Tag: Editorial

Mark our words. Today the people are in a panic fearing the worst if the heavens do not open up soon and send rains to quench the anxiety of this parched landscape. Tomorrow they could very well be looking to the heavens again to pray the rains be stopped lest everything goes underwater. It is true rainfall patterns have changed in the past few decades because of global warming. But Manipur`™s tragedy is not just the vagaries of the climate. It is also about the institutional lethargy to try and understand its own living environment, not to speak of any credible effort to prepare for possible catastrophic consequences of climate change. This change can be even more dangerous for fragile habitats, and it is our intuition that Manipur would fall in this category. The hints for this we are witnessing today. Just a little shift in the annual rainfall pattern and the place, the hills as well as the valley, can easily lose it capacity to support even its current population. Even though it has been less than a month after the seasonal winter showers (or Wakching-gi Nong in Manipuri) ceased, the state is suffering from an acute shortage of potable water. If not for the precious foresights of rulers of a past era who envisioned the importance of water preservation and dug huge community ponds and moats at vantage points, probably we would already be visited by annual disasters of drought and flood deaths. But the old aqua regulation infrastructures are proving inadequate to support the increased population and changed climatic conditions, and if the current generation of leaders continue to be in their complacent rentier mindset, enriching themselves without sparing any thoughts to ensuring future survival security of the place, these disaster can still become a reality. The crisis can even become an existential threat. To picture what such a scenario would be, imagine the current dry spell extended for another five or six months. There would be an exodus of people fleeing the state. Let nobody be certain such a scenario is impossible. Human history of the last 12,000 years, after the last Ice Age receded, has many accounts of societies which once flourished but disappeared because of their unpreparedness to meet the challenges of the climate. Anthropologist and popular science writer, Jared M Diamond`™s 2005 book, `Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fall or Succeed`, has very convincing accounts of such societies which perished because of their environmental short-sightedness and others which outlived the worst odds. Interestingly, one of the shared attributes of all societies which perished, is a self absorbed elite, more interested in accumulating personal wealth than taking the lead role in building a common future.

Two vital lessons from history are: One, societies do go extinct. Two, leadership do matter a lot and in this, the society`™s elite have a big responsibility to shoulder. Manipur is, in this sense, in a precarious situation. The entire society is so myopically content living for the immediate. Few seem to have ambition that go beyond getting rich quick, building a house, buying expensive cars. Quite naturally, corruption becomes the rule of this game. Nobody thinks of giving back to the larger society, never realising if the ship sinks, everybody, including them would sink. Take Imphal city. In the last few decades alone, the elaborate traditional networks of drainage system that we know as `khongban`, again the product of the vision of planners from a past era, have all but disappeared because of land encroachment by ordinary residents. Wetlands that once served as flood regulatory natural water reservoirs, such as Lamphel-pat, Porom-pat, Thanga-pat, Takyel-pat, etc, have also all been land-filled and reclaimed to build government infrastructures and residential colonies. Deforestation have robbed the hill soils of moisture retention capacity so that within a month or so of the monsoon ending, all water drains away, leaving both the hills first and then the valley below, parched ahead of time. Why has there been no effort to evolve a grand plan to tackle this issue? Do our political leadership not consider this important? The state also has a huge legion of engineers. Where is the evidence of their presence in terms of such a plan? If at the first spell of showers ending the current drought-like situation, the people are again left to face floods, that should be a governance failure enough to occasion ministries falling. In medieval Japan those at the helm probably would have acutely felt the shame of failure and committed hara-kiri. Indeed, in Jared Diamond`™s book, Japan, the extremely vulnerable Island nation, is one of those societies which tamed its hostile environment to survive through the ages despite extreme adversities.

Leader Writer: Pradip Phanjoubam

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2015/03/droughts-to-floods/

The All Manipur College Teachers Association, AMCTA, has now substantiated its charges against three college principals appointed by the government. It furnished the answer to its RTI petition on the matter to the media recently. The charges against two of the principals, though serious, still have an element of subjectivism. The third however is simply atrocious and an affront on the entire society. The first allegations for instance is a charge that the particular academic should not have received 30 point on the Academic Performance Index, API, ranking, as he is deemed to have, for 30 API points can only be awarded to a research work which has resulted in a patented innovation. It is well known patent regime in India is virtually non-existent. Somebody makes a technological or intellectual breakthrough, and the next day thousands would be using them as if it was their own without even acknowledging the person who made the breakthrough, and not be worried about the law at all. Since few care about patents, it probably is easy to get one, and probably as has happened in other fields, such as book publishing, patents too have become a commercialised commodity for academics to purchase and get their academic scores to clear their promotion lines. The worths of the books or the patents against more neutral scales, such the contribution they make to society or the appreciation they receive from peers and markets, have therefore been thrown into the winds. Sure enough, by the economic logic of demand generating supply, there are today vendors catering to the academic`™s need for published books and, it does seem, patents, flooding the market with absolute trash. The second charge against another academic is that the certificate he received from the ex-director of Art & Culture, for his research project on applications of physical methods in studies of ancient iron smelting culture of Manipur, has no memo number or date of issue. The implication is, the certificate is arbitrary, and has not shown any objective criteria for its award.

Both these are bad enough, but there is a subjective element in the allegations. The interrogation is more of the system which has left rooms for manipulation, and not as much of the individuals who used these rooms. In other words, if the system is reformed, the individuals seeking unfair credits will have no means of doing so. Quite interestingly however, the third allegation of AMCTA has proven it otherwise. The academic in question, received his requisite API points for promotion as principal by producing two Ph.Ds, but from a private university which had been banned for academic fraudulence. It had also subsequently been derecognized by the Manipur Government. The said university, Chandra Mohan Jha University, Shillong, in June last year was hauled up for selling more than 4000 Ph.Ds to candidates for anywhere between Rs. 2 to 4 lakhs, and all Ph.Ds from the university were declared invalid. It is unlikely these 4000 and more Ph.Ds were sold to young bright scholars out to research, discover and cover new grounds in their fields of academic specialisations. The buyers probably were aging desperate clueless academics, already in the teaching profession but debarred from further promotions for the lack of a Ph.D degree.
It is shameful that the government should have turned a blind eye to something which it had itself derecognized in the midst of the scandal. But this particular case may just be the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Hence the job now is to weed out all holding such certificates from the decaying higher education system in Manipur. The AMCTA, which has so enthusiastically declared its commitment to promotion of quality education in the state can take the initiative in this project. But then, this might boomerang, and the AMCTA may discover its own members benefitting from these fake degrees from the CMJ University, Shillong. The state`™s vocal students unions, with their known prowess of militantly taking up issues related to quality education to the streets, should not be silent on the matter either. But most importantly, the government must have the matter probed independently either by a judicial committee or the CBI. If anybody is found having benefited with service promotions from these fake Ph.D degrees, they must be immediately demoted. If these include monetary benefits fraudulently extracted from the state`™s hard pressed exchequer, they must be made to return the amounts. If there are more befitting penalties under the law, they should be subjected to them. The issue at stake is quality higher education in the state which today is in an advanced stage of decay, and if left untended, would most likely rot beyond salvage.

Leader Writer: Pradip Phanjoubam

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2015/03/fake-university-fake-phds/

The revolt by VDF, who went on a strike yesterday, demanding service conditions improvement, including regularisation of their employment by the Government and with it a salary hike from their present emoluments of Rs. 5000 each, is unfortunate but expected. The hasty decision four years ago to raise these village volunteers in a counterinsurgency move was in itself of doubtful legality, now their continuance in the nebulous zone of Government employment is proving a potential danger. It may be recalled, following the unprovoked killing of three people at Heirok Village on March 24 at a Thabal Chongba festival by an underground group, the people of the village rose and demanded the government to arm them so they can defend their village. Jumping to the opportunity, by May, the government started raising the VDF, with the object obviously of raising an equivalent of the infamous Salwa Judum militia in Central India raised to fight fellow Maoist villagers who were waging war against the Indian establishment. The Salwa Judum has since been banned by the Supreme Court, and the militia was subsequently disbanded. In Manipur, probably to dodge the SC ruling, the VDF was ostensibly absorbed as a state force, and this is where the problem is. To keep them as a militia is illegal now after the SC ruling, but if they are to be treated as government employees, then it is their right to demand at least the standard benefits of government employment. The government`™s problem was spelled out yesterday in a press conference by the Deputy Chief Minister, Gaikhangam. How is the government to absorb 10,050 VDF recruits into the regular police constabularies? One, this would be unfair to regular police recruits who have had to go through much more rigorous selection process (and probably have had to pay much higher bribes) to enter the service. Two, the government does not have the resource to meet the extra expenditure overheads. These questions should be posed to the Central government as well. After all, it is unlikely the state government could have gone ahead with the raising of the VDF in without an enthusiastic nod from the Centre. The question also is, if they cannot be absorbed, can they be disbanded? 10,050 young men, trained and armed lethally, thrown out of their jobs in one go can spell big trouble indeed.

There is perhaps a way out. There is another much older precedent of such a militia. In 1835 the British also raised a militia called the Cachar Levy in Assam, which ultimately would become the Assam Rifles. These men were paid less than the military but better armed than the police, as L.W. Shakespear wrote. The logic was, after the comprehensive defeat of Burma in 1826, and the British saw no likelihood of a military threat on Assam anymore, and began to feel maintaining a military was not cost effective in a place where they initially saw little or no revenue potential. So they started withdrawing their regular military to be deployed in more hostile frontiers. But by the mid 1830s, the Bruce Brothers pioneered tea industry began growing rapidly in Assam suddenly making the British feel the need for some security cover again. It was at this point that the Cachar Levy, and so also the Jorhat Militia which ultimately merged with the former, were raised. The solution we envisage for the VDF from this reading of the history of the Cachar Levy is, this levy served as a nursery for Gurkha Rifles recruits. The best militia men from the levy would be absorbed into various Gurkha Rifles battalions. This was a big incentive for the militia men, as well as a convenient strategy for the British administration to have a ready supply of trained recruits for its military. Indeed, during the First World War, the Cachar Levy, then known as the Assam Military Police, supplied so many recruits to the Gurkha Rifles fighting the war in Europe that the levy became acutely short of experienced troopers. This was one of the reasons given by historian Edward A. Gait, for the inordinately long time the British took in suppressing the Kuki Rebellion, which coincided with this war. The VDF too can be given such an incentive as was given by the British to the then AMP. The best cadres of the VDF can similarly be given preferences to be absorbed into the police forces. The caveat is, the AMP was under a colonial administration so the legal allowances the British had may not be available in a democratic legal environment. But this option is something definitely worth exploring.

Leader Writer: Pradip Phanjoubam

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2015/03/inceptive-for-vdf/

`Democracy is the worst system if not for the others`. These words of Winston Churchill continue to haunt every time elections are held under the multiparty system, the model of democracy India has adopted. For instance, all of us know, despite many professed swears that we are fed up, the same leaders who have been the butts of many profane jokes and ridicules in private social evenings, would come back to lead us again. Or if any of one of them is to be unseated, we also know very well their replacements would only be a carbon copy of the replaced politician in different garbs. In these days of sweeping contract culture, it will be one former government contractor replacing another former government contractor. There have been ten Manipur State Legislative Assemblies since 1972, when Manipur became a full-fledged state under the Indian Constitution, but a retrospect will determine, apart from a few cosmetic changes here and there, there haven`™t been much to distinguish one Assembly from the other. This being the trend, understandably, the next Assembly, due in a year and a half, cannot be expected to be much different. It will most probably be the same wine in a different bottle. The electorate has always, wittingly or unwittingly, for various compelling factors, tended not to be independent decision makers, and this is the crux of the problem of democracy in many ways.

The term `leadership` has come to have different meanings in Manipur. In its simplest, it merely means a set of leaders who can win elections using whatever means, fair or foul, humiliating or dignified. Small wonder then that this brand of leadership is facing serious and real challenges, not from within the democratic system that elected them, but from without by men and organizations which have sprung up precisely to challenge the system. Whatever may be said, in more ways than one, the clout that the latter brand of leaders command often surpasses those of the democratically elected ones. Take just the instance of the Naga elected political leadership. Of the total of 11 in the 8th Assembly, there were four who meekly and obediently resigned from the Assembly as well as the membership of their former political parties, all because certain non-Constitutional leaders commanded them to, on the threat that their candidatures to future elections would be opposed if they failed. Today, again especially in the hills, it is no longer a question of the elected leaders welcoming their counterparts in the countercultures of insurgency to join the system they have given their oath of loyalty and allegiance to, but of them faithfully making themselves the subjects of the latter. The casualty is the democratic electoral system.

In the valley, things are a little different, but in no way better. The elected leaders would not resign because insurgent leaders want them to, they can only pretend they are the true guardians of the people as well as the many parallel governments. They issue invitations for peace talks, threatening state repercussion for breaches of law etc, but beyond the façade of these vaunts, there is little substance. The law has been made an ass a long time ago and the diktats of extra-constitutional organizations have come to command much more respect and awe. As we have seen, these groups which can hold the government to ransom are not always insurgents but also can be students`™ and JACs. Even as the government, for whatever the reason, pretends there is no damage done to the structure of democracy as such by handing over many vital and onerous responsibilities of governance to extra-Constitutional bodies, the people have lost all sense of the connection that should exist between government and governance. Hence, we all know who are enforcing excise norms in the state today even as the government remains a silent spectator, just as we also know who handle the education agenda, who are on contractual obligations to construct our roads, do clandestine `taxation` drives, award penalties for civil offences etc. Yet, we also know almost as a certainty, the profile of elected leadership will remain no matter how many new elections are held, precisely because we are the ones who will elect them. By and large, it will be another set of contractors joining the old set of contractors. Absurd things happen in the absurd theatre of Manipur.

Leader Writer: Pradip Phanjoubam

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2015/03/leaders-versus-leaders/

The newly spruced up roads in Imphal East which led to the Hatta Kangjeibung where the Sangai Festival was held in November last year, are now suffering from atrocious abuses again. At several places, including two at the Minuthong-Lamlong stretch, narrow trenches have been dug across the asphalt toppings. It is not sure who did this, for it could be private residents who want to access water pipelines across the roads, or else different government agencies to lay underground cables or pipelines. Either way it shows how very badly managed the whole affair is, and also how disrespectful the public is of public property. All these come as despairing, especially because Singapore is fresh in mind again with a deluge of articles on the city-nation`™s trials and tribulations in its founding and making, in the wake of the death of its founding father, the iconic Lee Kuan Yew, at the ripe old age of 91, just two weeks after Singapore turned 50. Singapore, it will be recalled was thrown out of the then Malayasian Federation in 1965, ostensibly to teach this tiny city, then of 1.6 million people, a lesson in humility of dependency. But Singapore, which has absolutely no natural resources to boast of, and not even fresh water for drinking, even though thrown into an existential crisis refused to cow down, and under the leadership of Lee Kuan Yew, its population of largely Chinese, Malayan and Indian immigrants, held its integrity together, not only to survive, but to become a flourishing city-State, now of about five million people, with one of the highest per capita incomes in the entire world. It is said, in 1967, Singapore`™s per capita income was 500 dollars a year, or about Rs. 85 a day, to its current 55,000 dollars a year, or about Rs. 9,470 a day. Lee Kuan Yew had a few guidelines he said he followed to this stellar path of success. He insisted on meritocracy alone, where the best jobs went to only the most meritorious therefore encouraging enterprise, diligence and industry. He also had absolutely no tolerance of corruption at the official or private levels, therefore making everybody, from the top to the bottom live by the country`™s tough rule of law regime. No negative or positive discrimination, no graded government privileges regardless of ethnic or religious affiliations. Chinese, Indians and Malayan, all were absolutely equal before the law, and the only ladder to higher social hierarchy was hard work. Under Lee Kuan Yew, the country also followed a rigorous social engineering project to ensure the emergence of a Singaporean identity so that Singapore`™s Chinese, Malayan and Indian felt they were Singaporean and not Chinese, Malayan or Indian. Housing projects encouraged them to live as neighbours, and segregation was discouraged. Amongst the many values inculcated and internalised amongst the public in due course of time is a remarkable respect for public properties. Nobody litters in public spaces just as they would not in their drawing rooms or bedrooms. The law is also strict on the matter. If you drive a car in Singapore and you ram into a lamp post and damage it, if an inquiry determines the accident is a result of rash driving, you will have to pay for the lamp post damaged.

Just a comparison of the attitude to public property would give us a sense of how everything is going the wrong way in Manipur. One day the government makes a road, and the next day, without a modicum of fear of law or guilt at the thought of the inconveniences that would be caused to fellow citizens, anybody can come out and dig a trench across the road to access a water pipeline or whatever. This can also be between government departments. One day the PWD lays a road, the next day the PHED digs it up to lay water pipelines, or the telecom department to lay communication cables. The picture is of a person whose one hand does not know what his other hand is doing, or routinely puts his best foot forward as a showpiece and then shoots it himself. Even before it is able to think of a game plan to tackle corruption, or evolve a social engineering strategy to bring its communities together, let the government resolve the relatively easier issue of inculcating respect for public property. Let there be tough penalties of fines and imprisonment for destroying public properties. Let its department also evolve a way to coordinate while drawing up their individual plans and strategies in the discharges of their different responsibilities.

Leader Writer: Pradip Phanjoubam

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2015/03/respecting-public-property/

It has become a wont in Manipur to cite the example of those who made it big from the state as evidence of the vitality of the place. This is especially true in the field of sports and performing arts. These success stories have also been often been forwarded as proof that there is no obstacle too big to restrain genius. Given the spirit, impoverished boys and girls who grew up with practically nothing that would suggest they can become champions, playing on their undersized playing fields, un-tutored by professional coaches and nourished on the ordinary staple of rice and vegetable stew, and some fish or meat when they can afford, have still on many occasion proven they can be world beaters. This sentiment is understandable and undoubtedly has a basis in reality. However, the man on the street saying this is one thing, but when it is the politician who eulogises on this, it would make anyone uneasy. The danger is obvious. It can become an excuse for non-performance by the political leadership precisely by shifting the burden of churning out champion materials to the individual citizen.

This excuse can also be extended, and in fact has been extended to all other fields. Hence, the fact that there are many who have done well despite having been schooled in wall-less, bench-less classrooms of the state`™s dilapidated government schools, is pushed as the example that success and failure are more in the hands of individual students, and not only in those of the non-performing educational institutes. This would amount to seeing the wood for the forest. There are indeed geniuses and these fortunate souls would pick themselves out of even the most untidy mess and find their way to the top. We have seen many such examples in every walk of life from amongst us, and as we have said before, most prominently in sports. The scripts of the path to success of achievers like Mary Kom, N Kunjarani, Sarita, Sanamacha, would all be practically the same `“ a rags to riches, anonymity to celebrity life, with a little variation here and there. But the rule of nature is, the percentage of people who are above average in aptitude or intelligence, is only a fraction of those who occupy the middle ground of the average. Again, just as there are geniuses who occupy the space above the average, on the other extreme there are also the lame and slow who are below average.

So while we must be proud of the geniuses born amongst us, and look up to the examples they have set for us to emulate, let us not be blinded to the bigger reality that says there are more average than above average or under average. Let the above average and below average have special programmes, but the general policies must have to be oriented towards the average, and to improve them. To take the example of a well planned highway, let there be a fast lane for the geniuses and a pedestrian path for the lame and slow, but the rest of the highway must be dedicated to the average. The point is, government policies must first and foremost strive to raise the standard of the average. If this was done, even the genius would have a better and easier platform to launch from, as there would be less ground to cover to reach the top, the average ground having been raised.

So then, let not the often heard vaunt that the state has produced many geniuses in many fields be any cause to lull senses into any unwarranted complacency. Let us be proud of the geniuses who made it big, but let this not lead to any false and deceptive assessment of the average citizenry. More than in sports, we see this rethinking is essential in primary and secondary education. The government schools in general cater to the average citizenry and so let it be this government`™s single-minded determination during this term to uplift them at least to the standard of the best amongst the private schools in the state. This government has been around for nearly three terms now. In the first and the second, there is no gainsaying each one of the team would have made their fortunes. In this term, for once let them forget filling what undoubtedly are already full and concentrate on giving back to the society a promise of a future they deserve.

Leader Writer: Pradip Phanjoubam

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2015/03/address-the-average/

The winter showers have hardly ceased and now the state is already faced with an acute shortage of drinking water. Most of the rivers in the state are drying up, and as a report yesterday indicated, the Nambul River has no water whatsoever and its bed is actually parched. A drive around the valley area will confirm the situation is not much better with the other rivers as well. Quite expectedly, piped water supply in Imphal city and other townships have is already only a trickle, putting many in a quandary. For the moment, individual households still buy tanker water from private water merchants, but in a few weeks from now, even these private suppliers will have no place to fetch water. Very soon, long lines of people with water containers will begin to form at the number of ponds and other water bodies in and around Imphal city, as well as elsewhere. It is quite ironic that these artificial water reservoirs are evidence of the foresight of Manipur`™s rulers from the hoary past, and today they have come to contrast and expose the abject lack of concern and vision of the modern generation leaders at the helm of the state`™s affair. If the low lying valley is in such a condition, it can only be imagine how much worse the predicament of the highlands would be. Let the state be warned, if it does not take this matter seriously, water is going to be its worst existential crisis in the decades ahead. Indeed, this warning is not mere speculation of lay observers like us, but also has come from very authoritative sources. The UN for example has predicted that 15 year from now, the whole world will be in a dangerous drinking water crisis. If this UN prediction is the averaged-out scenario, it is only natural some areas will be more vulnerable than others. Manipur must take precaution that it is prepared and does not fall casualty early.

Indeed even from school geography text books we know Manipur and the rest of the Northeast get rain from both the South East Monsoon and the North West Monsoon thanks to the rain cloud barrier the Himalayas provide, though the former is much wetter. It is for this reason that the Northeast is considered as one of the wettest of the monsoon belts of the world. If in this condition Manipur is also left without water immediately after the rains, it tells of the planning vision the state is cable of. Maybe we are wrong, but it is unlikely the concerned departments in the state, in particular the PHED and IFCD would have precise figures of the volume of annual water discharges from the two monsoons the state receives. If the total volume from them is known, then water conservation plans can be much more meaningful. The point is, how much of this water is used, and how much of it left unused. Predictably, only a small percentage is ever used, and in a way although this points to a lack of planning, it also means there is room for alleviating the situation, for given the vision and political commitment, the unused water can be made available for use. Our forefathers dug huge community reservoirs towards this purpose and to good effect even today, but now there would be other more technologically advanced ways of doing this. In this, lessons could be learnt from places with advanced water management technologies, such as Singapore and The Netherlands. In Singapore which has no source of fresh water except direct rainfall precipitation, it is said not a single raindrop that fall on the city nation goes waste. All of them are funnelled into huge reservoirs constructed in the sea at the country`™s docks. Technology to recycle sewer water has been introduced effectively, although the treated water is currently made available only to volunteers, but it will be only a matter of time before such recycled water becomes perfectly acceptable for popular everyday kitchen uses.

Another reason for the water shortfall is the depletion in the moisture regulatory and retention capacity of the hill soils in the catchment areas of these rivers because of unprecedented deforestation. This must be contained. The river catchment, as indeed all forests, must be treated as sacrosanct. Yet again, it is also the modern consumption pattern of water, together with a quantum increase of population, which is causing this shortfall. This calls for lifestyle adjustments, besides better designs of toilet flushes, kitchen faucets etc. Let one thing be clear, something needs to be done fast to avert a future catastrophe.

Leader Writer: Pradip Phanjoubam

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2015/03/daunting-water-challenge/

The winter showers have hardly ceased and now the state is already faced with an acute shortage of drinking water. Most of the rivers in the state are drying up, and as a report yesterday indicated, the Nambul River has no water whatsoever and its bed is actually parched. A drive around the valley area will confirm the situation is not much better with the other rivers as well. Quite expectedly, piped water supply in Imphal city and other townships have is already only a trickle, putting many in a quandary. For the moment, individual households still buy tanker water from private water merchants, but in a few weeks from now, even these private suppliers will have no place to fetch water. Very soon, long lines of people with water containers will begin to form at the number of ponds and other water bodies in and around Imphal city, as well as elsewhere. It is quite ironic that these artificial water reservoirs are evidence of the foresight of Manipur`™s rulers from the hoary past, and today they have come to contrast and expose the abject lack of concern and vision of the modern generation leaders at the helm of the state`™s affair. If the low lying valley is in such a condition, it can only be imagine how much worse the predicament of the highlands would be. Let the state be warned, if it does not take this matter seriously, water is going to be its worst existential crisis in the decades ahead. Indeed, this warning is not mere speculation of lay observers like us, but also has come from very authoritative sources. The UN for example has predicted that 15 year from now, the whole world will be in a dangerous drinking water crisis. If this UN prediction is the averaged-out scenario, it is only natural some areas will be more vulnerable than others. Manipur must take precaution that it is prepared and does not fall casualty early.

Indeed even from school geography text books we know Manipur and the rest of the Northeast get rain from both the South East Monsoon and the North West Monsoon thanks to the rain cloud barrier the Himalayas provide, though the former is much wetter. It is for this reason that the Northeast is considered as one of the wettest of the monsoon belts of the world. If in this condition Manipur is also left without water immediately after the rains, it tells of the planning vision the state is cable of. Maybe we are wrong, but it is unlikely the concerned departments in the state, in particular the PHED and IFCD would have precise figures of the volume of annual water discharges from the two monsoons the state receives. If the total volume from them is known, then water conservation plans can be much more meaningful. The point is, how much of this water is used, and how much of it left unused. Predictably, only a small percentage is ever used, and in a way although this points to a lack of planning, it also means there is room for alleviating the situation, for given the vision and political commitment, the unused water can be made available for use. Our forefathers dug huge community reservoirs towards this purpose and to good effect even today, but now there would be other more technologically advanced ways of doing this. In this, lessons could be learnt from places with advanced water management technologies, such as Singapore and The Netherlands. In Singapore which has no source of fresh water except direct rainfall precipitation, it is said not a single raindrop that fall on the city nation goes waste. All of them are funnelled into huge reservoirs constructed in the sea at the country`™s docks. Technology to recycle sewer water has been introduced effectively, although the treated water is currently made available only to volunteers, but it will be only a matter of time before such recycled water becomes perfectly acceptable for popular everyday kitchen uses.

Another reason for the water shortfall is the depletion in the moisture regulatory and retention capacity of the hill soils in the catchment areas of these rivers because of unprecedented deforestation. This must be contained. The river catchment, as indeed all forests, must be treated as sacrosanct. Yet again, it is also the modern consumption pattern of water, together with a quantum increase of population, which is causing this shortfall. This calls for lifestyle adjustments, besides better designs of toilet flushes, kitchen faucets etc. Let one thing be clear, something needs to be done fast to avert a future catastrophe.

Leader Writer: Pradip Phanjoubam

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2015/03/daunting-water-challenge/

Of the many qualities of a leader, one of the most important is the commitment with which ideals are held and valued. This needs no confirmation from any social scientists, for very often it is common sense that provides the most penetrating insights into issues that have direct and profound bearings into everyday life. And what other thing can have as much impact on everyday life as the quality of leadership any society gets. Ask any man or woman on the streets, literate or otherwise, and they will have the same answer `“ a leader without ideals, or a clear notion of a social goal, is no leader. The other important quality of a leader is, he must have the ability to draw up a clear roadmap as to how his ideals can be actualized. This again is street wisdom as much as it would be an absorbing agenda for highbrow academic seminar rooms. Do our leaders have these qualities, is an intriguing question. Many of them do, there can be no question about it, but the nagging doubt that arguably all of us would have expressed sometime or the other on this question is, many of them do not seem to possess them. Why then do our voters allow those who lack these qualities to return is a question that not many voters have asked themselves seriously or honestly, hence the recurrence of the phenomenon. The result is, we have many leaders in form only, but not in substance. This leadership vacuum is, from this vantage, at the core of some of the most vexed problems of Manipur, most pertinently, the question of insurgency. For ultimately, ideals are nobody`™s monopoly, and so also leadership, and if one set of leaders are unable to provide it, there will be others who would claim the role. Insurgency in this sense is very much a challenge and contest for this leadership space. Resolving the problem will in the end have also to be about resolving this issue.

But if there is a lack of ideal in the formal political leadership, the contenders lack the form. There can be no argument that all insurrections, including the ones we are witnessed to, were originally fired by ideals, hence their once popular appeals. But the danger here is, when there are no definite forms to the leadership they provide, the ideals themselves come to replace the form. That is to say, the ideals become the system itself, resulting in a mix that have led to the most oppressive dictatorships in history. Stalin, Pol Pot, Trosky, Mao were all idealists, and people still admire their ideals. Their only failure was, they allowed their ideals, and ultimately themselves, to not only substitute the system, but to become the system itself. History bears testimony as to how oppressive ideals un-moderated and un-tempered by a formal and objectified roadmap can get. In the modern context, this moderation must have to be looked for in a belief in constitutionalism. This would understandably limit the definition of leadership, for then a leader would have to be how the consensual constitution defines what a leader is, how he is to be selected and how deposed etc. In mature Western democracies, such as for instance England, we do hear of such stories as how even former Prime Minister Tony Blair, while he was Prime Minister, have had to visit a police station to face questioning by the officer-in-charge, (OC as we know them more popularly) and complete mandatory calls of the law for the drunken behaviour of his son. Few in this part of the world would not be wonderstruck by such accounts of the law enforcement. They would be equally awed by how a leader cannot step outside the constitutional definition of leadership. But this is the civilized safeguard to keep men entrusted with power from becoming despotic dictators. If the form can dilute and destroy ideals, as is happening in our formal politics of today, it is equally true that an overflow of ideals can subsume the form, if these ideals are not moderated by guidelines of a definite and institutionalized constitutionalism. The latter, it must be admitted, is one of the bane of the leadership of the non-official kind. The challenge of leadership then is, to have the ideals as well as the system `“ but separate from each other and one moderating the other.

Leader Writer: Pradip Phanjoubam

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2015/03/danger-of-ideal-as-system/

The new focus in Manipur on the plight of children in conflict environments is commendable. The intelligence of children and their susceptibility to adverse influences by the social milieu they grow up in had been taken too much for granted for too long. Even if not all have been as unfortunate to lose their parents and dear ones, or suffer personal injuries and other traumas as a direct result of the violence that has engulfed our society, there is no way any one of them can escape from the oppressive tyranny of the situation by and large. Tidings of violence assault their senses just as they do everybody else every morning. Some of these news, they would also be realising, are too close for comfort. Bandhs, strikes and blockades have become part of their vocabulary, and school closures on account of these their routine experience. Not only this, quite outrageously and meaninglessly, they are also made to participate in political protests and agitations, spending long hours in the sun, marching with flags and placards the significance of which they have no inkling, and shouting political slogans from rote. Let us not be too hasty to presume their personalities will not reflect the oppression of this atmosphere when they grow up to be adults.

It is true that whatever its nature, good, bad or ugly, Manipur`™s reality is the world our children will one day have to inherit. It is also true that the turmoil in the land cannot simply vanish, and they have no choice but to get to know and imbibe its essence sometime or the other. But all these do not mean they have to be dragged into the adult world even before they have completed kindergarten. Our society has miserably failed in clearly demarcating between the world of adults and the world of children. Which is also perhaps why children `“ their needs and desires, have been taken so much for granted, presumed as it has always been that they must live in the same world as their parents do, and share the same values and anxieties, and all its myriad other burdens too. By all means they must one day. They must have to ultimately carry forward the legacy and history of the society they were born in, but can this mean they have to be made to sacrifice their childhood and be forcefully baptised into the harsh realities of the adult world before they are ready? Must they have the space to grow up with their skipping ropes and marbles, or join political processions meaningless to them even as they are being introduced to the joy of figuring out the logics of elementary arithmetic? There seem to be many who think the answer is in the affirmative, wanting our children to grow up as street fighting activists. Well there is nothing wrong if they become activists, but let them be given the space to develop their faculties first to decide what they want to be. There is a time for everything: a time for play, a time for books and yes, a time for politics. But all of them cannot be clubbed into one time frame. In any case early baptisms, or call it brainwashing, into political ideologies, cannot serve the purpose of grooming good future citizens, and by that virtue, good pillars of the future.

A little diversion will help drive home this point. The adult world is also where sex and procreativity acquire a meaning. Our children must grow up to learn and imbibe the essence of these gifts of nature at some stage in their lives. Many parents, if not all parents, must have faced uncomfortable questions on this matter from their innocent and curious children. Where do babies come from? How are puppies made? If only females give birth, how are the new puppies the children of our (male) dog? Etc. What are the normal answers parents give to such queries? Surely at such times, all parents presumably would clearly demarcate between the world of adults and children, and without lying outright, would also not reveal everything in the raw. And this censure would be with the sincere belief that it is for good of the innocent minds. Children, it would be deemed here, must have the space to grow and imbibe such knowledge, inevitable as they are, in the right doses and at a pace that would not be detrimental to their overall growth as a person. So it must be with politics and violence.

Leader Writer: Pradip Phanjoubam

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2015/03/children-in-adult-world/

All work and no play make Jack a dull boy. But no work and no play would probably make Jack good for nothing. Once upon a time the local playfields everywhere in the state were teeming with life and activities after school and college hours. These undersized playgrounds, as we all know, have also been the anvils on which the sinews and grits of many international sports stars were forged. Today many of them are metaphorically dead, especially in the Imphal area. The grass on them which once could never be green because of too many feet trampling them perpetually, today grow in wild abandon on many. For now, instead of sporting activities, there are only young, idle, unemployed, unlettered boys hanging around, doing nothing except watching the road and wait for the day to pass so that another equally meaningless one could begin. Once upon a time they looked forward with impatience for the afternoon`™s bout of robust hockey or football, the choice depending on the vagaries of the seasons, but today if there is anything they eagerly await, it probably is Yaoshang festivities in March and Durga Puja in October, where they can play chefs de mission of the gaiety that accompany these functions in every locality.

Competitive sports bring laurels and reputations for the state, but sports even at the informal level, played with an appetite for fun by children and youth on village and suburban playfields, as any psychologists would testify, have always had much more far-reaching social functions. As for instance, these are vital spaces where children are introduced to their first lessons in socialisation, teamwork, besides harnessing their inherent aggression into productive competitiveness. Today, this vital social institution, like so many others in this beleaguered land, is beginning to decay. This is lamentable. On the one side, the quality of sportsmen and women produced from the state which have stunned the rest of the country repeatedly, predictably would decline if the trend is allowed to continue unchecked. But beyond this, a lumpenised society where there are no sublimated outlets for the natural instinctual aggressions can get implosive. We may already be witnessing the latter phenomenon in the unprecedented rise of violence, drugs abuse, juvenile delinquency and promiscuity, and in general, a widespread lack of respect for law or order in recent times. There can be no doubt the popular rhetoric that the shrinking number of playgrounds in Manipur may actually be directly proportional to the rise in violence and lawlessness, contains a great deal of truth.

If this is agreed upon, then one of the missions in the effort to check the deterioration of order and discipline in our society would be to reverse this trend. It must be generally acknowledged that sports do not have a meaning only at the formal level of medal hunt, but is also an indispensable safety valve to release instinctual aggression in a society and give these energies creative channels. In this effort, much of the responsibility rests with the communities which must activate itself to reawaken a tradition which has so successfully given them an unparalleled balance of mind and matter over the centuries. Besides the bigger sporting extravaganzas that the state gets to see, community level unofficial mini tournaments that were routine a few decades ago, must be revived. The government too has a big role in this. It must apply its mind and resources to ensure the success of this social enterprise. It must evolve a policy to assist and encourage village communities, in the case of the districts, and local youth clubs in the urban and sub-urban contexts, to develop their respective playgrounds and to organise tournaments at different levels. We definitely would want to see the state`™s many playgrounds come alive again. There is so much talk of there being no lasting military solution to violence and lawlessness. The predictable alternative so many prescribe by rote without substantiating is `a political solution`. Whatever that is, maybe a bit of unobtrusive social engineering, such as giving local playgrounds some added official and community focus, would also do wonders.

Leader Writer: Pradip Phanjoubam

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2015/03/shrinking-playfields/

At least the state can heave a sigh of relief that college teachers under All Manipur College Teachers`™ Association, AMCTA, have decided to lift their cease work strike after a meeting with the Chief Minister, Okram Ibobi, and Education Minister, M Okendro, ostensibly on the promise that the teachers`™ demands would be met. We are certain the demands are just, but as we have time and again said, making scapegoats of students for any demand whatsoever is unjust and extremely irresponsible. Even if the Government, for whatever its compulsions, and we are again sure that it would have plenty of them, is unable to keep its promises fully, we do hope the teachers would not again resort to cease work. If the strike must continue, let them do it other ways, such as boycotting the principals they do not want or the Chief Minister and the Education Minister, but at whatever the cost, they must leave the students alone. It was indeed encouraging to see even when the AMCTA cease work strike was on full swing, there were many teachers who extended their moral support to the cause of the AMCTA, but continued taking classes.

There can be no further argument that the most daunting challenge before education in the state today is uplifting the standard of higher education. At the moment, it is in the pit. No parents who can afford it want their wards to remain in the state for higher education, and similarly, all student who aspire for more than just a degree, would consider it a letdown if they were left to do their college education in the state. We also know once upon a time, even when teachers were drawing only a pittance as salaries, this was not the case. The reputations of colleges in the state, in particular that of DM College, reached far beyond the boundaries of the state, and if a survey were to be done on the kind of alumni this college has amongst people now in their 70s and 80s, it will include several men and women of exceptional leadership, not just of Manipur, but of neighbouring Mizoram and Nagaland as well. Today, this profile has altered altogether and indeed beyond recognition. Students with means would rather go and study in some nondescript colleges in rural UP and other Indian states, than be in the hands of the state`™s educators. Alumni profile of current generation top job holders will also confirm even those who have studied in these nondescript colleges outside the state are ahead of those who have had to remain in Manipur. Can anything be more shameful? We wish these issues were the focus of concern of the state education department and the teaching community.

In the school sector, there has been a revolution, thanks to the entry of private players, the initial seeds for which were sown by Catholic Mission Schools. Today, parents can stay longer with their children, guiding them, for many private schools here are beginning to give as good education as anywhere else. Sadly though, most government schools are without students, arguably for the same reasons no good students ever want to be in Manipur`™s many colleges. Ironically, this is true of even children of college teachers and education department officials in the Manipur government. Most of them probably have their children studying in colleges outside the state, and not in the colleges they administer or teach. A teachers`™ cease work strike in these educational institutes then amounts to using the careers of young men and women not their own progenies to advance whatever their causes or interests are. Let the government and teachers sit down together and thrash out the matter. Let all just demands by the teachers be met. Let the teachers have their right to strike, but under no circumstance must teaching be allowed to cease during the teaching seasons just as the right to strike is taboo in essential and emergency services. If this sacrosanct principle is ever compromised by anybody, the government should, as the Education Minister recently threatened to do, invoke the law of dies non, or no-work-no-pay, and even look to fresh recruitment of teachers who can do what they are meant to do `“ teach. Let all for once agree that the very reason government educational institutes exist at such the cost to public tax money, is to produce good students and therefore good future taxpaying citizens.

Leader Writer: Pradip Phanjoubam

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2015/03/a-respite-at-last/

Discussions on the lynching incident in Dimapur continue as much as its images haunt. But these are no longer in the same hysterical tone as it was last week. More sober assessments which should make observers educated and insiders want to introspect are now beginning to appear. Sanjib Baruah`™s article today in the Indian Express, titled `Reimagining Dimapur` is one of these. Trust Baruah to introduce new, illuminating ideas and jargons in the discourse on Northeast, and in this article too, he comes up with the term `moral panic` to describe the lynch mob`™s response. `Moral panic` he says is the heightened public anxiety, triggered by media frenzy, about an individual, a minority group or a subculture seen as an imminent threat to social order. The term evokes an uneasy feeling, for it might as well describe the entire Northeast today, not the least Manipur. And this feeling is uneasy precisely because things can indeed go terribly wrong, and we must add, as it did in Dimapur. The negative image the incident has earned Nagaland in the eyes of the world is unprecedented, and it will take years for the state to purge itself of it. The image also rubbed on to the entire Northeast, and indeed India, as is evident in another article yesterday in The Mail, London, which published graphic images of another lynching in Nagaland`™s Meluri town in Phek district in September last year of a Manipuri carpenter also accused of rape. Most of the petrified commentators obviously see these only as images of India, and had very disparaging words to say of India.

Clearly, there is a warning signal in these developments and in what Baruah called `moral panic`, and Manipur must take heed. It must be careful not to slip into a xenophobic hysteria and instead be able to assess its current concerns of demographic imbalances rationally. Measures must be taken to address the issue, for indeed the concerns are genuine, but there must be extreme caution so that frenzy does not take over. Such an eventuality can cause damages which will take generations to heal. They will also take discourses away from the central issues, again just like in Dimapur. The shock of the lynching for instance has almost overshadowed the other important question of the possibility or rape and the trauma of the rape victim. Tragically, even now few talk of the unfortunate girl with sympathy, or as a victim. This is true of Nagaland as a whole at this moment. It is anybody`™s guess that even the peace talks between the Government of India and the NSCN(IM) would have lost much empathy in the rest of India and the world after the incident.

From the discussions on the Dimapur lynching as also the Meluri lynching, one other prominent discourse thread that has emerged is on the dangers of customary laws. In times like this, its beauty, which undoubtedly is also its priceless attribute, seems outweighed by its ugliness. Lynching happens everywhere, and Manipur is no stranger to the phenomenon too. Not too infrequently, front pages here too are scarred by reports of thieves and rapist succumbing to injuries they receive at the hands of mobs, houses of criminals and sometimes child recruiters of certain underground groups being dismantled and burned down etc. These crimes are obnoxious, but even then these are generally handiworks of rampaging groups of men, running amok and blinded by fury momentarily. They do not however suffer from the delusion of impunity from the law of the land, and have no customary law to put above the law to defend their actions. In both the Nagaland cases, the opposite was true. In the Dimapur case, the victim was dragged out of a jail, as if as a metaphor of the belief that the law is secondary to customary justice, then stripped and tortured to death in public. In the Meluri case, the naked man was strung up on the crossbar of a football goal in the village ground, and even as a huge crowd watched the gory spectacle from galleries, some of them sporting umbrellas, the man was slowly tortured to death. The cold-bloodedness is scary, but all this because obviously customary law permits it. Surely, it is time for moderation, so that customary laws do not promote what is ghastly and inhuman.

Leader Writer: Pradip Phanjoubam

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2015/03/customary-laws-and-outlaws/

Winter in Manipur has been severe and rather extended this year. It is only a day or two since the chill lifted. It would have been a lot harsher for the poor, for indeed, as it is, winter months are cruel even for temperate climes as ours, when much of life hibernate, expending the least energy so as to last out till the nourishing showers of spring herald nature its wake-up call. Imagine how miserable life would be if winter temperature were to drop a few more degrees Celsius, and extended a few more months. But the disturbing fact is, such projections of a changed climate scenario are no longer remote or restricted to science fiction writing. Seeing what has been happening even in the past few years, climate change seems now almost an inevitable future the world is heading into. There are scientific evidences that there have been radical shifts in climates in the history of the earth, almost at regular intervals. The Ice Age for instance is supposed to follow a cyclic pattern, the last minor one having retreated 12,000 years or so ago, but in between these cycles, there have also been many sudden freak shifts, as scientist now claim there had been an unexplained cooling of the globe 5,200 years ago, not because of anything anybody did, but out of changes in solar activities. In 1991, hikers found the preserved body of a man trapped in an Alpine glacier and freed as it retreated. Later tests showed that the human `“ dubbed Oetzi `“ became trapped and died around 5,200 years ago. Scientific evidences elsewhere in the world corroborate the theory of a sudden chill wave at about the same period. In prehistoric times, 245 million years ago, the collision of continents to form a single land mass known as Pangaea caused one of the biggest extinction of life from earth, with 96 percent of marine life going extinct in about 3 million years span.

The point is, earth`™s climate has changed in the past and probably will change again in the future. While there is nothing very much we possibly can do to alter the meta-narratives of the cosmos, what is also certain is, man can hasten these changes locally on earth, all to his own detriment. To look at it more positively, this also means man can delay or even avert some of these climate shifts by controlling the factors that disturb the earth`™s climate system. At this moment, man seems to be doing very little to this effect. Hence, if this year`™s winter has been harsh, scientist are now predicting a hotter than usual summer to follow. Being warm-blooded creatures, all mammals, to which category of living things humans belong, can tolerate a wide range of temperature conditions. But the danger is not so much about how weather resilient the human body is, but of how life would cope with a radically changed living environment. If winters get harsher, summers more scorching, monsoons unpredictable, the first casualties would be crops. We all know the kind of human misery a year of crop failure can cause, but imagine a scenario in which this happens in a stretch for a couple, or even many years. Life would be put at great peril then. It is such thoughts that make one realize, inspite of all its strengths and resilience, life is extremely vulnerable. Human life is no exception. It is also not a surprise that in life`™s history of over 500 million years (so says scientists), whole species have routinely gone extinct for unfathomable reasons.

There are many cosmic factors behind climate changes that we can do nothing about and only God can explain why. But there are also an equal number of factors that we can do a lot about. Likewise there are a number of overwhelming environmental issues that must have to be tackled at the global level. But there are also again localized ones that all individuals, regardless of where they are, must put in their mite in tackling. Hence, while those of us in the developing world can contribute little towards controlling automobile fume emissions that induce greenhouse effect in the earth`™s atmosphere, precisely because the number of automobiles we own is minuscule, we can help in the global effort by retaining green covers of our forests etc. Let us not ever forget the slogan of the global environmental campaign `Think Globally, Act Locally.` After all it is also our own lives, together with that of the rest of the world that we are called upon to protect.

Leader Writer: Pradip Phanjoubam

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2015/03/climate-change-awe/

The uncertainty over the question of introducing a legal mechanism for regulating the inflow of migrants into Manipur it seems is unlikely to be put to rest anytime soon. A Bill had been table in the Assembly on the matter, but it seems the civil body spearheading the agitation for its introduction, the JCILPS (Joint Committee on Inner Line Permit System) will not have any of it, saying it is too mild and cannot achieve the objective of stopping influx of population from outside into the state, thereby threatening demographic marginalisation of the original population of the state. This is a very tricky situation and calls for everybody to sit back and reconsider and reassess the whole question once again. The important thing to be kept in mind at this juncture very obviously should be, is it regulation or complete shutting off of immigration that we are looking for? We for one think the need is for the former and we will explain why in the following few paragraphs this column permits.

But first, let us consider these words from a civil servant in the critical years of the early 20th Century who dedicated an entire career in the Northeast, Nari Rushtomji, in his book `Imperilled Frontiers` on why a regulatory mechanism is necessary not just of immigration but of development as such. For many of these small communities, he says, even the arrival of a few families of outsiders can be unsettling. Rushtomji who watched helplessly and with dismay the reduction of the Lepchas and Bhutias into a hopeless minority in the face of an unprecedented influx of Nepali population into Sikkim in the mid 20th Century, generalised his sentiment in these words: `There are communities, however, that have suffered tragically, and beyond redemption, from well-intentioned attempts to reform them overnight. `While, therefore, no community can remain static and while change is an imperative for a community`s healthy growth and development, it has to be ensured that the pace of change is adjusted to the community`s capacity to absorb such change without detriment to its inherent organism and essential values.` He also observes in the same book that the apprehension of cultural aggression `has been at the root of the unrest on India`s north-eastern frontiers since the British withdrawal.` These are the words of somebody who understood the Northeast and empathised with its concerns, and they need to be noted. These words also imply that just as change is inevitable, so also population movements. The caution however is, these changes must be at a pace the local populations can absorb, therefore the need for regulatory mechanisms.

Regulation and why not complete halt? Without going into the arguments of Constitutional hurdles, or those of national as well as international laws, many obvious and overwhelming practical problems can be anticipated if a complete shutting off of immigrants is to be envisaged. First of these is the possibility of internal strife in the state. If as the JCILPS demands, the cut off year for declaring a resident as non local were to be fixed at 1951, there would be many small tribes in the southern and eastern districts who would also end up excluded. It must be noted that population movements into the state is happening from the east too. But this happens at a glacial pace, so as Rushtomji insightfully surmised these migrants have been absorbed into the local social organism and indigenised. If however extremist sentiments prevail and 1951 is pushed, there would be ethnic troubles. We need only to recall the deadly Kuki-Naga conflict of the 1990s for evidence. The next argument follows from this. The population movement from the west has been a matter of alarm because of its pace and number. If regulated, they too can cause no threat, and ultimately would also be indigenised. This has been happening throughout the state`™s history. Islam and Hinduism for instance came in and indigenised this way. And this is good. Regulated immigration refreshes ideas, technologies, genes and in the end all these strengthen and make the society more resilient. The most creative societies in the world are those which followed this principle of encouraging the indigenisation of immigrants. Singapore and the USA are two examples. Likewise Manipur had evolved into an extraordinarily creative society because of absorption of skills and ideas which came its way through history. Isn`™t it a wonder that in complete isolation, from antiquity Manipur knew wheel, bullock cart, plough pulled by harnessed bulls, blacksmiths, goldsmiths… All this could not have happened if it was not open to inflow of ideas and skills, some acquired by travellers, some brought in by immigrants and some original inventions. Manipur was always a melting pot of ideas, skills, ethnicities… It must continue to be so, but at a pace which will not upset the inherent indigenous integrity of the place. It must also be noted that insistence on 1951 cut off was what undid the Assam Agitation in the 1980s.

Leader Writer: Pradip Phanjoubam

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2015/03/regulate-not-shut-off/

Renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking is back in news for his caution that the human race should be worried about artificial intelligence as a threat to them. According to him, humans evolve too slow to be able to keep pace with machines, if the latter come to have independent existence, which from the way science and technology have been developing, is no longer a remote consideration. Even 50 or 60 years ago, the idea of computer was stuff for science fiction, today computers form the innards of practically every gadgets, including all imaginable home and office appliances, be it the refrigerator, microwave oven, mobile phones, TV sets, music players… Even three decades ago, mobile phones were a wonder, internet was a mystery, WiFi connectivity beyond easy imagination… Now they are all part of routine reality. For those born in the last one or two decades, these are all part of their intuition, unlike their parents who have had to make the extra effort to teach themselves and acclimatise to the new age technological environment. Imagine, these intelligent gadget becoming autonomous of humans. Such a scary scenario is what Hawking is earnestly warning the world to be wary of, for considering the pace of advancement of science, advanced robotic intelligence is no longer the stuff for science fiction alone. Come to think of it, even the simple pocket calculator beats humans in any kind of computing exercises. Giving the thought more urgency, another big name in the world of computers, Microsoft founder Bill Gates has joined Hawking to warn the world of the same danger. Surely, the matter cannot any longer be considered as mere idle flights of imagination.

But the thought of slow evolution of humans, and their being overtaken by other species which evolve faster has been around for some time. The 1968 science fiction film, `Planet of the Apes` is a product of such imagination. But leave aside the thought on human`™s being overtaken by higher forms of life, such as other primates in terms of intelligence in the future, there are other ways this can happen. This challenge could come from the most unlikely competitors in the great race of life and the fight for supremacy and survival by species. Intelligence is a survival tool, and as far as this tool is concerned, humans are on top. But intelligence need not always be the defining tool for survival supremacy. There could be other weapons more potent which have remained dormant so far because of conditions such as climate. Major shifts in climatic conditions hence could trigger their coming into prominence. As for instance, even in the course of the last few decades, we have been witnessing the emergence of ever new strains of viruses and bacteria. To name just a few serious threats to humans by microbes never before known, here are some: HIV, SARS, Bird Flu, Swine Flu, Ebola… Over and above these, old disease causing viruses known to humans for ages are mutating to become resistant to drugs fashioned to defeat them. Tuberculosis and malaria are just two of them. These viruses continually mutate and evolve to solve their existential problems humans put up before them, but humans can only use their brains to devise strategies to be ahead of the race. Biologically however, their evolutionary survival strategies are too slow to keep pace with the changes these organisms are capable of going through. So far, humans are ahead in the race by virtue of their brain. Can they always be so? Supposing one day, there come to be microbes to which humans have no remedial answer. Could it be a possibility then that millions of years hence, if and when alien space travellers do reach earth, they find the planet supports life, but only in the form of viruses and bacteria?

Leader Writer: Pradip Phanjoubam

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2015/03/virus-threat-nightmare/

The question what is history has been asked in so many different ways. There have been as many different answers too, and all of them in some way or the other have indicated that it is the story of the State, and that without the State there would be no history. This is a definition which has put many indigenous communities which lived outside State consciousness at a disadvantage, and indeed, much, though not all of the post colonial insurgencies have been largely about formerly Stateless peoples either coming to terms with modern States or else aspiring to be autonomous States themselves. Even if this postulate were to be accepted, the problem of the notion of history would be far from resolved. If in post colonial nations, history has been about State building, the intriguing question is, what happens when the State has been built? Where does history go from there? Again, this is a question which has been asked in many different ways, with the answer remaining incomplete and illusive. Francis Fukuyama`™s `End of History and the Last Man`, where he argues history ended with the conclusion of the Cold War and the triumph of the Market economy, is indeed a landmark in this intellectual query. What followed after this epoch are events and no longer history as it was traditionally understood, Fukuyama asserts. With the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and its challenge to Western complacency, perhaps the course of evolution of this notion of history is destined to change yet again.

In India`™s context, this question was asked in the most profound ways by Ramachandra Guha in `Indian After Gandhi` and Sunil Khilnani in `The Idea of India` both international bestsellers. Both imply, as Fukuyama did in the context of the Western world, that Indian history came to an end in 1947, or at least that the idea of Indian history must transform to accommodate the new challenges. What indeed would historian write of India history post 1947 is intriguing? Would it be about electoral victories, government formations, government toppling, the multi-crore scams the country has witnessed, the famines, the insurgencies, the rise of national GDP, government salary hikes…? Would these qualify to be historical events in the manner that the Battle of Plassey 1757, Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, the Quit India Movement 1942 etc, did? Would Sonia Gandhi, Narendra Modi, Arvind Kejriwal, Manmohan Singh etc, be historical figures as much as, or in the same sense as Gandhi, Nehru, Subhash Bose, Sadar Patel are considered to be? Should the story of the market be also history? Under the circumstance, should the notion of history also not change?

Guha`™s and Khilnani`™s books are interesting in this light for they both imply again that the foremost challenge of modern Indian history, especially in the initial decades of its independence was about coming to terms with State building institutions that evolved out of European experiences without having gone through these European experiences. In the words of Khilnani, modern Indian history has been most prominently an adventure with the political idea of democracy. In the European context, the idea of democracy was a result of centuries of conflict resolution strategies and political dialectics shaping the reshaping the political system to resolve their societies`™ internal contradictions. Among the preconditions this democracy presumes is wide literacy and political consciousness among its citizens and in fact for a long time, the debate in Europe had been on the question of enfranchising the poor and illiterate masses and making them participants in the democratic process. India went ahead and discarded this question, giving a new meaning to democracy, and despite the initial verdicts of sceptics in the West, this came to be ultimately for the better of the idea of democracy itself. It may be recalled, Western observers, most prominently India baiter Neville Maxwell, had predicted India`™s 1956 General election would be the last democratic election the country sees before the country collapses into chaos or else lapses into authoritarianism `“ a confident prediction for which he is evidently embarrassed even as late as in an interview by Outlook Magazine in 1910. Our reflections on this issue are meant as a flag for those who are so eager to use history as alibi to justify their current agendas, to be a little more wary and humble.

Leader Writer: Pradip Phanjoubam

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2015/03/history-as-a-notion/

The law and order situation in the State has gone beyond redemption. And the truth is, much of the violence we are witnessing are also increasingly no longer about insurgency in the sense that the place once understood a political insurrection to be. They are becoming on the other hand about people who believe in plain mayhem and gore. Yesterday`™s blast at the crowded Khwairamband marketplace in Imphal is the third in recent times, and from the look of it, appears to be the handiwork of the same morbid minds. Like all pathologically ill minds, they seem completely incapable of remorse. Public opinions therefore make no difference to them and regardless of all the condemnations and protests at the last such crime, they seem determined to continue perpetrating their brand of mayhem. Three people were killed and dozens wounded this time, but it is a foregone conclusion, given the opportunity, these perpetrators will strike again. This is all the more reason for the security establishment to be more vigilant. Unfortunately and tragically, here too is another grave pathology at work. Despite being acutely aware this market had come under murderous attacks repeatedly, the gaping holes in the surveillance net, as well as the lethargy among those minding it, remain unplugged. It is becoming a matter of joke that the government claims there has been no security lapses every time these shocking bomb blasts happen.

Quite expectedly, the questions from concerned public zero in on what the government`™s vaunted CCTV coverage of sensitive Imphal locations. Considering these despicable IED attacks at crowded places have been happening regularly for the last many months, should not the government by now be having a satisfactory answer to this query. When the CCTV installation project was announced some years ago, the government claimed its crime fighting capability would soon make a quantum leap, and that this technology would ensure it is next to impossible for offences committed in the covered zones to slip the notice of the security establishment. Whatever happened to those tall promises is anybody`™s guess. The CCTVs have been installed at huge cost to the public exchequer, but according to reports, even this state-of-the-art technology has fallen victim to the infamous contract culture of the State, defined as an organised looting by a well established nexus of ministers, bureaucrats and contractors in which money meant for officially commissioned works are siphoned off illegally through a process of over-invoicing of sub-standard purchases and work executions. Now that the price of such alleged official thievery is beginning to be paid in public blood, the government must be made to issue a white paper on the CCTV installation project.

In the meantime, there can be no words strong enough to condemn yesterday`™s bomb blast. Three were killed and dozens injured, but making the crime even more personal for everyone is also the fact that the victims could have been any one of them. The targets, as in earlier IED attacks at market places, seem to be migrant labourers. This in itself is mindless and to no purpose, but bombing a marketplace is nothing less than absolute madness. Even as we condemn the act, our condolences go out to the next of kin of the deceased three. We also wish the injured speedy recovery. We are also of the opinion that since these repeated attacks are on account of a failure of the government, the government must foot all the medical bills of the injured, as well as pay suitable compensations for all those who lost their lives.

Leader Writer: Pradip Phanjoubam

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2015/03/descent-into-madness/

The public lynching of a rape accused in Dimapur on March 5, discussions and pictures of which have gone viral on the internet, was to say the least ghastly. While lynching of rapists and other such despicable criminals are nothing new amongst many communities in the Northeast, not the least those in Manipur, certain circumstances have made the Dimapur case uniquely controversial. First, the man lynched is a Bengali speaking non-local Muslim, derogatorily and sweepingly referred to `Miya`™ in Nagaland. Second, the man, who was already in police custody for the crime that he allegedly committed on February 24, was actually dragged out of a high security jail by the mob demanding his blood. Third, the rape victim, a 20 year old college student, is a Naga, rightly or wrongly giving the crime a different hue in the eyes of many observers. Third, the show of extraordinary and frightening bloodlust of the mob so evident in all the pictures would have provoked disgust in anybody, even those who believe rapists deserve the death penalty. Practically everybody in the mob seemed to have their mobile phones out to gleefully click pictures of the humiliated, naked, blood-soaked man as he was being crucified against a steel fence at a public place. It did not seem like just a spontaneous outpouring of anger at the crime the man allegedly committed, but a savage orgy of bloodletting.

Quite understandably and justifiably, most of the commentaries on the incident in the newspapers and televisions, as well as on the uncharted territory of the social media, have been one of condemnation, however, perhaps because of the shocking and brutal nature of the crime, most tended to attribute reasons which are often only half truths. As for instance, would the lynching have been spared if it was not a Miya who was the rape accused, as many speculated would have been the case? To this we would say, probably not. Only five months earlier, on September 20, another rape accused, Ibobi Singh, a Manipuri carpenter was lynched in Meluri in Phek district of Nagaland. The news was published in this newspaper too. There was absolutely no show of public outrage anywhere, not even in Manipur, and indeed, not even by the family of the man. It was as if everybody believed the person earned his fate. What if the accused was a Naga? Again, probably he would not have been spared, but probably he would have had better chances of slipping away under clan protection, invocations of customary laws etc. The crowd too would probably have not been driven to the extent of breaking into a jail to bay for his blood. No doubt about it that there were strong elements of xenophobic and racial hatred involved, but this was not all there was. But then, to indulge in a little self analysis, for somebody in Manipur or Nagaland or much of the rest of the Northeast, where such gory enactments of brutal justice are routine, the instinctual understanding of these public responses, would probably be somewhat different.

The xenophobia against outsiders in the Northeast must be addressed. The danger of incidents such as the Dimapur lynching is, the universal disgusts provoked often have lead to a reverse desensitisation and therefore equating of these hate crimes with other race crimes, which we contend are similar only in form but not in substance. As for instance, the fear of population influx in the Northeast is an existential concern, perhaps a little exaggerated but all the same real, and is not at all the same as the race crimes against Northeasterners in places like Delhi, driven not by any sense of survival endangerment but by a misplaced sense of racial superiority. We therefore join the chorus of condemnations of the savage Dimapur lynching, and call for booking of those who led the murderous mob. But we also call on all not to let the incident blur visions on other crucial issues, such as the Northeast region`™s fear of demographic marginalisation. Let the Dimapur incident be also a grim reminder to those spearheading anti migrant movements not to whip up paranoia amongst the people, already and unfortunately suffering from a dangerous sense of siege, lest there are similar explosions of dark murderous emotions.

Leader Writer: Pradip Phanjoubam

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2015/03/ghastly-dimapur-crime/

One of the worst crimes that the media can commit is to create a false consensus. These false consensuses exist, and more often than not, they are not part of any conscious campaign or propaganda, but a result of general insensitivities and inbuilt cultural biases. This is dangerous, because overt assaults evoke resistance, but these soft and slow pushes far too often go unchallenged. These falsities also result because of certain inherent paradoxes embedded in the semantics of human language. We bring up the topic, because we do notice the Northeast has been in many ways at the receiving ends of such false consensuses. But let us first qualify our statement by explaining what we understand by the embedded paradoxes of semantics by quoting logician, Bertrand Russell. The famed mathematician and philosopher who received a Nobel Prize not for the discipline he is trained for, but for literature, came up with the now equally famous `Russell`™s paradox`, more popularly known as the `Liar`™s Paradox`. This was as a follow up to a BBC debate he had with Jesuit priest, Rev Fr. Copplestone on the existence of God. The debate is reproduced in Russell`™s book `Why I am Not a Christian`. Fr Copplestone, at a point in the debate, came up with the argument that nothing that does not exist can have a meaning, or would be within human understanding, and since the concept `God` has a definite meaning well within the grasp of human understanding, this must be a definitive proof that God exists. Russell argues against this insisting not everything that makes sense exists. Much after the debate, he was to back up the argument with his famous semantic paradox. In it he says the statement `I am a liar` at the semantic level makes sense, but at its core is false, for if I am indeed a liar, I am speaking the truth, and if I am speaking the truth then I am a liar, therefore not a liar.

We have no intent of joining issue in the debate on the existence of God. We are only interested in the particular problem of semantics thrown up, for this may also be at the core of the false consensus that the media often is guilty of. After all, the media deals in words and words can be played around until they begin conjuring up realities devoid of, or at the most remotely connected, to reality. Images of endemic backwardness of the Northeast, the lahe lahe stigma that hangs around any portraiture of Assam, matrilineal Khasis, violent Nagas, orthodox Meitei, nomadic Kukis`¦ all these, despite their semantic falsities, have stuck, and often pose as hurdles in the region`™s coming to terms with the modern scientific age. They would have also resulted in biases in policy framing. Take for instance the often repeated assertion that the Centre has been pumping money into the northeast. True, money has been flowing in from the Centre, but can it really be described as pumping in money. The deceptive scale has been to measure in terms of per capita investments or talk in terms of percentages. For sparsely populated northeast, we can imagine what disadvantage such a scale would put it in. At least in infrastructural investments the talk should be of quantum and not percentage. Constructing a bridge in Mumbai would cost the same as a bridge in the Northeast, but if per capita investment were to be the criteria, it is obvious the Northeast would end up with only partial bridges and roads.

This being the case, the challenge before the present generation of media professionals, is to deconstruct or dismantle these falsities and rebuild newer and rejuvenated images that are closer to the reality on the ground. Just as the false consensus came about as a residue accumulating over the years, the challenges must not also be in aggressive haste. Such an approach would rob the campaign`™s legitimacy considerably. This would be how we define journalistic activism in the Northeast context. The role of course must be shared equally by the rest of our by and large silent intelligentsia.

Leader Writer: Pradip Phanjoubam

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2015/03/liars-paradox/