By – Amar Yumnam
Imphal, March 10:
Manipur has been under turmoil for two years. Recently, the imperfect functionality at best of the provincial government forced herself to come under animated suspension and the provincial administration was brought under the direct Rule of the Union Government (Constitutionally known as the President’s Rule). With a view to initiating steps to bring the inter-ethnic killings and associated disturbances under control and marking the sense of urgency for restoring governance, the Union Government announced four steps on the second day of March 2025. They were: A. Ensure free movement of public on all roads in Manipur from March 8, 2025; B. Take strict actions against all cases of extortion; C. Speed up fencing work at designated entry points along international border adjacent to Manipur; and D. Dismantle entire network involved in drug trade to make Manipur drug-free.
My interest in this piece is on the emphasis on ensuring with effect from 08 March 2025 the free movement of people on all the roads in Manipur; the primary significance of this lies in the guaranteeing the free movement of people and goods on the highways connecting Manipur with the rest of India. The most significant in this is the National Highway 2 passing through Kangpokpi where there is presence of populations demanding separate administration to cause disturbances. The indulgence by the people on the roadside in every possible way by such people to stop any kind of movement raises many painful issues.
Here I would like to put it in very clear terms that my raising the issues questioning the attitude and the democratic values of the people demanding an administration separate from Manipur both in terms of space and polity is not without some education relating to democracy, development, justice and morality. First, like Swati Narayan in Unequal: Why India Lags Behind Its Neighbours (2023), my more than half a century studentship of Development Studies makes me deeply worried with this reality: “Natural calamities are typical stress tests that challenge the strength and soul of nations…..So, the crux of the South Asian [India is a South Asian country though there are some parts with South East Asian inheritance] puzzle is: why have some countries lagged behind severely in human development while others have unexpectedly forged ahead? Could the historical burden of thick layers of inequalities cemented across generations be the reason for India’s slow and lopsided development?” I am fully aware of the relevance and the potential for lopsided exploitation of this question by certain individuals in Manipur’s context; I would come to this later.
Second, India is perhaps the only country today which does not follow a structure of incorporating geography and institutions in the development model. More or less simultaneously with the rise for integrating institutions (Social Norms) in development thinking and designing in the mid-1980s, the imperative for geography too arose. China and the South East Asian countries have so wonderfully and successfully incorporated both Institutions and Geography in development modelling and the relative performances speak well of the richness of this approach. Here I would emphasise in no uncertain terms that historically the rulers of Manipur did have Institutional and Geographic incorporation in their thinking about the kingdom despite the poverty of financial resources to convert their wishes into actions. The non-incorporation of Institutional and Geographic factors in the structuring of development policies is a weakness at the union level and not at the provincial level.
Third, as Coskul Samli clearly writes in Infratsructuring: The Key to Achieving Economic Growth, Productivity and Quality of Life (2011): “Any construction, any development, or in fact whether it is any activity, by definition, has a foundation. The foundations for economic activity: (1) consumers satisfying their needs by shopping, (2) starting a factory, (3) moving the output of the factories, either for export or import purposes, along with numerous other economy-related activities, are all dependent on the key economic foundation called the infrastructure.” The significance of this is all the more in a province, like Manipur, where the current strength lies in the social sector capabilities and not in the industrial sector; given the near non-existence with international trade activities, the flows of products from the rest of India is significant economically and the scope for livelihood. Regarding the infrastructure sector, my engagement with an International Team tells me in clear terms the significance of this for all the sectors of any economy for development to occur and the poor to move out of poverty. So the blockage of any highway link of any community anywhere in the world can never be morally right.
Mentioning the world Moral immediately takes me to the contemporary realisation of the relationship between Morality and Democracy. The first person to immediately coming to mind is naturally the Great Plato. While recalling Plato, it would be relevant to see what Jose Hariss has said in his piece in the Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions (2006): “From the last days of the Roman republic down to the present day, both the term ‘‘civil society’’ and the practical arrangements that it signiWes have been understood by historians, theorists, and contemporary actors in a multiplicity of ways. Some of these understandings, while differing in emphasis and detail, have nevertheless recognizably stemmed from a shared intellectual tradition. Others have been deeply and diametrically opposed to each other, to such an extent that the term sometimes seems to refer to institutions, values, analytical categories, and visions of civilization, that are not just very different but mutually exclusive. Thus, one central tradition of writing about civil society has portrayed it as virtually coterminous with government, law-enforcement, and the cluster of institutions that comprise ‘‘the state’’(Model 1). A very different tradition has identified civil society with private property rights, commercial capitalism, and the various legal, institutional, and cultural support-systems that these entail (Model 2). Yet another line of thought has seen civil society as quintessentially composed of voluntaristic, non-profit-making, civic and mutual-help movements, coexisting with but nevertheless quite distinct in ethos and function from the spheres of both states and markets (Model 3). And in very recent discourse ‘‘civil society’’ has come to be increasingly identified with the enunciation of universal standards of democracy, fair procedures, the rule of law, and respect for human rights (preferably to be imposed by cultural permeation and persuasion, but nevertheless backed up by economic sanctions, international courts, and the threat or actuality of physical force) (Model 4).” Of the many, let me just quote Plato once: “Justice, as you say, is the interest of the stronger. What, Thrasymachus, is the meaning of this? You cannot mean to say that because Polydamas, the pancratiast, is stronger than we are, and finds the eating of beef conducive to his bodily strength, that to eat beef is therefore equally for our good who are weaker than heis, and right and just for us? That’s abominable of you, Socrates; you take the words in the sense which is most damaging to the argument.” It is exactly at this point that the significance of what Robert Talisse says in his Democracy and Moral Conflict (2009) arises: “I will try to convince you that no matter what you believe about morality, you have overriding epistemological reasons– reasons concerning how, what, and when one ought to believe something – to endorse democratic politics. Moreover, I aim to convince you that the epistemological reasons which lead to democratic politics are rooted in epistemic commitments that you already endorse.”
It is in this background that two happenings are very critical for Manipur today. First, the Tragedy of the Commons (Forest Degradation in common words) and the coupling it by hectic trading in forest products and Drug Cultivation are extremely bad in the areas dominated by the population demanding administration separate from Manipur. Second, in a very natural way, the populations of primates are in sharp decline in Manipur.
I have institutional, globally pragmatic, locational dynamics, private benefit potentials and political reasons to feel strongly that the prevailing property rights regime provides the mechanisms for facilitating mobilisation and indulgence for various engagements by the group demanding separate administration. The focus of governance naturally should be modernisation of this property rights regime.
