Tag: Editorial

At its crux, there are only two known ways of resolving a conflict of interests. One is to crush the weaker of the two with brute force and the other to reach a democratic consensus. The civilized norm of the modern world being the latter option, the need is to explore its possibilities wherever conflict has come to stay, at least until a more perfected mechanism is evolved. For the moment, we can only foresee all putative future conflict resolution mechanisms as derivatives of the democratic system, the latter being known for its resilience and almost infinite accommodative capacity. But it must be acknowledged that often the most vocal advocates of democracy have regressed into the logic of an atavistic past where only force mattered. The objectionable interventions in the Middle East and West Asia have said this eloquently. It is a matter of pessimism that war still seems unavoidable even in the days of democracy. A qualification needs however to be added here. In the UNDP Human Development Report, HDR, 2002 with the theme `deepening democracy in a fragmented world`, one of the many interesting patterns of national behaviours that evolved from empirical data on wars in the second half of the 20th Century is, no two democracies have ever gone to war with each other. Quite obviously, these nations have discovered an alternative ground on which to thrash out vexed issues. The indication is also, democracy is a versatile medium for this meeting of minds and resolution of conflicts.

Even in our situation, there have been very strong tendencies on very many occasions to return to the former method of conflict resolution, which basically has a one-line philosophy made famous by Joseph Conrad`™s fictional character, Kurtz in Heart of Darkness `“ `exterminate the brute`. But, as in this story, the scale to decide which is the `civilized` and which the `brute` between the exterminator and exterminated, becomes extremely blurred. But the values of democracy, with its insistence on giving each and every one a say, regardless of numerical or physical strength, have generally managed to keep this tendency in check. There have been occasions when this inner moderation snapped, as in the case of the Naga-Kuki feud, Meitei-Meitei Pangal mayhem, and Kuki-Paite fratricide, but it would be reasonable to presume that many more would have been prevented by this inner cord. For indeed although our society seemed at certain junctures to have reached points of explosive ethnic violence, nothing so catastrophic have happened so far. This however does not mean the dark forces of violence have been successfully subdued for all times. We still continue to sit on a dormant volcano which can with provocation come alive again. And provocations there have been and there will be by those who either do not understand or believe in the healing power of accommodation and mutual respect that democracy recommends.

There have also been plenty of talks of a dialogue between the civil societies of the different communities that are at loggerheads. This is welcome, but a dialogue devoid of a willingness to accommodate can possibly lead nowhere. A dialogue or a discourse is not simply about convincing the opposing party to surrender to the will of the other party, but of discovering, or rediscovering as the case may be, of common grounds on which to build the foundation for the future together. This spirit has never been conspicuous in all the vociferous claims and advocacy for understanding and good neighbourliness. By democracy we do not necessarily mean only the political system with a mechanism for determining public policies by sheer contests for majority opinion. This is a necessary ingredient, but it is far from being a sufficient condition. Equally important, it has also to be about justice, and in evolving this understanding of justice, the premium must be on reason and creative insights into what is common good. Here the concept of freedom is also important. Without individual freedom, the aggregate of which is what constitutes freedom of larger social grouping, including the nation, there can be no democracy. But again, as philosopher Isaiah Berlin said, freedom cannot be without any conditions. Absolute freedom for the wolves translates into death for the lambs. Freedom then can make meaning only if it is moderated by reason and a commonly legislated rational law.

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2015/11/wolf-and-lamb-story/

We are once again on the threshold of another cycle of the winter magic. It is indeed happy serendipity that many, if not most of the widely celebrated festivals in Manipur and its neighbourhood come in winter. Kut opened the season on November 1. It is Diwali today, in two days there will be Ningol Chakouba. Come December and there will be Christmas and then the celebration of the onset of another New Year on the January 1. Happy though the onset of this season is, there is also a peculiar air of sadness associated with it. This is especially so when it comes to Ningol Chakouba, another institution that Manipur`™s rich and long tradition established, demonstrating before the world that this society intuitively and genuinely cares for the female child and that the feminine gender has a very special and warm corner in its heart. That the women of Manipur have been at the forefront of the society is a fact, but it is not a standalone phenomenon. For indeed, in their coming to be free and independent to participate as equal partners of their men in economic and social activities, the social environment they are in has always had a huge role. In fact, it is this environment that not only gave them the liberty, but also nudged them to be their sovereign selves. But this social environment is changing, as all social environment must, being the living organism that they are. Irresistible forces of globalization, shifts in economic paradigms, reformations in social moorings, winds of modernism etc, have all made sure traditions never remain stagnant. It would be wrong to try and shut out these forces of change. In any case they cannot be, for as the age old wisdom teaches us, time and tide waits for no man. The correct attitude must be to treat them as challenges to be handled and ultimately taken advantage of, rather than threats to be fought or run away from.

Family reunions are a time equally of pain and joy. So would Ningol Chakouba be for many. It would be a time for loved ones to be together but also a time to remember loved ones lost. In life`™s journey, nobody can live forever. This journey can be unpredictable too. Even the young and innocent can be snatched away. All religions seek to provide consolation by advocating the belief that life does not end with death and that there is much more beyond. But there are also those for whom life itself is religion. One is reminded of the 1952 novel by Nikos Kazantzankis `Zorba the Greek`, made into a Hollywood classic in 1964, bagging three Oscars. Alexis Zorba, overcome with the sorrow of death approaches a wise old man buried in his books and asks: `Why do the young die?` The wise old man looks up from his books and in a soft unperturbed voice answers: `I don`™t know.` Upon this Zorba flies into a rage and shouts: `Of what use are your books and knowledge if you do not know this?` The wise old man, in the tone of a man who understands and empathises with the anguish of the questioner replies: `I read them because they teach me about the pain of people who cannot answer questions such as yours.` Life indeed is defined by both pain and joy. One would be meaningless without the other. So let us all take heart, and live life full.

Not by death, but by politics, one ningol will miss another Ningol Chakouba this year. She has not eaten for all of a decade and a half and in a special prison at the JN Hospital Imphal. It is difficult to avoid a little guilty that as all of us partake in the festivities of Ningol Chakouba, this Ningol, continues to volitionally starve herself on behalf of all of us. We pray in silence for the brave heart that she is, but we have the uncanny fear that she may end up merely as a mascot to be paraded in public, even if it is for a worthy cause. It is also a peculiarly paradoxical situation for those of us who support her cause. To encourage her to continue her fight is almost like encouraging her to torture herself with starvation and possibly die. On the eve of Ningol Chakouba our thoughts go out to her once again. We wish her to continue her fight relentlessly but live on until victory is hers and ours. We also hope and pray that someday in the near future, this lady too will be able to have her fill of the joy and nostalgia of Ningol Chakouba once again.

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2015/11/ningol-chakouba-thoughts/

As winter approaches, it has already begun to feel like a time for reflection. Perhaps this is because it is the season of festivals, both secular and religious. The most important of these festivals are, Christmas, of one of the most important religions of the world, and of course Diwali, arguably the most widely celebrated festival in India. But in a more local context there are also, was also the just concluded, Kut harvest festival, the upcoming Ningol Chakouba, the Sangai festival and in the neighbouring state of Nagaland, the famous Hornbill festival. We have no intention of delivering a homily on the approaching festivals as well as those just gone by, and we are not even qualified to do it. However, the winter mood inevitably drives many, and we join them, to reflect on some of the many mysteries and intricacies of life – most particularly human life. A National Geographic feature some time ago on “sex” provides a pad to launch a rumination on one of these mysteries. The theme of the feature was based on Charles Darwin’s theory of “Natural Selection” and how this is part of the natural process of propagation of species, and how sex is the most perfected mechanism nature designed to effect this “Natural Selection”. The assumption is that instinctively, sexually reproducing life forms (which is nearly the whole of the animal kingdom and a greater section of the plant world), tend to mate with partners who are perceived to have the best genetic characteristics needed for survival and propagation of species. A lot of zigsaw puzzles of mating behaviours of animals seem to fall in place, from viewpoint of this theory. Even in the case of human beings, this seems to explain why there is so much concurrence on the general perception of certain types of body figures and vital statistics, as attractive. But there are problems, and as is almost always the case, the problems give more food for thought than the successful explanations.

One of the problems, as the National Geographic documentary pointed out is the peacock, incidentally India’s national bird, known for its colourful feathers and its characteristic strut. Charles Darwin is said to have remarked that the sight of a peacock was always extremely painful for him. Although said probably in jest, the remark is understandable, for how else can the peacock’s cumbersome feathers be explained in terms of the Darwinian theory of natural selection. The feathers make the bird extremely clumsy, making it easy prey for predators; it hampers its food gathering manoeuvres therefore reduces its survival chances; it is a dead weight during flight therefore making the bird expend more energy to traverse distance etc., and the list of disadvantages the bird suffers because of its tail can be much longer. in short, it is not a survival accessory and should have been long eliminated by the theory of Natural Selection. Consequently, peacocks with the most feathers should have died out leaving behind the less feathered but fitter and agile amongst the species to carry on the survival struggle. The fact has been just the opposite. For reasons that cannot be satisfactorily explained in scientific evolutionary terms, the peacock’s chances of finding a suitable peahen to mate with depend precisely on the fullness and brightness of its strut. The National Geographic feature demonstrates this by studying and noting the diminishing success rates of peacocks with feathers pruned in varying degrees, in finding a mate. What then has the peacock’s feather to do with evolution? The feature merely presents this as a frontier for science, but such questions seldom fail to transport the enquirer to the realm of religion.

But it is in human behaviour that more profound evolutionary problems are encountered. The enigma is most engrossing when it comes to the question of the human qualities of love and compassion. Even if these are also the qualities of others in the animal kingdom, there is one that distinguishes the human species – its capability of transferring parental love to non-offspring. That is, the phenomenon of adoption. In modern times, the practice is also growing. There are more evidences of the forces of Natural Selection continuing to determine human behaviour. The human emotion of compassion is one of these. The pressure of Natural Selection is supposed to be to eliminate the weak and unfit in a species so only the strong and fit lives on. Humans have turned this logic upside down, and feel protective about the weak and lame, the handicapped and mentally challenged. So is this a signal of the dead end of the road for Natural Selection and propagation of own genes. Would this prove to be a disadvantage for the human species in evolutionary terms. Perhaps, but the National Geographic features only calls this a brave new world for evolutionary science. Whatever it is, whether it ultimately dooms or uplifts the human species further in evolutionary time, there can be no doubt this will still be a reaffirmation of the magic of human life that makes it worth the while.

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2015/11/the-peacocks-feather/

There is a tendency in Manipur of everything to always return to square one. The avenue for a way out of this depressing stagnancy eludes the imagination of one and all, including our leaders, intellectuals and the numerous NGOs in the field of social works. The shared obsession seems to be to analyse, dissect, scrutinize and rubbish selected chapters of the past compulsively and then blame each other or else some external agency or the other for all the misery and misfortune that is everybody’s fate today. Maybe there is some truth in this vision but it certainly cannot be the whole truth. To think this is so would be to reduce the social organism that we all are part of, to a collection of simplistic equations of stimulus and responses only. And this we know cannot be, for the being and the soul of any society is far more complex, and we would even contend, infinitely so. The difficulty in sizing up a society or its mores completely lies in this complexity and not to any attributable flaws of the past, as the current intellectual tradition in social analysis in the state seems to suggest. If social issues were so clear cut, and there were no ambiguities about remedial measures, most social problems ought to have disappeared by now everywhere in the world. Just as the greatest thinkers the world has known discovered, or others after they are long gone too fathomed, this cannot be ever so.

The linearity of our social analyses had had some very serious consequences. For instance we seem to be a society which sees salvation in the past, at the cost of even ignoring the future. From the point of view of this limited linear vision, this is totally understandable. For from this vantage, at least in its structure as a chronological sequence of events, there is a definiteness about the past and this makes it seem comparatively simple to grasp, or at least not out of grasping distance. We would not say the same thing about the substance that gave form to this structure, but even here the same definiteness associated with past events thins out the desperation to get the diagnosis right. The unfortunate thing is, this approach in our effort to come to grip with the past, is often extended to our quest for an understanding of the future. This, we would contend is flawed, for one thing there is nothing linear or definite about the future. All our problem solving efforts have seldom acknowledged that the future is about discovering what is possible. The foundations of our mainstream as well as the numerous prevalent alternate politics today have never been built on any such broad platform, negating in the process the wellknown one line definition of politics as “an art of the possible”. Unlike the past which is dead and circumscribed to the realm of memory only, the field for the future is wide open. We cannot erase the Chahi Taret Khuntakpa chapter in our history, but creative vision of the future can prevent similar historical catastrophes.

While we cannot possibly forget our past, or ignore what we have inherited from it, we do feel there is an urgent need for our society to tone down some of its claustrophobic obsession with the past and develop a vision for the future that is not everything about undoing the past but envisioned precisely as “an art of the possible”. Only when this understanding becomes the standard, realistic terms for resolutions to most of our conflict situations, both internal and external, can begin to dawn. If the question is about past wrongs and their impacts on the present and the future, surely as creative, autonomous beings that all human individuals are, we can overcome these impacts. In structural terms, democracy guarantees this possibility. In spiritual terms too, the prison of colonial modernity of formerly colonized worlds, has never been able to contain this same creativity that gives the individual the capability of sizing up his predicament and affect the changes necessary to overcome that state of mind. It is depressing that our public discourses seldom have approached the future without the past as the sole measuring tape. Let our future go beyond the status of being just a response to our past.

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2015/11/historys-excess-baggage-2/

There is a tendency in Manipur of everything to always return to square one. The avenue for a way out of this depressing stagnancy eludes the imagination of one and all, including our leaders, intellectuals and the numerous NGOs in the field of social works. The shared obsession seems to be to analyse, dissect, scrutinize and rubbish selected chapters of the past compulsively and then blame each other or else some external agency or the other for all the misery and misfortune that is everybody’s fate today. Maybe there is some truth in this vision but it certainly cannot be the whole truth. To think this is so would be to reduce the social organism that we all are part of, to a collection of simplistic equations of stimulus and responses only. And this we know cannot be, for the being and the soul of any society is far more complex, and we would even contend, infinitely so. The difficulty in sizing up a society or its mores completely lies in this complexity and not to any attributable flaws of the past, as the current intellectual tradition in social analysis in the state seems to suggest. If social issues were so clear cut, and there were no ambiguities about remedial measures, most social problems ought to have disappeared by now everywhere in the world. Just as the greatest thinkers the world has known discovered, or others after they are long gone too fathomed, this cannot be ever so.

The linearity of our social analyses had had some very serious consequences. For instance we seem to be a society which sees salvation in the past, at the cost of even ignoring the future. From the point of view of this limited linear vision, this is totally understandable. For from this vantage, at least in its structure as a chronological sequence of events, there is a definiteness about the past and this makes it seem comparatively simple to grasp, or at least not out of grasping distance. We would not say the same thing about the substance that gave form to this structure, but even here the same definiteness associated with past events thins out the desperation to get the diagnosis right. The unfortunate thing is, this approach in our effort to come to grip with the past, is often extended to our quest for an understanding of the future. This, we would contend is flawed, for one thing there is nothing linear or definite about the future. All our problem solving efforts have seldom acknowledged that the future is about discovering what is possible. The foundations of our mainstream as well as the numerous prevalent alternate politics today have never been built on any such broad platform, negating in the process the wellknown one line definition of politics as “an art of the possible”. Unlike the past which is dead and circumscribed to the realm of memory only, the field for the future is wide open. We cannot erase the Chahi Taret Khuntakpa chapter in our history, but creative vision of the future can prevent similar historical catastrophes.

While we cannot possibly forget our past, or ignore what we have inherited from it, we do feel there is an urgent need for our society to tone down some of its claustrophobic obsession with the past and develop a vision for the future that is not everything about undoing the past but envisioned precisely as “an art of the possible”. Only when this understanding becomes the standard, realistic terms for resolutions to most of our conflict situations, both internal and external, can begin to dawn. If the question is about past wrongs and their impacts on the present and the future, surely as creative, autonomous beings that all human individuals are, we can overcome these impacts. In structural terms, democracy guarantees this possibility. In spiritual terms too, the prison of colonial modernity of formerly colonized worlds, has never been able to contain this same creativity that gives the individual the capability of sizing up his predicament and affect the changes necessary to overcome that state of mind. It is depressing that our public discourses seldom have approached the future without the past as the sole measuring tape. Let our future go beyond the status of being just a response to our past.

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2015/11/historys-excess-baggage/

Who says corruption, both in the official as well as in the unofficial worlds, has ended in Manipur. All this despite the most brutal campaigns against it by numerous crusading organizations of which there has never been a shortfall, especially in the past few decades of militancy. Numerous bullets in the legs and sometimes in the heads, have not deterred the phenomenon one bit. The most saleable commodity, government jobs, it is everybody’s knowledge, still carry premium price tags. Likewise, it is an open secret that black money still exchanges hands in the award of government contracts, or else these are had at the point of the gun. Fair play, as defined by a competition of merit, is today an alien concept. A new power order has emerged and this new order has two distinct poles. One the hand are those in the seats of power and their executive instruments. That is, the politicians in power and the bureaucratic machinery. On the other are those who have the power to instil the bone chilling fear of death by summary execution.

A study of the pattern of wealth accumulation (or distribution if you like) will be a pretty accurate testimony of this new order. As a thumb rule, it will be discovered that anybody who has made the quick buck is close to either of the two poles. Chances are most of the opulently rich are sycophants of the executive order, or else brokers for the other pole where brute force defines power. Of course, this is if they are not the corrupt bosses of the officialdom themselves. Very few of the wealthy would have made their fortunes from honest enterprises pursued with patience and perseverance through generations, as most enterprises with firm foundations are generally made of. The rules may have been rewritten a little, but the game remains the same. The organized robbery of public exchequer is still the goal of the wealth making game, and this is unfortunate for many things. The most pronounced of these being the murder of the entrepreneurial spirit itself. Why sweat when you can get what you have to sweat for just by making a Faustian deal and corner a government contract. You can now buy wealth with bribes and kickbacks or else get it by the use of force. In a lawless world all these are permissible. In a soulless world where corruption has been so deeply institutionalized, there is nothing unnatural anymore about it too. What’s so very wrong with a little bribe here and there (or call it percentage cut for official favours to cleverly make it sound a little less objectionable). They have all become a necessary evil of an essentially evil world.

The other pitfall is, while wealth definitely would still command envy, it does not inspire the respect it deserves anymore. Making the tragedy more profound is that even those few who have made their wealth honestly get tainted with the same broad brush. So much so that when the social mechanism, groaning under the weight of prolonged and immense abuses finally recoils and hits back violently, despite the brutality involved, there is a catharsis of sort. Hence, when the dark forces of extortion visit the wealthy, there is a good measure of a perverse sense of social retribution that comes along with it. This perhaps explains the lack of any widespread outrage from all sections of the society against this phenomenon. Only the class of people made vulnerable, protest in terrified whispers, all to no avail, much to their frustration and agony. The rest simply watch, if not with glee, than at least with a stoic indifference, as if to say, everybody gets to reap what he sows. If a few honest souls get trampled in the process, who cares? Isn’t this what is collateral damage about. All this is also strangely reminiscent of a familiar argument against the AFSPA. If 50 years of the draconian Act has only increased the intensity of insurgency, decades of violent campaigns against corruption has also only driven it deeper underground and is far from being wiped out. The cyclic pattern of these phenomena is terrifying. Perhaps the revolution everybody exalts has first to be complimented by a revolution of the soul.

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2015/11/legitimizing-wealth-2/

In multi-ethnic, multi-religion Manipur, nobody will doubt why the need to have citizenship and their administration defined and characterised on civic terms is vital. As in the history of the emergence of the notion of secularism, which in the ultimate analysis came to mean separating religion from politics, or in the classical European idiom, separating the Church from the State, secularism and civic citizenship in places like Manipur, should be about relegating not just religion, but also ethnicity, into the private spheres and disallowing it to colour or overtly influence the pursuit of public policies. Sadly however, the reality on the ground so far has been directly the opposite. Every community has been hankering for the creation of their exclusive enclaves in which all others are aliens and therefore have little or no rights. While it is true that democracy should not be just about numbers, or of trusting in the ultimate justice the free market economy or the laissez-faire is supposedly capable of delivering, and instead should also be about guaranteeing a lift for the lame and slow, there must also be a counter guarantee that policies of positive discrimination do not result in social segregation. Consequently, there must also be a civic definition of who is weak and slow and who is not. For indeed, these are dynamic, and therefore perennially changing equations, where it is not impossible for those who were once lame and slow to become fast and fit, and vice versa. This civic definition should also be designed to ensure social mobility and entitlements remain as per the dictum of “to each according to his need, and from each according to his ability”. It should not matter this slogan originally belonged to the Communists. Let it be recalled that even the famous outlaw Robinhood’s maxim of robbing the rich to feed the poor in mediaeval England, has today been adopted by modern democratic states to sublimate and made to mean “tax the rich to subsidise the poor”.

Let ethnicity remain as private convictions, just as religion is, but let it not at any time become the fuel, much less engine, of public administration or politics. Politics and public administration must ensure these different private convictions are not unfairly hurt but politics itself must remain above them. One example will illustrate. Politics has been rightly described as a contest first and then exercise of state power. Democracy refines this exercise by offering an effective though not fool-proof civic mechanism for all sections of the citizenry to share this power. Ordinary adult citizens are hence given equal power of a vote each to elect their representatives. This franchise right equates everybody, men and women, rich and poor, regardless of religious or ethnic affiliations. However, in societies which have not internalised the values of liberalism, ethnicities and religions tend to cluster and form vote banks, defeating the one man one vote principle in spirit, if not in letter. The world has seen how even established nations can splinter on account of this. The former Yugoslavia is just an example. India, and on a smaller canvas, and more intensely too, Manipur are not alien to such dangerous frictions.
This is why a fresh civic agenda to define politics and power sharing is vital. This civic agenda should not be about homogenising by flattening out all ethnicities and their uniqueness. It should be on the other hand about ensuring a creative balance in which ethnicities remain intact and each gets their share of power but none gets to colour or monopolise state power. Towards this end, one of democracy’s features could be to encourage to the extent possible, mixed constituencies. This will ensure that even if very small ethnicities cannot have leaders from among them elected to the democratic legislative bodies (at least until such a time liberalism becomes everybody’s intuition), the leader from whichever community they elect cannot ignore them without cost. As for instance, a legislator from Wangkhei cannot slight the Nagas from Nagaram, or a legislator from Thangmeiband or Uripok cannot ignore the Bazar community etc. It obviously cannot happen overnight, but ideally, in the decades ahead, most or all constituencies in the state should have this characteristic to the extent possible, though only to the extent it does not begin to threaten the sense of security of any particular community.

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2015/11/why-civic-citizenship/

A basic difference between the West and the East in attitude towards ideal citizenship is rather pronounced and fits into a familiar stereotype. Once again, it is about a rather closed-ended, but definitely tangible materialistic outlook towards the ways of the society, pitted against another that leans towards a more abstract and by that virtue, intangible and extended notions of society and social structures. Hence, in the Western context one often gets to hear individuals talk of model citizenship as constituting of paying ones taxes honestly, respecting rule of law etc. Interestingly, the list of virtues includes one other quality, namely that of donating to charity. Philanthropy is structured into the Western society and many explain this not just a matter of large-heartedness or selflessness, but more a question of what many refer to as enlightened self-interest. The benefits of the money an individual gives to charity will on the one hand directly benefit the needy, but in an indirect and roundabout way, they would come to the donor as well, not just in a metaphysical way, but also very much materialistically. Plenty of examples for this but first a little more elaboration on the structure of this philanthropy. In Italy’s income tax law for instance has a clause whereby a tax payer can give 0.8 percent of his income tax due to any of a list of government recognized religious charitable organisations. If the individual does not wish to do so, he or she will have to in any case pay the amount to the government. Many actually pay the 0.8 to religious charitable organisations (as IFP found out during a trip some years ago) and the country being 95 percent Catholic, a majority of this public charity go to Catholic organisations, Charitas being just one of the most prominent, and a name familiar to many developing countries. Now to say that 0.8 percent of the income tax base of a developed nation is respectable is an understatement and this is the kind of money available with this nongovernment sector to do charitable work, including setting up schools and hospitals for the weaker sections, and not the least to spread the religion. The general attitude of suspicion often associated with the funds of Catholic missionaries have should be allayed somewhat by this knowledge that much of it come from voluntary donations. For the West, donating to charity is an intuitive individual strategy for achieving social harmony.

This enlightened self-interest is seen in other Western countries too. The USA for instance must rank top in terms of the number of extremely rich trusts and foundations, funding charitable projects, not just within the country but internationally. It is also true that a good many the top bureaucrats in New Delhi have children studying in the US on some fellowship provided by these American trusts. Understandably, if one’s son or daughter is studying in America on American scholarship, or is working there after the programme, one would most likely have at least something nice to say about America. The implication is, this charity has a bearing on international diplomacy and politics too. The enlightened self-interest here is obvious. Former chairman of Chrysler Lee Iacocca in his irreverent and crass criticism of Henry Ford-II his former boss and later sworn enemy, (in his autobiography: “Lee Iacocca”) puts this in a crass and distasteful way when he claimed that Ford was interested in uplifting the working class and creating a middle class so that they would have the money to buy his cars. Iacocca’s statement may have been a result of personal spite, all the same he outlined a deep and basic psychology behind Western philanthropy – you get as much as you give.

Contrast this with the Eastern notion of a model citizen. The mantra all of us have heard and internalized from early childhood, is that good citizenship basically constitutes of respecting one’s parents, elders, teachers, etc. A good man here donates (makes sacrifices) to temples in the hope of divine rewards, but forgets about making a contribution to charity from which orphans and destitute can benefit. The civic nature of citizenship is treated as secondary, and one which would follow as a corollary of the first set of values. Citizenship is no longer something the structure of the state can help mould, but a spiritual, a non-materialistic goal. Public charity plays little part in this scheme of things too. Hence, while India has many super rich citizens, charitable trusts rich enough to fund social projects in a big way still remains negligible.

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2015/11/absent-civic-citizenship/

One of the strongest criticisms against the idea of a Nation State is that it is basically a model evolved out of a unique European experience in history and cannot be generalized on other histories. But the fact that nobody can deny is, what European history culminated in the 18th and 19th Century, came to be practically the whole world`™s experience, borrowed or otherwise, thanks to the expansion of European colonialism during a period that spanned almost concurrently with the most heady days of European nationalism. Almost as if it was an inevitable process, the post-colonial history of Europe`™s former colonies has been one of the traumas and birth pangs of `native` Nation States. The struggles continue unabated till this day, dividing peoples on lines of nationalistic loyalties, and those of us in Manipur, which is in the throes of a thousand mutinies, should not in any way fail to grasp its awesome impact. Europe`™s history, it may also be interpreted, was only part of a progression that all else had to go through. It was just a question of Europe being there first. This is as against those who argue the explosion of nationalism all over the world are mere mimicry of the European experience.

While we have the luxury of hindsight in analysing events of the past, especially when there is a considerable time gap, we can hardly say the same thing about events that are unfolding in real living time. But from the look of things, another European experience is set to be replicated the world over. After giving the rest of the world the notion of nationhood, national boundaries are now melting down in Europe. The European Union is today emerging as one big supra-nation absorbing many differences between the nationalistic aspirations of peoples living within the geographical entity known as Europe. The reunification process of Europe is indeed having plenty of hiccups, the worst of it includes the rejection of a common European constitution by France and Holland some years ago. Then there is also the United Kingdom, holding on to its identity and uniquely distinct economy and refusing to give enough to the common European identity. It is still one of the few European countries that have not accepted the common European currency, the Euro. All the same, not many believe such resistance can hold out forever against the new tide, although this optimism would have suffered a jolt after witnessing the collapse of Greece.

The impact of this march of supra nationality is also felt in many other unexpected ways, not always pleasant or friction free. The EU may not have any military clout, but it is profoundly influential in many other ways. The fringe nations of Europe today are clamouring to join the EU not only for the obvious reason of economic security but also to have a share of the common European identity. This of course has had its repercussion in making Russia feel uneasy. These fringe European states, through history, had served as the buffer for heartland Russia against numerous invasions from Europe. Russia`™s violent reaction to Ukraine getting too close to the EU and the West`™s meddling in Syria, are examples of how the country these buffers disappearing as a threat to its safety. There is also the peculiar question of Islam phobia in Europe. On the one hand, it is keen for these fringe European states, which have seen extreme violence against Muslim citizens, to not abandon humanitarian law, if they wish to join the EU, but there is no gainsaying EU countries themselves suffer from a similar phobia to not as openly. The divided opinion over the accepting Syrian refugees is a case in point. It therefore is given the task of balancing its unease at ethnic blood-letting as in the former Yugoslavia at the time of its splintering, in which the country`™s Muslims were a major victim, but also its own inherent xenophobia, though much more effective disguised and indeed sublimated.

The second was the increasingly diffused understanding of nationhood in the traditional sense, in Europe of today. Many other ethnic related conflict situations in Europe have met similar resolutions in recent times. German dominated South Tyrol in Italy is another prominent case. In the changed dispensation, South Tyrol in Italy is prospering much more than North Tyrol in ethnic German State of Austria. South Tyrol`™s ethnic German population also do not have to be always equating with Rome or Italian nationalism, but perfectly legitimately with Brussels, where the EU headquarters are located, and Europeanism as well. Just as in the case of the spread of the notion of Nation State, perhaps the phenomenon of the melt-down of nations will come to spread to the rest of the world too. Who know, the softening of ethnic and national boundaries may also diffuse our own myriad conflict situations.

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2015/11/nation-meltdown/

Corruption today has become a monolithic monster in Manipur, eating away at the very vitals of the society. It is not as if there is no corruption in the other states. In fact in terms of volume corruption may be much more elsewhere than here, but what few other states can match the state is in terms of its spread and depth of entrenchment. In a sense, it would not fall very short of target to say practically everybody with a stake in any public dealing has been corrupt in some way or the other. The base inclination to cheat the public coffer for personal aggrandizement is uncontrolled, and everybody is on a grabbing spree to illegally convert into private property, what is supposed to remain as everybody`™s property. This selfishness must have to be the explanation for the emergence of the phenomenon as an accepted tradition. It shows up in a wide range of cheating habits such as illegal tapping of electricity by ordinary consumers in connivance with petty officials and the kickbacks of percentage cuts that ministers are reputed to take from government contract works and purchases they dole out to sycophants and cronies. Everybody talks of these black deeds as if they were perfectly normal and practically everybody with even a toehold on the state executive structure thinks it is their right to take bribes to extend favour within their executive powers.

And so today we find even the lowliest white collared government employee has a purchasable price tag on his signature, and these prices are flaunted with pride, and often shown off with flourishes of expensive cars or mansions much beyond their means of legitimate incomes. And the skewed sense of natural justice today is, these shows of opulence by officials who have fattened themselves from public purses, are actually looked up upon by peers and society as well deserved rewards. In the end, the worth of the individual has come to be measured in terms of money only, no matter what colour the money is of. What other distortions can the understanding of achievement undergo we wonder. What other degradation social values can undergo too? But corruption is also very much a reciprocal process. If the public official who takes bribe for executive favours is corrupt, so is the bribe giver who feels no guilt about jumping merit norms and doing injustice to competitors. In a way, the bribe giver is also paying so as to be in the position of the bribe taker someday, when he too can up his value in today`™s perverted social scale, perpetuating this oppressive process into an extremely vicious cycle. The matter is complicated further by the emergence of insurgencies, whose only source of sustained big money inflow is the government coffer. We have come to a stage when extortion and corruption have actually come to complement each other, with one using the other as their raison d`™etre.

Corruption today is a beast not easy to rein in. But if our society must survive, there can be no way than to find a way of correcting the present perspective. We see no other way this can happen other than the top leadership beginning the process by seeing beyond their selfish interests and once and for all forgoing the black income everybody knows they earn. This would give them first of all the moral authority to tell others in the lower hierarchy of the government to end their corrupt ways, other than give them greater opportunity to focus on the serious business of governance. You cannot possibly have a head of government, or his cabinet colleagues, who thinks a ten percent cut from every government contract as his birth right expect his sermons on corruption and its ills to be take seriously by anybody. Surely the devil cannot convince anybody even if he were to quote extensively from the scriptures. But even this cleansing at the top would only be the beginning. The corruption toxin has percolated deep below the skin of our society. What is certain however is, the detoxification process must have to begin from the very top.

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2015/10/detoxifying-society/

For long the IFP has been advocating the need for the government to evolve a comprehensive database, and based on them comprehensive white papers on the employment structure as well as community wise constituent percentages in the government hierarchy. We were prompted by the often levelled serious allegations from different communities that the Manipur government has been biased toward the majority community, the Meiteis, in job recruitments, and that the hierarchy of its power wielders itself ensures that all important decisions are swept by the interests of the majority community. We had also suggested that such a database would be invaluable to allay such apprehensions and suspicions if they did not have a foundation or else be valuable guidelines to make suitable rectification if the allegations are proven true by an actual headcounts. But beyond proving or disproving the allegation, it is anybody`™s guess where else such a database could come handy. For instance, we can think of what the government could have done with such data to arrive at a decision on the agitation by the state`™s Muslim community for the introduction of a reservation policy for the community in government job allotments. Is a genuine cry for special statutory asymmetric measure to ensure more `inclusion` of what is believed to be an `excluded community` in the different hierarchies of government justified? Are the Meitei Pangal actually marginalized? These are questions that could have been much better answered without ambiguities had the government given some serious ear to IFP`™s long standing suggestion. Reservation is a sensitive matter. It can level out playing fields where they have not been uneven, but it can also tilt the same playing fields in the reverse direction if flawed criterions are used to determine it. Hence, it is absolutely essential for the government to know where it treads on the matter.

We too do not have the relevant data in hand, but still by and large, the Muslim community is much less better off than many other communities. While some among the community are exceptionally rich, the majority are burdened by grinding poverty. As for instance, the community forms a large percentage of the menial labour force in the state. They are also visibly more given to petty crimes such as vehicle lifting, as police reports after reports have indicated. These, together with other factors may be vital indicators that some sort of positive discrimination must go the community`™s way. We do however believe that all such affirmative action must have to be time bound, lest they come to be treated as birthrights, as in the case of the reservation policy for Schedule Tribes and Schedule Castes. Positive discriminatory measures must remain only so long as the income and opportunity disparities remain above what is normally considered as not alarming and therefore acceptable though not desirable flaws of normal society. Unqualified extension of these measures can reverse the injustice to those who are made to compete with a hand tied behind their back in the name of levelling out the playing fields. This is what all the agitation against reservation in various institutions of higher learnings in the entire country currently is all about. Reservation is necessary considering the inbuilt and deep rooted inequities in our social structure, but it must have qualitative as well as quantitative limits.

To re-emphasise the point, in evolving any of these policies, what is most needed is hard data. This database in the future can extend beyond the government`™s employment sector. It can for instance include things like, how many heart specialists are there not just in the government services, but also in the private sector. Likewise it could keep a tag of film makers, documentary makers, fiction writers, retired academicians, playwrights, journalists, which district they belong to etc., so as to save time and energy when the government is left to do a manhunt while starting new ventures and need to appoint knowledgeable people to different positions. This will be a census exercise of a specialised kind, and updated much more frequently. It is beyond argument that good record keeping is a vital instrument of good statecraft and it is equally true the Manipur government has been very bad at this.

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2015/10/data-as-policy-beacon/

A lot many water bodies have died out from the Imphal Valley. In their footsteps may follow the rest of the remaining natural water bodies in the valley area, including the Loktak in due course of time. Purely from common sense, the lifespan of a lake in a land-locked valley with only very few rivers to act at drainage system to flush it perennially, cannot be that very long, and indeed is known to not be very long. For regardless of whether there is a river system draining water away from a valley, there will always many more other rivers that drain into it bringing down tonnes of silt each year from the surrounding mountain catchments areas. It can quite well be imagined why the battle to save fresh water lakes in small valleys have been almost always a losing battle. The best that have been done is to delay their deaths, but the cause for optimism is, advancements in science have come up with ever better techniques to increase the longevity of these lakes. Perhaps someday, it will become a reality when this delay of lake decay can be for always. But the fact remains that without this sort of intervention of science, valley lakes cannot live forever. This is what Manipur should be cautious about.

Rivers can change their courses, and so when silt deposits raise their bed high enough, the finds another alternative path of least resistance. This phenomenon is not altogether unknown even in Manipur`™s recorded history. In fact, Manipur`™s ancient court chronicles indicate there have been routine artificial dredging of river beds through compulsory contributory labour known as `laloop` under different kings, and even of artificial diversions of river courses. Considering the sizes of the rivers here, these projects could not really have been too awesome or daunting. All the same, although of a totally different dimension, the idea of river linking in the larger context of the vast Indian sub-continent which is in vogue in current times, has never been alien to good administrator kings in the state`™s ancient history. Even now, in spite of what the critics of the river linking project say, we do feel it will be an experiment worth the while in Manipur. Just one case should suffice to illustrate. Diverting the Nambul River from the heart of Imphal city would do miles to the health of the river as well as in flood control within the Imphal municipal area. The water too may acquire more irrigational value in the process. The stretch of the river bed thus dried up can become part of the master plan of an Imphal city sewerage project.

Saving our lakes, most particularly the Loktak, will be a far more difficult proposition. But perhaps this will also have to be linked up with a river management project. Perhaps the solution is in devising a way to have our rivers safely deposit their alluvium loads they bring down from the hills in special reservoirs along their meandering courses before they empty into the Loktak. But it is not only the fate of its lakes that the ecology of Imphal Valley is threatened by. The inescapable fact also is, whatever material is introduced into its soil will remain there forever precisely because there is very few rivers flowing out of the valley and draining it. Take for instance chemical pesticides or chemical fertilizers, or for that matter chemical effluents from factories in the future. Most of the residues from these are simply going to continue to accumulate in the soil. Who knows what effect such residues will have on the soil in a couple of hundred years. Just suppose it begins turning acidic or alkaline, or in the worst case scenario, poisonous. Considering pesticides are poisons in all senses of the term, poision, this is not altogether impossible. Again in the absence of a flushing mechanism, it will take eons before these soil conditions can be neutralized. This will indeed be a nightmarish scenario. Abolishing chemical pesticides or fertilizers can also mean present day disasters and it would indeed be stupid to recommend such a measure unthinkingly. What must however be done is to make sure that to the extent possible, only bio-degradable alternatives are used. Or even if there are no real substitutes to chemical agriculture boosters, their long term consequences must be closely monitored and regulated. While we all celebrate the fecundity of the alluvial soil of the valley and its salubrious climate, the obvious fragility of the valley ecology have seldom been part of any serious reflection in official policy making or the general understanding of the issue? This is most unfortunate, and indeed myopic.

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2015/10/fragile-valley-ecology/

The issue over the three bills the Manipur Assembly passed on August 31, is far from settled, especially in the wake of unprecedented and violent opposition to them, particular in Churachandpur district. The opposition is largely on account of a belief that the three bills are part of a tacit strategy for the non-tribal resident in the Imphal valley, the Meiteis, to grab hill lands which are deemed as tribal exclusive. As to how far this apprehension is based on reality or an honest interpretation of the three bills, is hotly contested. The three bills together were meant to do what the Inner Line Permit System, in vogue in Nagaland, Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh, does `“ that is, to put a check on influx of migrant populations into the state so as to assuage fears that local indigenous peoples were slowly but surely pushed to the margins. This concern, it does unfortunately seem now was confined to the valley districts, which are open to every Indian citizen to settle, unlike the hills which as scheduled tribe areas are already protected from outsiders acquiring landed properties. Looking back a little beyond the agitations, first the agitations for the introduction of the ILPS or an equivalent system in the valley district and then the agitation in Churachandpur district to oppose the bills, it must be acknowledged that the Manipur government did resist the very idea of a restrictive law on migrants for a long time, explaining it would go against the spirit of the Constitution. However, under mounting pressures, the Manipur government in what it probably believed was a halfway house, introduced a watered down version of the ILPS named the Manipur Visitors, Tenants and Migrant Workers Bill, 2015. But even as the bill was awaiting the assent of the state Governor Syed Ahmed, street agitators in the valley denounced the bill saying it will not be able to do what the ILPS does. Chief minister, Okram Ibobi had to finally in a special session of the Assembly, convened on July 15, moved a withdrawal motion of the bill.

Still under pressure, and a volatile situation after the death of a school boy Sapam Robinhood who was hit by a police tear gas shell during a street procession, the Ibobi government in what was then described as an ingenuous strategy to ensure at least a major portion of the demand for the introduction of an equivalent of the Inner Line Permit system could pass the legislative process, including the Governor`™s vigil, spilt the substance of the demand and spread it over three bills: the Protection of Manipur People Bill 2015; the Manipur Land Revenue and Land Reforms (Seventh Amendment) Bill 2015; and the Manipur Shops and Establishment (Second Amendment) Bill 2015, and passed them unanimously during a special Assembly session. The idea was, if the first and controversial bill ran into hurdles, the remaining two should not be held up with it. Of the three bills, only one was original and the remaining two were amendments of existing laws. It is the original one, the Protection of Manipur People Bill 2015, which even the government was probably aware, could run into legal and constitutional trouble. It first of all concedes to the demand from the streets of taking 1951 as the cut off year for deciding who is indigenous to Manipur. The question was, how can somebody who has settled in the state for 65 years, whose children were born in the state, who have voted in elections therefore were responsible for electing successive democratic governments, many of whom have also probably held important positions in the government, etc., suddenly be called outsiders. Then again this was a financial bill, for upholding this responsibility would have necessitated the formation of a directorate to resister, enumerate and monitor migrants, the overheads for which would have to be reflected in the state`™s annual budget. The assent of the Governor for this would have therefore become mandatory even for its introduction in the Assembly. Fortunately for the government, the Governor allowed the bill to be introduced and passed, but is now withholding his assent for it together with the other two. There has even been a Public Interest Litigation, PIL, filed by an individual seeking the content of the 1951 census figure of citizens with respect to Manipur, and the government has still not responded to the PIL.

The popular anticipation was the latter two bills, Manipur Land Revenue and Land Reforms (Seventh Amendment) Bill 2015; and the Manipur Shops and Establishment (Second Amendment) Bill 2015, would not face any legal hurdle for they are existing laws, and were also valley specific. The amendments to them were meant to merely make transfer of landed properties in the valley districts to non-domiciles, not altogether impossible but difficult. Legally and constitutionally, there would have been nothing to object to them even by the Governor, therefore probably would have become law easily if not for the trouble that erupted from in Churachandpur, which led to the tragic deaths of nine young people. The fact that even tribal MLAs did not object to these bills should also be seen from this vantage. It would be presumptuous to believe they were eager to sell off tribal rights, and more reasonable to believe they saw no infringement on tribal rights in these bills. The bills were not referred to the Hill Area Committee, but probably this was because nobody saw it as hill related. They were discussed in the cabinet, and in all-party meetings. Newspaper readers will remember it was only NPF legislators who shunned these meetings saying they would not support or object to the movement for ILPS. It was only when the Churachandpur trouble broke out that they jumped to the opportunity to push their own agenda, which is well within their right. Sometimes, when things get complicated, it is advisable to return to the basics of the genesis of the problem. Unlike in the pre-literate mediaeval ages when the court chronicles were the only historical records, in today`™s literate society, on a daily and even hourly basis, newsy events of all kinds are recorded as they unfold by numerous media organisations. Referring back to these records to reflect on the sequence of events that led to the present crisis may be what is necessary now to bring about a resolution to the current ugly entangle.

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2015/10/the-trouble-with-the-bills/

Whatever else may be said of the Manipur Police, brutal, corrupt, inadequately trained`¦ there is one thing which cannot be said of it and indeed everybody in the state must be thankful for `“ despite all the troubles of dangerous ethnic hues the state has been witness to in all these years, the force has steadfastly refused to be communalised. The force has been brutal, and this needs to be a matter for the police brass to reflect on and come up with remedies, but even here, it has been brutal in equal measures in dealing with any kind of trouble, anywhere in the state. The credit for this must first go to the professional leadership of the force. They have ensured that the average policeman remains loyalty strictly only to their profession and to the uniform they wear, and not to any parochial appeals. It also tells of the professionalism of the organisation that this leadership is not confined to any particular community, and indeed are from practically every community in the state, including importantly from those which suffered casualties. In Churachandput in the current crisis for instance, the SP as well as the DC of the district, are from the dominant community of the district. If there is a saving grace even in tragedy, this coincidence must be it, for it is imaginable what interpretation the entire episode would have been open to had any of these two important administrative leaders been from some other community, particularly from the valley. If this professional neutrality even in brutality were not to be so, Manipur could have been in total disaster and despair beyond redemption by now.

Especially in the wake of the agitations in the valley districts for the introduction of the Inner Line Permit System or an equivalent restrictive law against population influx, and now the agitation against its introduction in the hills, again especially the Churachandpur district, there have been many allegations the Manipur police has been partisan. Indeed, the slogan `rubber bullets for the valley and live bullets for the hills` coined by the Churachandpur agitation is an articulation of this perception of partisanship. It is true that only one young man was killed in the valley agitations while nine met death in Churachandpur, though it must be added only six died of bullet injuries. The casualties are extremely unfortunate and tragic, and there cannot be anybody who did not wish the situation had not turned so ugly and sinister. Still for many reasons, the charge of partisanship is unfair for the police, for the nature of the agitations in Imphal and Churachandpur were very different. In Imphal, the unruly mobs were burning tyres on the streets, haranguing wayfarers, pelting stones at riot control police teams etc. By contrast, on August 31 night, the engaged mob in Churachandpur were on a rampage, burning houses, attacking the police and DC`™s residence etc. The fact that two people ended up roasted alive in the arson attacks are an indication of the nature of the violence on the night. It may be recalled, when mobs were as violent in Imphal, say for instance on June 18, 2001, in all 18 people were killed in police and CRPF firings. It may also be recalled that at Mao Gate and Ukhrul in earlier incidents, mob confrontation with the police had also resulted in two deaths each. These are all sad and condemnable, but it must still be said that in its brutality, if not anything else, the Manipur police has time and again been by and large equitable and ethnic neutral in its law enforcement responsibility. Two cheers for this. The third we will reserve when the police learn how to be less violent in mob management. The police must strive to correct its ways in the years ahead, but hold on to its professional ethnic neutrality at all cost. The force must also absolve itself of its current extremely damaging image of being corrupt and bribe hungry.

But there are other factors behind the police earning its image of brutality which are not altogether within its control. Myriad, complex, violent civil unrests have made Manipur a very violent society, reciprocally shaping a violent police force. Peace in the `peace zone` of the hill districts is hardly non-violent, and in the `war zone` of the valley districts the less said the better. Parallel governments and underground kangaroo courts still abound everywhere in the state, and hardly a day pass without blood crimes. The khaki also remain a terror when it comes in the shape of police commandos, or as caricatures when it is adorned by rickshaw-harassing, vendor-intimidating constables, or when its officers inspire images of corruption, wallowing in dubiously acquired, hideously opulent wealth. Something must be done to rescue the khaki and return `to Caesar what is Caesar`™s`. This uniform was once respected and we hope the concerned authorities would be committed and motivated enough to work to have it win back that lost respect.

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2015/10/two-cheers-for-police/

Fifteen years ago, before that fateful afternoon of November 2, 2000, on which the Assam Rifles gunned down 10 innocent bystanders at a bus stop at Malom in an Imphal suburb, after a failed attempt by militants some distance away to trigger a wired remote-controlled bomb as a convoy of the troops passed by, practically nobody outside of her immediate family and friend circle would have known Irom Sharmila. The troops also went on a rampage in the nearby village for days without end, leading the young woman, then only 28, to her desperate and heroic path of fasting indefinitely to demand the repeal of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, AFSPA 1958, which not only gives sweeping powers to security forces in areas officially declared as “disturbed areas”. After a decade and half, she still has not eaten and is kept alive through nose feeding in custody at a special jail ward of the Government’s Jawaharlal Nehru Hospital, Porompat. Because of the cause she has taken up, combined with the iron determination that had kept her going for all along, at this very moment she undoubtedly is one of the most wellknown person worldwide from Manipur, if not the best known. One way of making a rough estimate as to how much her name has come to be in circulation is to google search her name, and you will discover there are 233 web pages dedicated to her and her cause, some of them in non-English foreign languages, accumulated in all of the fifteen years of her astounding protest, during which media from outside the state, politicians, social workers and human rights activists have been routinely paying her visits and showing solidarity to her heroic fight. Practically every news organization has done a story on her, from the BBC to provincial newspapers in Bangladesh, vague and little heard of in this part of the world.

It is simply extraordinary how an ordinary mufossil girl, with little or no background in social activism, could have transformed overnight so completely. But then, extraordinary events always throw up extraordinary people with extraordinary commitment. It has also been a pattern through history anywhere in the world that these extraordinary people often are very ordinary people from very ordinary backgrounds. For 15 long years Sharmila battled it alone single-mindedly, braving criticism and taunts initially but persuasions, probably intimidations, temptations of bribes and co-option too as the years rolled by. She had no time or interest in any of them. The only thing she wanted was to have what she steadfastly believed was the cause behind such horrors as she witnessed in her home locality 15 year ago, removed – the controversial AFSPA. She did not get the kind of publicity she is getting now when she started out on her long odyssey, but she did not care either. To somebody voluntarily dating death by hunger for 15 years, publicity and glamour cannot possibly mean much. So, alone in her special forlorn prison cell at the JN Hospital, she kept on running her lonely marathon without ever the thought of looking back.

The energy that has been driving Sharmila can best be described as an irresistible force, but the tragedy seems to be, this spirit, indomitable as it may be, may be running against an immovable object. Even committee set up by the Union government to assess the AFSPA after another explosive situation following the rape and murder of another girl, Manorama Devi, in 2004 by troops, had recommended the abolishing of the draconian Act and to toughen a non-military Act – the Prevention of Unlawful Activities Act – to tackle armed insurrection in the northeast and Kashmir less militaristically but this was left in the cold storage of the Union government to deep-freeze and be forgotten. It is anybody’s guess that the recommendation has been rejected. Obviously, there are hawks amongst policy mandarins in New Delhi who still do not see beyond a military solution to the Northeast situation. The troubling thought is, it is also quite obvious there are many within the state who too sometimes are left to doubt by the lawlessness all around, if there is at all any other real way out. Easier said than done, but there is a way out. Let everybody give peace a chance. That would be a rich harvest for all of us in the Northeast, and a definite way to save the brave lady, Irom Sharmila. It would then be much easier and more convincing to campaign for the total abolition of the draconian AFSPA once peace prevails.

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2015/10/lonesome-crusade/

The need to be remembered as men of integrity, and as someone who has contributed his little to society and humanity must have to be behind so much human valour, inventions, ingenuity, courage, philanthropy, generosity`¦. the list of virtues can go on. This need must be a basic instinct, although it has the tendency of showing up in varying degrees in different peoples and communities. Some are sensitive to it, others not so much. And this must also be what in the long run distinguished societies that have emerged at the top and those condemned to backwardness and subordinate position in the hierarchy of nations. In a way, the instinct must be also linked to man`™s craving for immortality in an irredeemably transient world that has led many a philosopher to discover only absurdity in life. With death as the grim leveller of all life, men like French existential philosopher and literature Nobel Prize winner, Albert Camus, were led to believe that all philosophies are a matter of a desperate grapple with the absurdities of life to give meaning to what are essentially meaningless. This absurdity is profoundly evident in existential questions that ask for an explanation how even the most powerful men and women, such as Ronald Regan, President of the US for two terms and Margaret Thatcher, the Prime Minister of Britain who ruled with an iron hand once, and many others like them can also be reduced by Alzheimer disease to a vegetable like any other geriatric anywhere in the world before he met his end. What profound meaning can there be too in the fact that the greatest conqueror of the earth, Alexander of the Great should have died of the bite of a tiny and insignificant insect like mosquito in the prime of his life. There is no escape from this overwhelming meaninglessness and hence the appeal and indeed relevance of the `existential despair` in everybody`™s life. In the beginning and in the end, is the unavoidable void. A realization so well encapsulated in the Meitei cosmology symbolized by the various postures of the serpentine god, Pakhangba, with his tail in the mouth `“ in the beginning is the end and in the end the beginning.

Still the quest for permanence in the transience that is life must continue. This thirst is in fact as inevitable and compulsive as the existential despair itself. This must be also what led many to resist a resignation, and not end up only as someone who live only for the present. Captivating as the picture of life portrayed by existentialism, even existentialist themselves have shown their longing for meaning. In Albert Camus`™ much quoted essay `Myth of Sisyphus` for instance, the meaning and salvation of Sisyphus`™ struggle, becomes the struggle itself. In Greek mythology, Sisyphus was punished by the gods to roll a massive rock up a summit-less hill. His whole purpose and mission in life thus became the prospect of toiling to push the rock up or be crushed under its weight. His endless and futile toil has today become an image of life, at once captivating, heroic and tragic, from the existentialist`™s viewpoint. The toil itself becomes the meaning, for beyond it, there is nothing else. What exactly is there beyond our own individual struggles in life, and when can this struggle ever come to a conclusion, except in death.

The only way to ensure one`™s legacy lives on is to leave footprints in time. And this is where the need to leave behind a memory of integrity and courage becomes an essential quality of winners, not just as individuals but also as a society. The two are closely interrelated, for indeed the achievement of the society is but the accumulative result of the achievements of individuals. The essential attribute of a society with a survival instinct in terms of this quest for permanence is a capability to leave enough space and concern for the future. The urgent question that we are all called upon to ask at this tumultuous junction of the history of our society is, do we bother to contribute our share to the future or do we live just for the present. In the face of all the corruption, bribery, sycophancy, siphoning money from development projects, dishonest contract works, unfair trade practices, which have all become rampant today, we cannot at all be optimistic that there is such a concern for the future beyond myopic individual concerns and insecurities. Embedded in this unconcern for the common future, disturbing as the thought may be, there may be a societal death wish. Should we not make the move now to exorcise ourselves of this demon.

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2015/10/future-imperfect/

Traffic in Imphal is increasingly sinking into a mess. The growth in the number of motor vehicles has been phenomenal `“ partly to do with scaled-up government salaries as well as much improved credit facilities availed by the banks. However, increased affluence has not meant a matching growth in civilisational values. Any sensible person in the state, and in particular Imphal, would vouch that a majority of the vehicle users here are not adequately educated on traffic laws, and they drive merely by what they believe is intuition of road safety. Imphal indeed must be another classic case of the pace of material advancement overtaking the growth of matching culture and responsibility which must moderate the fallouts of these advancements. Unlike in advanced countries where education and experience have ensured moderation in these matters, partly because the growth of these technologies have been organic, in the developing world, the arrival of these technologies have been in leaps and bounds, thereby upsetting the balance. The story told by a Japanese executive of Minolta Company then living in Delhi to this writer in a train compartment they shared during a journey to Delhi from Shimla, says it all. He said he was posted in New York before being transferred to New Delhi, and when asked which city he liked better he said in New York he enjoyed driving his car but once in Delhi, he had to hire a driver. And this is New Delhi, the capital of this country he was talking about. It needs little imagination to come to the conclusion how much worse the situation is in Imphal. This is not going to be easy, but the government must begin addressing this issue urgently, before things go out of hand. Strict driving license norms, strict enforcement of traffic rules and wide traffic rule awareness programmes are some of the ways it can begin doing this. Driving in Imphal today is not only a frustrating exercise, but also hazardous.

Traffic management in the state has been about regulating traffic flow at busy traffic junctions, and nowhere else. Again, if periodically there are spurts of police activities in checking vehicle papers on the roads, these have had hardly anything to do with traffic control but sanitising the roads of miscreants ahead of VIP visits. We wish they were otherwise. We wish there were mobile traffic policemen on motorcycles, chasing down rash drivers and awarding them penalties including confiscation of driving licenses or even jail depending on the seriousness of the offences. But then, driving licenses in Manipur have long ceased to have the value there are supposed to have, because they are so freely available. It is also no longer a document that anybody would be particularly worried about losing even to the police, for replacements are just a matter of a few hundred rupees tip to petty officials of the motor vehicle department. Equally easy would be to tip the policemen instead and get the original back. The traffic mess in this sense is also a part of the Aegean stable of corruption in the state awaiting a Hercules to clean.

Then there is the question of the larger governmental vision and will. Does the administration have these at all? Reams after reams have been written on why inter-district as well as interstate buses should not have their terminuses in the heart of the city. And yet, the government remains unperturbed, leaving them to be everybody`™s daily horror `“ the Jiri bus parking at Waheng Leikai and Tiddim road bus parking at Keishampat Power House to name just two. Until ring roads are built around Imphal (of which we have learnt there is already a plan to build two) and all long distance buses can skirt around the city to dock at a central terminus in one of the suburbs, why cannot the present bus stations in the heart of Imphal be shifted a few kilometres away from where they are now? The larger city architecture also contains more flaws. Like a house with no kitchen, or toilet, Imphal city has no proper parking space for private vehicles. This being the case, vehicle users park their vehicles wherever it pleases them. The city`™s architects remain uninterested in doing what is obviously the needful. All that they are interested is in erecting more stalls in whatever space available. What can be more myopic than this? There is also a flyover coming up and many have argued this will be a solution. We have always expressed our reservation about this and we have not been able to convince ourselves to revise that opinion, especially after seeing pictures of the near complete flyover indicating it is probably only one and a half lane wide. We will not be surprised at all if we see atrocious traffic jams on the flyover itself and at its bases. Shouldn`™t attitudes change now? Shouldn`™t traffic control be treated as an important job and not be placed as a subsidiary responsibility of the government?

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2015/10/disciplining-imphal-traffic/

To say Manipur`™s problems are intractable would be an understatement. There are too many of them, a great many of which work at cross purposes, pulling the cart in different directions, ensuring in the end nothing moves. The demand for the introduction of the Inner Line Permit System and now the opposition to its introduction, are just the latest example of this lack of any common will amongst its people. Perhaps the divide is inevitable, considering the ethnic diversity, but more importantly, the different political economy each was in before the advent of the modern. The settled agriculturists, the shift cultivators, the hunter gatherers, the nomadic foragers and communities amongst whom the economy and professions have begun to diversify and take roots in the secondary sector, beyond the traditional and primary, are hardly likely to have the same outlook to land and governance. Before the advent of the modern, Manipur was all of these wrapped into one, and indeed would have counted as a typical Zomian landscape that James Scott sketched in his important but controversial, `Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchic History of Upland South East Asia`. Scott predicts the days of Zomia is definitely numbered, implying the ultimate and inevitable replacement of this quaint and anachronistic human-scape with that the modern. If this foreboding is accurate, perhaps the turmoil places like Manipur are going through is the inevitable trauma of such a transition.

For the moment, any form of a civic identity of its citizenry seems destined to remain elusive in Manipur. Everybody, on the other hand is too stuck up with their perceived ethnic identities defined presumably and exclusive by ethnic traditions alone. Each therefore continues to choose to remain in the respective seclusion of their individual boxes, rendering any larger civic agenda redundant. By its very definition, the civic identity would have to be secular. In the context of places like Manipur, we are of the opinion that secularism should be less about separating religion from politics, but more about separating ethnicity from politics. In other words, to paraphrase and adopt respected historian Romila Thapar`™s definition of secularism, in our context it should be about giving our civic citizenship primacy over our ethnic identities in matters of routine administrative outlooks, or `governmentality` to borrow the notion made famous by Foucault. Just as religion is expected to remain in private spheres of individual citizens in a secular democratic polity, ethnicity too must. The civic and public agenda of governance must rest on issues like administrative convenience and optimisation of resource utilisation etc. After witnessing all that has been happening in Manipur in the past few months, we are inclined to believe maybe this degree of uniformity through a constitutional definition of citizenship and rights, is vital for any project to construct a secular polity to succeed.

The trouble in Manipur today is, especially in the wake of the controversy over the ILPS demand and subsequently objections to it, too may are fixated on reading too much between the lines that they have become extremely prone to miss out what are actually in print. In a secular democracy, laws are made by a set of people but these law makers do not get to interpret the law they make when it comes to their application, unlike say in a feudatory or dictatorship. The interpretation is done by another set of people in an independent institution called the judiciary, whose mandate is to weigh any piece of legislation against the fundamental tenets of the constitution and best practices in international law, if challenged. If the application of any law is found by the judiciary to contravene any of the fundamental principles of the constitution, such an application or interpretation of the law will be deemed to be ultra vires and disallowed. We also know that the appellate structure of the Indian judiciary extends right up to the Supreme Court and therefore even an individual citizen can challenge the false application or interpretation of any law via even the country`™s highest court. What we learned by rote in school that democracy is safer than any other known polity because of this separation of legislature, judiciary and executive, is reality. To doubt this would be to ask for anarchy. Again, as Friedrich Angels wrote, the State is a mechanism for surplus management. State formation therefore happens where a surplus economy emerges. In other words, states run on taxes they can collect and use, and if there are no taxes to be collected, there will be no state. But in the case of Indian provinces that we also refer to as states, this logic has been overridden especially in the case of the Northeast. The proliferation of the demand for separate states and administrations therefore has nothing to do with alternate models for tax management, but of the desire for separate begging bowls. Isn`t it time yet for issues such as these to become the focus of our intellectual deliberations?

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2015/10/new-secularism-needed/

Persistently writing on a single topic has the danger of repetition of points. But this is a characteristic hazard of all campaigns, including journalistic ones. We have no scruples about admitting we have been involved to a good extent in this form of journalism, although after making sure to the extent possible that our views are not partisan. The `Look-East Policy`, now `Act East Policy`, of which there has been a deluge of opinions as also reams written about, is one of these. We have always been for the policy and we still are. This has been misconstrued by many as merely a case of market worship and that we have not been sensitive enough to the cautions that an expanded, internationalized market ought to be taken with. This is a case of reading too much between the line and missing out on what were actually in print of what we have written. We never disagreed more on the matter of the market, and that although it is desirable, has to be harnessed under broad regulatory mechanisms. For the market, as all of us are aware, is amoral and can be extremely brutal. The one most important engine that drives it, that of profit, does not think fair play, or exhibit environmental concerns, or gender issues etc. Left on its own, rather than encourage competition, for far too often it has been known to destroy competition. That is why tough monopoly and oligopoly laws are felt essential even in the most advanced market economies. However, once under a certain regulatory mechanism to eliminate these aberrations, it can be the most effective incentive for individuals and peoples to strive for perfection. As Charlton Heston as Moses in the Hollywood classic `The Ten Commandments` said, `There can be no freedom without the law.` The market hence must have to be moderated by the law so that the strong does not trample the weak and hog all its benefits.

But let this be a matter for another discussion. However, our concern and attraction to the idea of the northeast opening up its eastern gateways, is also on another major considerations. This landlocked region needs to open up as many doors and windows. One question should provide much of the explanation to this contention. How did the northeast become landlocked? How did it come to be connected to sub-continental India by just a corridor wedged between Bangladesh and Bhutan, now often referred to as the `Siliguri Corridor` or the `Chicken`™s Neck`? In many ways, if there is anything as a physical manifestation of what is often referred to as colonial legacy, the northeast predicament must be it, for its political shape, and now cognizable identity, were indeed predetermined by certain colonial confines. Its northern boundary is the controversial McMohan Line, its southern boundary is the Radcliff Line, and its eastern boundary were very much the gradual but definitive outcome of the Treaty of Yandaboo, all thereby carrying a colonial stamp. These were the boundaries that shut off the northeast from its natural elements, made the sea suddenly distant, age old trade routes stifled, alienated it from its neighbourhood and not the least created the `Chicken`™s Neck` corridor that connects it to the rest of India. This forced confinement would have robbed the region of its spirit and disoriented a great deal of its sense of purpose. Perhaps the perennial problems the place festers with are a symptom of the unnaturalness of this turn of political history.

The international boundaries around the northeast entity cannot be redrawn. To expect it thus would be un-pragmatic if not foolhardy, notwithstanding the fact that they were drawn out of colonial needs of the expanding British Empire and not so much out of the region`™s intrinsic needs of the time. The `Act East Policy` then, viewed from this perspective is a way of unwinding to the extent possible without disturbing any international diplomacy equilibrium, some of the claustrophobic confinement that the northeast has been condemned to by a certain brand of politics of a certain era. Trade, in our opinion, is only one important part of the story, for there is also an equally important strand of the same story that tells of a way to get the northeast breathing freely in its organic environment, and in the process restoring some of its lost inner spiritual self.

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2015/10/looking-east/

Healthy scepticism is recommended on any public issue. This is what the time worn cliche `scientific temper` is all about. Never let anything go by without having it first pass through an intense scrutiny keeping in mind Murphy`™s Law that if anything can go wrong, it will. Or the derivative of this law that if everything is going right, begin suspecting something is wrong. This will, above everything else, put our policy framers under pressure always to perform at their optimum. While scepticism is a virtue and a necessary quality of perfecting the democratic system, there is also the common and grave danger of it slipping into abject cynicism, a condition in which the sceptic begins to believe there can be nothing good coming out of anything the government or anybody else does. The deeper trouble with this kind of cynicism is, while those in its grip have learnt to reject ideas and policies, often deservedly, they are woefully lacking in interest or capability of suggesting credible alternatives. In many ways they become the `dog in the manger` of the nursery school book parables. Our die hard sceptics, which would happily include many of us in the media, must guard against the danger of this delusion.

But it is sad to say that this vigil against cynicism has not been always successful in the Manipur society of today. Hence the numerous cases of irreconcilable dichotomies in the manner issues are faced or challenges met. Take the case of the slipping law and order problem. Practically everybody would have grumbled and complained in private about it, predicting even an ultimate collapse of the state because of the near total failure on this front. Yet, this same society would object to any tough law to control the situation, invoking amongst others, human rights. Take again the abysmal power shortage. There possibly cannot be anyone who has not at some point or the other been blinded by fury and dark thoughts of personally causing mayhem to electricity department properties, including local transformers, when routinely condemned to a fate of unscheduled blackouts. Yet there are still amongst us who would say an unconditional `no` to any power projects, citing our love for the environment. Fine, but if this must be the way, can we be still justified in cribbing about power shortages. Or in the earlier example, is there any case for complaining that the law is in the hands of anybody with some degree of nuisance value. And these are just two examples. Our society is confronted with the same mindless dilemma on so many other matters, including the most trivial `“ say traffic regulation or public hygiene. From the government`™s side, you have a flyover coming up to ease traffic, but you think nothing of bus depots in the heart of the city that causes frustrating regular traffic jams. You don`™t want private vehicles parked along busy streets but you also do nothing to provide any official parking areas in the city. From the public side, you want a clean city, but you have no scruples about littering in public, you are vocally against corruption but would not hesitate bribing to get official favours etc.

This is no way to get out of the quagmire the Manipur society has been trapped in for all too many decades. There has to come about a time when we are clear about what we want definitely, and then single-mindedly pursue it. We cannot possibly hope for a positive outcome riding two boats at a time all the time. For instance, if we want quality education, teachers must teach and students must learn and not the other way around. More importantly, teachers must be capable of teaching and students of learning. Just as those in the government must govern and contractors must do contract works, not the other way around. Similarly, if we want electric power, it is not going to drop from Heaven no matter which God we pray to. We will have to either allow its generation at home or else buy it if we can afford the cost. If we are not willing to do either, for whatever the reason, let us not complain about power scarcity. True, we have to weigh our options, for sometimes the price we pay for something we get, can have so many hidden costs that ultimately we end up the losers, but at least let us make the effort to sincerely assess these options, rather than jump blindly into bandwagons of protest or support. Sounds like a conundrum, but the need often is also to sceptically examine the position of known sceptics. In many ways, scepticism is an unavoidable condition of the thought process, like reason. Even if you do not believe `reason` can explain everything in life, you still have to give `reason` for this non-belief to be able to convince anybody reasonably.

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2015/10/sceptical-about-sceptics/