become clear each of the meeting had little new to offer, apart from each participant agreeing the ILPS should be introduced in the state and then breaking out in ruptures of emotional political rhetoric. It is quite likely, the committee`™s understanding of the ILPS at the end of so many months `“ from the logic for its introduction as the Bengal Inner Line Regulation in 1873, to its many consequences, the most profound of which is the hurriedly concluded Simla Convention of 1913-14 which created the McMahon Line `“ continues to be in square one. No wonder then its report is considered still not fit for an Assembly discussion.
What this sorry episode has also brought to the fore is the complete absence of an intellectual bank on important social issues such as the ILPS, for everyone especially the policy makers, to draw from. Our institutions of higher studies have miserably failed in this social responsibility, as much as our legal luminaries have. But they are not the only ones to blame, after all they have the responsibilities of their own professions to look after too. This then is a pointer to the need for some autonomous think tanks, capable of, and dedicated to building such intellectual banks, and from which the entire society, government as well as the public, can benefit.
Leader Writer: Pradip Phanjoubam