Tag: Editorial

The question of ethnic identity has been a preoccupation of the Northeast for quite some time now. The issue is sensitive and it does need to be addressed but those of us in the Northeast, and others who have been close watchers of the region know very well how very dangerous it can become should it come to be articulated in political terms. The danger is compounded in ethnically diverse milieu such as in Manipur where the numerous new identities begin reducing the entire identity question to one of setting each`™s terms for power. The reality has also been, ethnic identity is articulated by an assertion of differences and uniqueness, making the evolution of a common framework for governance next to impossible. It is for these reasons that there is a need to treat ethnicity, like religion, a private affair and politics restricted to the realm of a pure science and art of governing to the extent possible. Only such an approach can make discourses on governance in the Northeast meaningful, for then there will be room for exploring the applicability and benefits of established and tested political systems of government: Democracy being the most relevant. This is to say, in the ethic situation, the definition of secularism must not mean just separation of Church and State, but also ethnicity and State. It is not by coincidence that the scourge of communal violence, so much a feature of other regions of India, is virtually absent in the Northeast, but in its place it sees an ever increasing tendency of deadly ethnic conflicts. The recent gruesome killing of Adivasi settlers by Bodo militants in Assam is only the latest reminder of this.

The proposition then is to prepare the democratic governance mechanism as a common denominator on which the foundation for peaceful resolution of problems can rest. This common denominator has indeed been what is missing, say for instance in Manipur, so that the various politically awakened ethnic groups have been pulling the politics of the land in all conceivable directions, paralysing governance and throwing up dangerous situations with extreme violence potential at every turn. In an ideal situation, the Naga ceasefire extension question, the Sixth Schedule tussle, the Sadar Hills district creation, etc, should have been sought to be settled purely as ethnicity neutral, administrative mechanisms, and equally important projected as such publicly. If such an approach was successful, the outcomes would have been much more in the nature of a win-win situation for all, and not one in which for every win by any ethnic group there is also necessarily a losing group. This cannot be a recipe for peace.

There is no justification in always shifting the blame for the ethnic turmoil in the Northeast to extraneous factors either, for the potential for the conflicts was always there and it only needed to be awakened. Sparks can light up only dry cinders. And if it is to be assumed that this turmoil is an inevitable part of formerly closed worlds of ethnic communities opening up to the world outside, there should be no need to lament the lost innocence. The approach then should instead be to face the challenges of this opening up, and seek to resolve the issues causing the turmoil. To ignore this would amount to advocating that ethnic communities should never grow up and remain trapped in their time warps. True, experience will throw up many previously unforeseen problems. True the new world order will require major overhauls of worldviews and this can be painful, but this must be treated as the challenges of the brave new world before the ethnic communities. English eccentric poet William Blake wrote of this thin line that divides innocence and experience, didn`™t he? Such pains were also witnessed during other epochal changes, such as at the onset of the industrial age in Europe, which Charles Dickens described famously as the best of times and the worst of times. Who knows the Northeast may be also passing through such a period, and if we are prepared for it, our worst times may yet prove to be the threshold of our best times?

Leader Writer: Pradip Phanjoubam

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2014/12/moderating-ethnicity/

The discovery of human skulls and skeletons at a construction site of the government inside the campus of the Tombisana High School must have come to all as a shock but not surprise. Stories of people, mostly young men, who disappeared after being picked up allegedly by security forces, have been around too long in the state for such a revelation not to happen sometime or the other. Quite obviously, the needle of suspicion is on the security forces again, and as one report indicated, the school campus served as a make shift barrack for the security forces a few decades back. This fact should already be a very helpful clue on which the direction of investigation should orient for a start. The years that the school campus was used as a camp of the security forces can easily be determined from the government`™s record books, and if this time tallies with the age of the bones since burial, it should already be a clinching circumstantial evidence of the guilt of whoever occupied the campus at the time. We are not forensic experts, but thanks to the information age, even as laymen most of us are aware to a good extent the advances made in this field. Computer technologies are available today which can reconstruct the models of faces of people who died decades and even centuries ago from the skulls recovered. There are very interesting videos available on the internet on such cases, including one in which not just the looks but even the economic status of an early European immigrant family in America who were killed in a clash with Native Americans were determined by such computer modelling technology from available skulls and bones.

If this could be done here, it may even be possible to see which living persons these bones once belonged to but is unlikely such cutting edge technologies are already here. Even then there should be other ways of determining the histories of these mysterious skulls and skeletons discovered. Other than conclusions drawn from forensic studies of these bones, there could also be tell tale artefacts in the rubbles at the digging site such as a ring, a watch, a pen that putative relatives of the unfortunate souls might remember. This being the case, the demand by Families of Involuntarily Disappeared Association, Manipur, FIDAM that digging and construction work at the site of the discovery be stopped immediately should be given serious and urgent heed by the government. It is a surprise the police have not acted on its own to seal off the place the minute the bones were found. The digging, when it resumes, must be with a forensic mission, and this must continue until such a time the case is resolved comprehensively. Thereafter, normal construction work of the government can be given the green signal again.

It is too early to begin making allegations, although the circumstance does indicate these are some of the people made to disappear after arrest by the security forces. Depending on the findings from this case, those who have always believed in the benignity of the democratic Indian State and doubted custodial killing is a norm in the nation`™s counterinsurgency programmes, despite numerous court rulings establishing individual cases of death in custody, may have to change their stances. Even if they say these are collateral damage, it would still amount to an admission of the crime, for this is only another way of asking for exoneration from penal action on the legally lame plea the acts were nationalism driven. But amidst the cold calculus of political economy, what often has ended up forgotten are the unimaginable sufferings of individual families at losing their loved ones, most of them picked up on mistaken identity, in such an inhuman manner. There are two categories of custodial killings. In one, captives with established insurgent links are killed in supposed encounters, for various reasons, including for the prizes to be won for their elimination. This is bad enough, but the other is simply unthinkable. Innocent youths are picked up on mistaken identity, subjected to inhuman tortures, and then when their innocence is realised, to avoid legal retribution, made to disappear. Those bones found recently are likely to be of the latter variety.

Leader Writer: Pradip Phanjoubam

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2014/12/bones-of-contention/

The bombings must stop, it is an act of terrorism. Those who are perpetrating such random acts of terror must realize that such activity will only distance the public from them and whatever cause they may seem to uphold.

The state has seen its fair amount of woes and continues to do so, but after all the tired years of struggle, corruption, military domination and God knows what! The public has had enough. It is time that time brings its change and brings the society to a somewhat better era, an era of peace, of development and no more bombs.

The recent surrendering of a top brass of the PREPAK outfit is something which was hard to imagine some time back. A top member of the CorCom and someone who was at the helm of the revolutionary movement; and it was indeed surprising to hear him state at the so called homecoming ceremony held at 1st Manipur Rifles hall that he had lost his confidence in the struggle for independence, in the revolution. I wonder how some might have felt after hearing his testimony. So, if a hardcore top leader owns up publicly that he has lost faith in his own cause, then it is not hard to assume how we among the public perceive them and their cause. All this notwithstanding, the current spurt of bombings cannot be tolerated at any cost.

A terror bomb is not tolerable. It cannot be digested why there should be bomb explosions occurring at public places. It is an act becoming of the Taliban and other terrorist organizations and not in the motive of waging the war in the interest of the people. In fact, such random terrorizing actions are detrimental to the interest of the freedom movement.

Such acts warrants hate from the public and will obviously lead to blacklisting the seemingly `those`™ who are behind the attack. Moreover, it also maligns the image of those outfits that are truly waging the war for self-determination. The knee jerk effect of such condemnable episodes is clear as mentioned and it is high time that such matters need to be dealt with, with force or with diplomacy is up to those concerned.

Many bomb traps have evidently shown that it is an act of cowardice and inflict more harm to the public and the psyche of the citizen then to its intended target. Such act serves to estrange the society from the rebels. An example is of the grenade lobbed at the Iskon temple where the festivities were going on and resulted in the death of many innocent people and the demise of one of the foremost spiritual leader namely Damodar.

If the trend of random terrorism goes unchecked, then it is not only a loss of lives nor is it a loss for the society. It is but a gain only for those who seek to alienate people, communities, organizations and a scathing self inflicted defeat for those involved with the revolutionary movement.

It is time that those in power check such wanton terrorism and bring an end to it otherwise the feeble trust left might evaporate.

Leader Writer: Paojel Chaoba

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2014/12/evaporating-trust/

The winter session of state Assembly concluded a few days ago with passing of just one Bill. It is the Manipur Protection of Interest of Depositors (in Financial Establishments) Bill, 2014. Moving the Bill to be passed in the House, chief minister O Ibobi during the session elucidated the need for passing it, citing that there have been cases of fraudulent practices by fake financial schemes in the state in recent times. He informed the House that even in Thoubal district, which is his home constituency there have been cases of fraudsters running away after duping many investors. The state has already witnessed fraudulent investment schemes vanishing without a trace with huge amount of money collected from the investors. In the past, IFP has been able to bring to light of the collapse of popular investment schemes in the state. It is true that many investors who had been conned by the fraud schemes are still not able to recover their money till today. Many families are still under mental trauma after the breakdown of such schemes. Most of the investors who suffered losses have time and again appealed to the government to intervene into the matter.

`It is never too late to act`™ is what the government has purportedly shown by introducing the Bill in the winter session of the House. Mention may be made that multi-crore Saradha scam in West Bengal stole newspaper headlines across the country. In this regard, the Central Bureau of Investigation arrested West Bengal Transport Minister, Madan Mitra, who is also a senior leader of the Trinamool Congress on the 12th of this month. And he is the first minister to be arrested by the sleuths. CBI officials regarding Mitra`™s arrest told the media that he was arrested on prima facie evidence of criminal conspiracy, cheating and misappropriation as well as deriving undue financial benefits from the Saradha group. It is certain that the said Bill which was introduced in the winter Session of the Manipur Legislative Assembly, after the Governors`™ assent would become an Act soon. Should it become an Act; let it serve its purpose to safeguard investors from financial racketeers who are on the prowl, looking for vulnerable targets.

The CM during the discussion on the Bill specifically mentioned that gullible `middle class`™ investors have been victims of the financial scams which rocked the state in the recent past. Ours is a place where one can find parallel growth of luxurious automobile showrooms, sprouting at different pockets of the town and also growth of pre-owned vehicles plying on the roads. Similarly, this is where there is simultaneous expansion of international-brand apparel showrooms along with the pre-owned clothes business. Locating the `middle-class`™, in such a situation, might not be easy. Leaving aside the task of delineating the Manipuri middle class in the context of financial scams, and however promising the Bill may sound in protecting the investors, we would mandate for a thorough investigation of the past scams which have left many investors high and dry. The investigation may be handed to the CBI or any other reliable agencies. Question is: will the authorities display the same commitment towards such measures? How long are they going to keep the financial fraudsters happy by allowing them to move freely?

Leader Writer: Senate Kh

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2014/12/hunting-down-financial-fraudsters/

Bertolt Brecht once wrote: Will there be songs in dark times? / Yes. / Of dark times. These words, pregnant with his characteristic intuitive brilliance, have also proven prophetic. There is poetry in life, even in its darkest times. In retrospect, even the leanest and most agonizing periods of anybody`™s life becomes the subject for nostalgia: all the more reason for those in difficulty never to give up. But more literally, have there been songs in dark times? Even a cursory scan of the list of Nobel Prize winners for literature in the post colonial era should provide the clue. For indeed some of the most powerful literature the world has seen have come out of the dark, poverty stricken, chaotic world of the newly decolonized Third World. The works of men like, Neruda, Walcott, Soyenka, Paz, Marques, Naipaul are evidence. Even though not Nobel Laureates there have been equally intense and powerful articulators of ideas like Achebe, Okri, Rushdie, Roy, Sen, Fanon`¦. The last named, Frantz Fanon, although his works were based on the conditions of Algeria of the mid 20th Century, are still considered a powerful portrait oppressed and oppressor binary anywhere in the world anytime.

The question then should not be all about doubts as to whether there would be songs in dark times, but about the quality of the songs in dark times. The demonstrated answer has been, these songs can resonate with a brilliance that can break new grounds and indeed add new colours to intellect as well as literary creativity. Dark times produce a peculiar angst and yearning for rebirth that can only find satisfactory articulation through creative outlets and critical minds. Creative energy thus built cannot remain bound all the time and there always comes a moment of truth when `Prometheus (becomes) Unbound`, to use another analogy from the world of literature. But if Prometheus must become unbound sometime or the other then there is also another uncomfortable fact. The wait for the time he matures and takes courage to shed his shackles can be terribly long, sometimes too long for creative energy to remain kinetic. It may even cool and become dormant, perhaps never to awake again.

What is the nature of Manipur`™s songs about its own dark times then? For dark times we are in without a doubt. Ours is no longer just a question of oppressor versus oppressed, for the line that divided the two is on the verge of vanishing. The oppressed and oppressors have become interchangeable. Here the mind is never without fear and nobody walks with his head held high. Few or nobody sing from the heart or speak from the mind. In such a circumstance, even the idea of freedom is no longer a lived experience but reduced to seminar room rhetoric, signifying empty semantics more than substance. Our intelligentsia have been less than articulate, or else have lacked the courage of conviction to be open or honest. Will our creative spirit ever become unbound then? Will we ever know the true essence of freedom? We wish our bards and intellectuals would honestly sing these tunes someday in the near future. Our arts have had a taste of the energy that only dark days can generate `“ energy which comes from a yearning for freedom, or a will to resist oppression. It therefore also signifies hope and aspiration. When hope is murdered, this energy too will die. The question which all of us who love the place should be asking at this moment is, are all the mindless violence, petrifying terror, paralysing intimidations, monolithic corruption, institutional injustice, doing precisely this?

Leader Writer: pradip Phanjoubam

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2014/12/the-song-must-not-fade/

Generalizing policies developed on data that are the mean of national figures is dangerous and can cause another kind of injustice. While the need for such a commission in the attempt to re-include many dis-included communities into the power sharing equations of the political process cannot be disputed, grotesque imbalances can result if local adjustments are not made to these mechanisms for levelling out playfields. As for instance, on a national basis, Christians may form a minuscule minority of the total Indian population of one billion, but in Manipur, and for that matter most other Northeast states, this cannot be so. Again, the list of religious minorities in the national context consists basically of Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists, and together they form a mere 18 percent of the total population of the nation, but in Manipur these religious communities form a good 41.49 percent. And there will have to be something seriously wrong with anybody who thinks 41.49 percent is a threatened minority. The case of the Sikhs should also underscore the point. The religious group may be a minority against the total population of India, or even in most other Indian states, but only the most demented would think of including the community in the list of minorities in the Indian state of Punjab. Let this thought be a poser in all discussions of affirmative action, in Manipur and indeed anywhere else. This is the Indian reality, especially so because it is a multi ethnic, multi religion, multi lingual country, and its states were formed largely on linguistic lines. Majority and minority statuses therefore would have to be qualified in a much more nuanced manner.

Quite visibly, much of Manipur government`™s efforts in the past at levelling out playfields have not given much thought on this aspect of the problem. In the government`™s need to take politically correct stances, goaded generously by lobbyists of all hues, it has most of the time ended up implementing minorities related policies of positive discrimination with little questioning on who actually are threatened minorities. The subject being sensitive and prone to misinterpretation, a caveat needs to be thrown in here. Positive discrimination must remain a part of the democratic polity. There can be nothing more beautiful than the idea of giving a lift to the slow and others disadvantaged by historical and economic circumstances, but there must be closer scrutiny in screening the disadvantaged from the advantaged, for often the line that divides the two categories can be extremely blur. In the backdrop of the recent controversy over a drive for conversion to Hinduism announced by sections of the Sangh Parivar, to which the ruling party at the Centre the BJP also belongs, this issue has somewhat become accentuated. In Manipur, the conversion issue periodically has tended to flare up into violent frictions between traditional communities such as the Kabuis and those among these communities who have chosen to convert to other religions, especially Christianity, bringing out the complexity of the problem. This is also true of the Meiteis, but here it is a little more layered, as the Meiteis have become a multi religion community.

In these cases the question who is the threatened minority often becomes impossible to decide `“ the religions of the new converts or that of the communities they once belonged to. In the eyes of the secular, liberal law, that lays a premium on individual rights, the converts hounded by their communities would indeed be the `victims`, but in eyes of traditional laws that is weighted towards community rights and community survival, the so called `victimizers` of the converts may actually be the ultimate `victims`, for on the larger canvas, they are the ones who are in a hopeless minority, and they are the ones who are fighting the odds to keep their original traditions alive. There are many other similar situations in which the law has ended up pampering and patronizing the privileged, but is deaf on actually threatened cultures and value systems. More than in Manipur, this paradox can be excruciating in states like Arunachal Pradesh, where most traditional communities still practice their original indigenous belief systems, but are increasingly leaving their original folds.

Leader Writer: Pradip Phanjoubam

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2014/12/minorities-as-majorities/

The stealth campaign by unknown persons of planting Improvised Explosive Devices, IED, at crowded places continues. In the latest attack at Khoyathong Thangmeiband, outside the ABC Godown, three people were killed and many more maimed early this morning. Obviously, the target was migrant labourers, and indeed most of the casualties belonged to this impoverished category of population on the move. But the casualty could also have been anybody else too, not that this did not happen this time made the crime any more excusable. Bombs are not only devastating, but also indiscriminate as well but few killers can be expected to have the scruples to care for the distinction. This madness must end. Even those behind this brutal and inhuman campaign, and who obviously have no concern about the moral dimension of such despicable violence, must still know their method can only backfire on them ultimately. All they will manage to do is, alienate themselves from the public and earn condemnation universally, as it is happening already.
Manipur has become such a land of contradictions where devastating tragedies are pitted against each other, leaving its inhabitants with no options but to despair. It is a situation in which you are no longer sure what a proactive response should be. In the present case for instance, what is the recommendation any sensible person is expected to give, apart from unreservedly condemning the criminals. Do we call for intensifying police presence, and as a longer term policy ask for more police forces? Do we call in the Army in the management of law and order? The state and its people know very well the consequences of these resorts too well to actually want them. Nobody would want a police state, and there are indeed many running campaigns against this trend already, and this would include the demand for the repeal of the draconian Armed Forces Special Powers Act, AFSPA, 1958. But if these draconian measures have become anachronistic and against the spirit of democracy, the question before everybody, in particular the intelligentsia of the state is, what can exactly be the democratic response to the kind of mindless carnages we are today witnessing in Manipur today?

Today`™s blast deserves to be condemned, and this everybody would do in profusion in the next few days, but the question is what thereafter? One simple way out is to simply blame the government without actually spelling out where it has failed or what it must now do. A lot will actually do this, especially those in the non-ruling political parties. This is the character of politics in the state today, loud and cantankerous but clueless. But beyond this mad din, something must be thought of to definitively put an end to the kind of atrocities witnessed today. This is a question which the state, the government, the opposition and the people, together must endeavour to answer, not merely pass the buck. This is also a time for the intelligentsia to break their much reviled and written about silence and come forward with new perspectives and prescriptions. The responsibility is everybody`™s.
There is no question about it that empathy of the public must rest with the casualties of these attacks, and that they must be protected. However, on a wider canvas, the issue of migration, its ramifications and consequences, must be studied under a more detached light, and not merely brushed aside because it sounds politically incorrect. One way of examining such sensitive issues without touching raw nerves is to study similar situations in more distant places and polities. Tibet is quiet an illustrative example. China invaded and took over Tibet (or liberated in the words of Chinese authorities) in 1950. Today, virtually all levers of power and economy have transferred to the hands of an ever increasing number of immigrating ordinary Han Chinese, who it is said are already outnumbering Tibetans. If we feel righteously outraged at this, why should not the concerns of the Northeast on the immigration issue not be given a more sympathetic ear and policy response? Here we are witnessing explosions of frustration, and in Tibet it is implosions. If it is bomb attacks here, in Tibet it is self immolations. But that is just the manifestation of difference in temperament, the inner angst is the same.

Leader Writer: Pradip Phanjoubam

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2014/12/despicable-violence/

A day in the life of Imphal can be a confounding collage. So many startling but contrasting, and even contradicting, events can unfold at the same time. The front pages of local newspapers are evidence of this almost on a daily basis. Take today`™s newspaper for instance. A screaming headline announced a devastating act of terrorism in which an Improvised Explosive Device, IED, planted by some unknown criminals inside a crowded betel nuts vending shed exploded causing two deaths and injuring several more. Adjacent to this is another prominent headline proclaiming the surrender of an insurgent outfit to the government, an event the government was eager to claim as a sign of the arrival of the peace train in the state. Elsewhere, is an announcement that a plan for a beauty contest is shaping up, just as a book fair opened in another corner of the capital. Such is the threshold of alarm in the state today that there is little left which can evoke a sense of tragedy, or public elation. Through prolonged exposure, this abnormality has become Manipur`™s new normal, and despite all the violence, chaos, corruption… life goes on as if there is nothing to be too upset about. It will sound unbelievable to many, but Manipur these days even manages to make jokes about grenade gifts. There is even a popular song about bomb blasts at market places. If Manipur has lost its sense of tragedy, the fact of such a degree of desensitisation amongst practically the entire society, probably is its biggest tragedy.

But amidst the maddening collage of disparate and seemingly disconnected events that unfold each day, there are tell tale signs that some radical shifts in the mindset of the people are taking shape. Recall for instance a few days ago the widely reported public outrage when some young boys disappeared from a locality, reportedly lead away from their homes by someone known to the locality. The public attacked the home of this man and threatened to banish his entire family from the locality. It is anybody`™s guess the public ire on the man was because he was suspected to be a recruiting agent for an underground organisation. A scan of the front pages of local newspapers will reveal such shows of public outrage at suspected recruiting agents of insurgents are not isolated or unique. They have indeed come to form a pattern. If this trend holds, and it probably will, by the turn of the next generation, insurgency in Manipur will cease to be a revolution and insurgents no longer held in any esteem as patriots, although of the extreme kind. This hardening of emotions is already a reality to a good extent. The revolution, and those committed to it, must notice this, and the sooner they do it, the better it will be for everybody in the state and the revolution itself.

The times have changed, and this is only to be expected, for time is not a static phenomenon. As all have been witness to, there have been tectonic shifts in the economy, polity and outlook, not just in Manipur, but India and indeed the whole world. The very idea of Nation State and notions of its sovereignty have transformed unrecognizably. What we call today as internationalism, is in real terms about the formation of supra national institutions, of which there is an ever multiplying number. The UN, SAARC, ASEAN… to name just a few. Manipur has plenty of fight left in it. Its people will fight if they are called upon to for what they consider as their war. They cannot however be expected to remain committed to 50 year old slogans and war cries. Charming as the past era is, it must be allowed to be replaced by new ones. King Lear`™s tragedy was precisely an inability to do this. He remained charmed by the morality of a past era, and was not resilient enough to accommodate the new world order. Literature and the arts tell the stories of the heart and soul, and often have more for humanity to learn from than science can ever teach.

Leader Writer: Pradip Phanjoubam

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2014/12/readiness-is-all/

That the huge expanse of the non state sector generally termed as the civil society is not always civil is axiomatic. In Manipur this ought to be obvious. The blockades, bandhs, strikes and many other disruptive activities, often for very sectarian causes emanate from organizations assuming the mantle of civil society vigilantes. The truth is, it is not just in Manipur, but the civil society in the entire northeast is badly fractured and ethnically riven and may not be quite what the term is generally understood to be. The term civil society itself presupposed certain shared democratic values and qualities regardless of religious and community affiliations and these values are what have been relegated into the background in our context. Hence when we talk of students`™ community or youth or women, in more ideal situations, there ought not to be any need for prefixing these understandings with community and religion specific qualifications. This however has been far from the truth in the northeast, and Manipur has been no exception in the regard. There is hence very little prospect to generalize the problems and prospects, and in fact the very status of the various civil society organizations in the northeast.

A few examples will illustrate this point. When we say students or youth or women communities, the nomenclatures themselves ought to have been self explanatory. The reality however is quite different in the Northeast where every ethnic community forms its own students, youth, women`¦ organizations, each with very different and more often than not sectarian agendas to pursue. Often again these pursuits of the different `civil society` work at cross purposes, accentuating, rather than solving problems. In Manipur such clashes of sectarian agendas are all too often. The almost entirely different objectives of organization such as the United Naga Council, the United Committee Manipur, All Manipur United Clubs Organisation, the Kuki Inpi Manipur etc, to name just a few, should suffice to make this point clear. The scenario would virtually be the same if we were to list the various students`™ organizations, or women`™s organizations in the state. As rule, except for a very few, all civil society bodies here are coloured by ethnic tints. The general understanding of the term becomes split into numerous smaller ethnic specific organizations. Contrast these with organizations on the other extreme of the civil society panorama such as the International Red Cross Society, Reporters Without Frontiers, Amnesty International, Medicine Sans Frontiers, Rainbow Warriors etc, just to have an idea of the direction civil society organizations in our own midst are heading.

There are indeed ethnic specific problems which are best understood by the individual communities, so a degree of community leaning cannot be avoided. But by and large, there must be a general thread that binds all civil society bodies to more broad-based identities. Our youth must be able to identify, empathize and sympathize with the national and international youth movements. Only when this happens can a reverse flow of the same sentiments become possible. The need of the hour then is for an effort to reconstruct our civil society. Let us sit down and analyze where we have gone wrong and then seek to correct our mistakes. We must put our civil society movements on the track that will integrate us to the mainstream of humanity. We must open up the channels to communicate and share with the rest of humanity, and by this very process of sharing, mitigate our own burdens. The ethnic identity upsurge being what it is, we know it is not going to be by any standard easy to go about doing this, but it is one of those very vital and urgent issues at hand we cannot shy away from. It is also the only way we can make our civil society civil in the true sense of the words.

Leader Writer: Pradip Phanjoubam

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2014/12/relooking-civil-society/

The manner in which the contentious issue of introducing the Inner Line Permit System, ILPS, progressed in the past few months since a public agitation was launched demanding the extension of this regulation to Manipur, has exposed once again the embarrassing failure of the Manipur intelligentsia. Months after the government decided to engage the matter in a proactive way, appointing a political committee to follow up the issue and determine possible ways of accommodating the popular demand, the matter seems not to have made much headway. The committee went ahead to consult intellectuals from the Manipur University, well known practitioners of law and other familiar public intellectuals, besides holding several all political party meetings, to get to the roots of the problem as well as suggestions on the way forward. The government for a while seemed confident there would be light at the end of the tunnel, but now it seems to have lost its way in the maze. It had promised the report of the committee would be tabled in the Winter Session of the Manipur Assembly, and even talked about introducing a Bill to initiate a legislation to make the ILPS applicable in the state. This mood, unfortunately, has completely altered, and a few days ago, the government had come out with a statement that the report of the committee is unlikely to be put up for discussion in the House or made public. The promised Bill too would have to wait.

Just what happened? How or why did the government suddenly develop cold feet? These are a few of the questions in the minds of the confounded public today. They are also understandably worried what might be the immediate consequences on their lives if those spearheading the demand were to come into confrontation with the government again. Would bandhs and blockades follow? Would schools and colleges have to shut down? Would the pitiable sights of bewildered school children in uniform being paraded on the streets in the name of the agitation haunt guardians again? Would there be serious casualties during street confrontations? Manipur`™s tragedy is, none of these apprehensions are farfetched and can overnight become its nightmare. So then, what exactly happened? Is the report too immature and naively confrontational? Does it lack in substance, moderation, statesmanship? All these are very likely too, considering the intellectual tradition in the state of passing off clairvoyance and other variants of crystal gazing as acceptable research methodology. In the face of abject failures to assess and size up current problems intellectually, experts here have often had to resort to citing predictions in ancient scriptures as prescriptions.

Till very recently the minutes of every consultative meeting of the committee were made public through the press. From the proceedings of these meetings, it had somewhat become clear each of the meeting had little new to offer, apart from each participant agreeing the ILPS should be introduced in the state and then breaking out in ruptures of emotional political rhetoric. It is quite likely, the committee`™s understanding of the ILPS at the end of so many months `“ from the logic for its introduction as the Bengal Inner Line Regulation in 1873, to its many consequences, the most profound of which is the hurriedly concluded Simla Convention of 1913-14 which created the McMahon Line `“ continues to be in square one. No wonder then its report is considered still not fit for an Assembly discussion.

What this sorry episode has also brought to the fore is the complete absence of an intellectual bank on important social issues such as the ILPS, for everyone especially the policy makers, to draw from. Our institutions of higher studies have miserably failed in this social responsibility, as much as our legal luminaries have. But they are not the only ones to blame, after all they have the responsibilities of their own professions to look after too. This then is a pointer to the need for some autonomous think tanks, capable of, and dedicated to building such intellectual banks, and from which the entire society, government as well as the public, can benefit.

Leader Writer: Pradip Phanjoubam

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2014/12/a-case-for-think-tanks/

As the State awoke to commemorate Nupi Lal of 1939, one of the most important events in its history when ordinary women rose up to fight against the monopolistic trade practices and the colonial administration of those times, the people of the State, where `women`were once revered with a distinct territorial protectiveness either as Ema, Eche, Echel, Ene, Eteima etc in a now bygone era, were greeted with the news of two shameful acts having been committed against women the previous day.

If you think that this writer is trying to evoke pathos, you are perhaps right as such incidents have been occurring so often that we stand in danger of becoming blase against such incidents. Like the way, we have become utterly indifferent to the news of bomb blasts, people dying from gun shots and so on. Human psychology works in strange ways; if we are unable to eradicate or put a stop to a stimulus which causes us great distress, its inbuilt defence mechanism instructs the human brain to circumvent the stimulus. That means teaching ourselves to become completely desensitise as there are now ways in which we can affect the stimulus to stop distressing us. Meanwhile, the long term pathological prices that the diseased society will have to pay escape our attention as it`™s not immediate. Besides, it`™s not easy to diagnose or treat a neurotic society. But, life goes on as it must and it always will.

Various dignitaries of the State have come out with press statements greeting people on the day marking that historic event in 1939. Reiterating the demand or an appeal to put a stop to the ever increasing crimes against women will be of little help here as those demands or appeals have been made again and again in this selfsame space. But little has been done to address this menace. Nor is there any suggestion of political will to fight crimes against women. Wait. When was the last time any top functionary of the government visited the family of survivors of violence or crime against women promising swift actions against the perpetrators or to mitigate their sufferings. If the government or the law enforcing agency had taken some swift actions in the past, there may have been a different tale. Political inaction can only aggravate the situation. As the matter stands today, only another Nupi Lal appears capable of curbing the ever increasing crimes against women. But if we allow that to happen, it will be a sad commentary on the collective masculinity of all men in the State. May all the men including those in power wake up to this fact and get their acts together before that happens.

Leader Writer: Svoboda Kangleicha

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2014/12/another-nupi-lal-looms-large-as-state-marks-another-nupi-lal-day/

The dissension between the All Manipur College Teachers`™ Association and the authorities of the government, in all indications, is not going to end soon. Although the government, through a press statement issued by its Higher & Technical Education Department on December 2, claimed that an understanding had been reached with AMCTA in a marathon meeting held with the Education minister on the same day. On the other hand, AMCTA in its latest communique to the media has denied of any agreement supposedly arrived with the government. Here, it may be recalled that government college teachers under the initiative of their association have already launched agitation against the government on various issues and demands from November 28 onwards. According to the teachers, the government has not been sincere enough towards resolving the issues that have been left unattended for a long period of time. Or at best, the issues raised by the teachers have been dealt half-heartedly. The teachers have also claimed that in spite of their repeated representations, demanding strict adherence to the guidelines of University Grants Commission in connection with recruitment of teachers; Career Advancement Schemes and other service related matters, the government has been unmoved. Besides, the recent appointment of three regular Principals by the government was not received well by the teachers`™ association. It has been charged that the appointment process was hasten up, despite the earlier demand made by AMCTA to appoint regular Principals in all 28 government colleges on one time basis.

Sticking to their stand, the teachers`™ body has been boycotting the semester exams which began from December 4. It is worth mentioning that the Higher Education department in its December 2 press statement had claimed that `AMCTA has further agreed to take all necessary actions `¦ in the proper conduct of the said Exams`. As for this column, we shall keep aside the debate vis-à-vis merit and demerit of the demands that the teachers have raised. The question is, if the claim made by the teachers`™ body that no understanding was reached between them and the government is true; why would the government through its department concerned issue a counter-factual public statement through the media. To put it very plainly, the Higher & Technical Education department would be the best people to throw light on the contentious statement, as they have issued the same. We might also chip in one important demand raised by the teachers`™ body; which is removal of the incumbent Commissioner of the same department for his alleged bureaucratic arrogance and contempt towards the teachers on many occasions. It seems that there has been proclivity on the part of the establishment to effusively bureaucratise the functioning of the higher education system, which is very unfortunate. Non-appointment of regular Principals in almost all the government colleges is indicative of this tendency of the government. By appointing `Principal in-charge`™ in the colleges, the government authorities are virtually robbing the right of an institutional head, who is entitled a considerable level of autonomy in academic administration in their respective institutions. There is still time for the government and the teachers to reach to an agreement on various demands – the sooner, the better. Giving rightful professional space would be a good beginning towards resolving the stalemate.

Leader Writer: Senate Kh

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2014/12/redirecting-the-amcta-impasse/

Talks of freedom of thought and speech have become a staple of every advocate of democracy, particularly in the midst of the new wave of popularity of market brand democracies and democratic principles. While the implications of freedom of speech should not be very difficult for anybody to digest, it is on the question of freedom of thought that logical problems arise, as pointed out by philosopher Karl Popper in one of his many essays on the concept of freedom. He says the Hillelian principle which forwards the meaning of true democracy and freedom to mean, doing unto others what you would have them do unto you, is meaningless in an environment where thoughts remain largely unarticulated. Democracy in its true essence cannot take roots in a society that shies away from articulating thoughts or engage in debates. For the concept of freedom of thought, in a social situation has basically to do with the prospect of making complex negotiations through the mazes of ideas and interests and finally arriving at the best possible path everybody can use to achieve their ends. Again in a social situation this will often mean making compromises. But all this can happen if individual thoughts do not remain as individual thoughts forever, but are shared widely, so that in the process of the interactions the thought processes themselves are continually refined.

Looking back then, can we honestly say that our society has been one which encourages the expression of individual thoughts? Have we been a society with a wont for articulating and sharing thoughts, with the intent of testing their validity and accuracy by pitting them against the real world? For thoughts and ideas need constantly to be tested of their applicability by having them stand the scrutiny of other thinking members of the society. Our experience has been, our society by and large is a silent one and more often than not this silence has been deafening. More to the point, the section of our society whose thoughts are sought have been seemingly on an unreasonable vow of silence, even when their voices are called for in the state`™s hours of crises. In direct contrast, other sections who can render the society better service by a little more restraint in opening their mouths unnecessarily, have been relentlessly making a nuisance of themselves. Indeed there is a despairing scarcity of sane, intelligible, coherent voices while a perpetual cacophony of political mudslinging and juvenile slogan shouting have been numbing the finer senses of the society by and large. It will not surprise anybody then that after every one of these bouts of frenzied dins, nothing substantial ever emerged by way of refining or resolving any of the agendas before the people of the state. On the other hand, what the state has been witnessing all along has been a transition not from chaos to order as it should be, but chaos to more chaos. The end result in the process is a scenario in which the important business of governance has virtually been taken over by an ever mushrooming number of non government pressure groups, pushing juvenile and sometimes senile agendas.

For democracy to fructify then it is absolutely essential for the state`™s intelligentsia to independently start articulating their thoughts and ideas, and generate healthy debates in the society. They must be the ones to set the agendas for the state, otherwise other less qualified to shoulder the onerous mission will begin doing so, and in fact have been doing so for much too long now. Only when this section of the society has begun considering it their duty to generate the state`™s discourses can policies in the state begin acquiring a definite direction. It will also be the time when democratic debates begin ceasing to be a cacophony of shapeless and meaningless noises replete with crassly disguised vested interests, and assume a constructive role.

Leader Writer: Pradip Phanjoubam

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2014/12/freedom-of-thought/

If politics in Manipur were to be described in one word, the word would be fickle. Indeed the number of politicians who have not switched loyalty for even the most trivial of reasons during a career, can be counted on the fingers of one hand, and in all likelihood there would be some fingers left uncounted. There are of course few who have remained steady and loyal to their ideology but there can be no doubt they are in a hopeless minority. This being the case, the overwhelming image of fickleness associated with politics in the state has stream-rolled whatever little integrity and value in politics these few have salvaged. Elections after elections, generation of politicians after generation, they are always the same, their one objective of grabbing power by any means have remained constant always. Dissidents are therefore commonplace in any political party in position of power. Everywhere else, political power is normally the preserve of the party which has won the most number of legislators in an election, but in a surrogate state like Manipur there is an additional source of power. It is not always the ruling party which can claim a stake to power, but even parties without popular mandate, having failed to win a single seat at the elections, can also become parallel powers, provided their party is at the helm at the Centre. The case of the BJP is just this at this moment. It is not a coincidence then that the BJP which drew a blank at the last elections, is today the sparring partner for state power with the ruling Congress, and by the standard of Manipur politics, are both also badly riven by dissidents within, vying to grab the levers of power their parties hold. The Anti-Defection Law has made these dissidents somewhat toothless, but they continue to fume and fret, parroting `tales told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing`™. It is good in a way, for the dissidents always make sure the skeletons in their party`™s cupboards do not remain hidden from the public. Poetic justice? Interestingly, the dissidents, which practically all Manipur politicians have been at least once in their careers, justify their anti party activities as a longing for change for the party`™s and people`™s good.

Well, it is unlikely they do not know that between change and fickleness for there is a world of difference. Bertrand Russell once said intellectual flexibility and readiness to accommodate changes is not at all a sign of weakness but of intellectual growth. This must not however be confused with fickleness. If change is about introspection and self correction, fickleness is about selfishness and an inability to hold a belief. As a thumb rule, those who step into electoral politics and have had a taste of the intoxicating influence of political power, have the tendency of shedding past convictions and discipline and adopt the fickle norms of defection and party hopping. There cannot be a more grave degeneration than this.

Fickleness also has an opposite number. These are the unconventional, `non-maintream` politicians. The firebrand establishment bashers, who take pride in their obduracy and self righteousness, whose temperamental development became arrested at the stage of college politics, who like the students are fearless of the law or physical harm, who think they are invincible intellectually and physically and are convinced even God is on their side, romantic warriors with the sense of mission that they were ordained at birth to carry the world upon their shoulders, who are so fixated with only their private visions of things that they cannot actually see anything else beyond. They too are `full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.` Sometimes, in contemplating them it is difficult to arrest a yawn. Intellectual obduracy and fickleness make the same variety of noises. Both swear by a self-proclamation longing for change. But theirs is far from the idea of change. For change is about courage and grit.

Leader Writer: Pradip Phanjoubam

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2014/12/welcoming-change/

Quality education can happen only through sincere pursuit of knowledge by students and equally sincere commitment to teach the students by teachers. In our states we have instead students who want to be administrators and policy makers, and teachers, a good percentage of whom are in the profession for the love of everything else but teaching. Many of the latter would rather be government contractors by proxy and join the looting of the state exchequer. Added to this are the bureaucrats and ministers in charge of this agenda, whose only interest seems to be showing off the status of their jobs and stiffening their collars in their chauffeured cars `“ never mind their empty bags when it comes to any tangible claim to fame. While nobody can be actually pleased with the manner in which our government has been handling education, nothing very much is there to be said, much less be proud about, the attitude of our teaching as well as students communities. It is no wonder that the best crop of our students every year, whose parents can call up the means, fly outside the state in their thousands even for school education. Happily, at least the school level, the state has caught up, and for triggering off a revolution in this sector, we have catholic mission schools to thank. We are happy for those who have the means to go and pursue studies outside. Many of them will return one day with fresh outlooks, visions and skills, but our concern for those who are less fortunate and have no choice but to remain in the state and sink deeper into the abyss for the lack of quality education, outweighs the earlier consideration. This because we believe the demons from our society can only be exorcised if a more egalitarian society, economically as well as educationally, can be ushered in, and not at all by a further stratification of our society as is bound to happen if the education system, as well as its atmosphere back home, do not improve. We also believe in the emancipating qualities of broad-based knowledge, a commodity which is becoming increasingly scarce and may actually be on the verge of disappearance already. We are staring a catastrophe in the face and we better wake up.

Education is a large issue, and to get a total grasp of it, there is a need to piece together many different visions and observations on it. We acknowledge this needs a much wider debate. Hence, we put ink to paper just one observation, hopefully again, to initiate a debate. It is such a pain to see school children being made to join strikes and rallies, class boycotts and office picketing. They seem so much like cannon fodders used by much more sinister, backstage minds. They may not suffer physical casualties in these protests, (or on the other hand they may), but they will ultimately be long term casualties, for what they are being made to do is to destroy the very same academic atmosphere they have to draw succour from, and what is worse, without their understanding the implication of what they are being made to do. Many years ago, before the current revolution of private schools was in sight, Catholic schools were in the midst of another controversy for not allowing their students to be part of students unions. They were bulldozed into conceding their point. But more than ever now, when education, particularly school education, is left standing on the hot tin roof, we see the wisdom of the nuns and priests. Many of the fiery orators who opposed this wisdom at the time, we are told have either joined politics or are government contractors, doing precisely they compelled school children to protest against. What about the little children with satchels on their backs who could not perform their peaks in the school leaving examinations because of these agitations? Many from that generation probably now see the light as to who were made the scapegoats.

Leader Writer: Pradip Phanjoubam

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2014/12/back-to-studies/

Sometimes the stark reality confronts one and we are left to suffer in its wake, the writings on the wall which we perceive to be for the other person can suddenly jump out and bite. A painful reality when the fabric of the comfort cocoon tears. It is open that most of the people in power indulges in their whims and fancies just for their own self-serving motives. In their indulgence, many are left crucified despite being innocent and suffer the injustices in the dark corner.

In truth, power does corrupt, but it must take exceptional courage and principles to adhere to truth and to care for your fellow man. In Manipur, there seems to be absolutely no space for the common man. He is laughed at his powerlessness, trampled on because of his truthfulness, spited on because he believes in democracy and in a better society.

Police and politicians are in such close proximity in the state that one cannot do without indulging in whims of the other, that is of course for the mutual favours. Not only the mentioned, but others from different spheres occupying a somewhat `political`™ position may do whatever they want, twist the truth, take the law into their own hands, to make the false appear right, to rampantly rape the commoners of their rights. A sacrificial lamb is the commoner. He bears the brunt of the whip as the system operates in favour of the rich and powerful, the connected people. The wounds on the back of the plebeians is brushed aside by those in the ivory towers as their feeling of being superior tantamount in self- belief that they have the right to do so, to inflict pain and suffering upon others, to crucify our souls, but never the same fate should befall to them. Their comfort cocoon cannot be breached at all cost. It is in their mindset and hearts that they cannot be held accountable but others can be. This fascist mindset had been the trend for the powerful and still they remain the untouchables, a true democracy still remains a distant illusion.

It is known only to those who have suffered the cruelty of the oppressive hands, spent the sleepless nights cringing their teeth but becomes emasculated when it dawns upon them that they are still helpless, to retaliate the oppression and still powerless to fight the oppressors. That feeling of helplessness has been borne by many and continues to do so.

Sad even more of the fact that those who have left their homes and sacrificed their lives to fight this oppression have in one way or the other become more like the oppressors. Those supposed to be fighting for us have also begun to think and act like those whom we detest the most. Here, the common man in the state is left to fend for himself between the devil and the deep blue sea with no respite in sight. To be left with the pain and the injustice perpetrated still must remain in the hearts of so many. To endure injustice is more hard than the physical pain that accompanies it. Maybe with the passage of time, the Gandhian thought of turning the other cheek may be a soothing balm for self reconciliation, sometimes reflection on a song or a painting may bring an emancipation from the bitterness. The adage of error and forgiveness being divine holds much water. However, for truth, equality and justice, it is felt that one should not conform to tyranny in whatever form they appear, and for each of us is the duty to challenge that, and in our own possible ways and means. As someone said, it is acceptable to fail but a sin not to try.

Leader Writer: Paojel Chaoba

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2014/12/a-sin-not-to-try/

The chief minister, O Ibobi`™s appeal for all to give their mite towards ushering in peace in the state so that development can pick up momentum is now familiar rhetoric. So many others have said these same words before him too. There can be no doubt that the interrelationship between peace and development is a typical example of the chicken and egg conundrum, however often forgotten here is that this prognosis is not all this simplistic and hence the prescriptions to it also have also never worked as they should have. This, it is arguable, is because there are a number of other factors that are acting as bottlenecks, if not roadblocks, in the way of both peace and development. One of these, not many will dispute, is the total absence of political legitimacy in the state, in spite of the fact that political stability is more or less have been ensured by the introduction of the Anti Defection Law. Unlike in the past when not many average citizens could remember how many times the state government had fallen in the past decade, today in the changed circumstance, the Ibobi ministry has lasted two and a half terms already, and is on way to completing three. Partly as a cost of the instable politics in the past, and partly because those in the vocation have not changed their ways, politics and politicians, though powerful, are still seen as unscrupulous and selfish by the people. In the face of this fall from grace of politics as such, there are still very few amongst the general public who would unhesitatingly vouch anything good can ever come out of politics. The damage this poisoning of the mind has done to the state, although intangible, has been far reaching. A detoxification of this public mindset must predicate any serious talk of peace or development. Only such an awakening can resolve the chicken and egg situation of peace and development that has today been reduced to a cliche. Neither peace nor development are likely ever to come within reach if politics in the land has not undergone such a moral cleansing.

We would like to remind our leaders that mere appeals for peace are nothing more than lip service. We would also like them to remember that when they appeal to others to allow peace to return, they are presuming their own innocence in the matter, as well as excluding their own responsibilities in setting right the things that have gone wrong. We can without hesitation say that all of us, big and small, weak and powerful, rich and poor, are intensely concerned about the issue. If at all there are differences, it is in the approach to a solution although in the end, all will have to acknowledge it is a common problem, needing a common solution. Which also incidentally means each and every one of us, not the least the politicians, will have to contribute our share in putting the peace train back on rail. This can be done by each of us pursuing our works and duties with honest conviction that what we do well and honestly is our way of contributing to peace, and consequently development. Looking at it another way, we see the chaos all around as a collective retribution for the crimes and sins we each of us have committed in the past, perhaps without even realising it or because our conscience have become blunted. The punishment then is equally a poetic justice for all. The rich, the powerful, the corrupt… as much as the average law abiding citizens who are too caught up with the routines of their everyday lives and made cowardly by the intimidating issues all around, to raise their voices and articulate honestly their minds. The latter especially should remember what Amartya Sen said in his The Argumentative Indian: `Silence is a powerful enemy of social justice.`

Leader Writer: Pradip Phanjoubam

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2014/12/chaos-as-penalty/

`Getting Zero: Zero new infection, Zero AIDS related death, Zero discrimination` is the theme for this year`™s World AIDS Day observation. It is heartening that Chief Minister Okram Ibobi speaking during the observation organised by the Manipur State Aids Control Society had come down heavily against misuse of funds by NGOs which are meant for spreading awareness. He had warned that any organisation found pilfering funds will be blacklisted. The CM`™s warning is indicative of the malpractices, and their quantum, on the part of the NGOs, which are working in the field of HIV/AIDS prevention, control and management. The CM`™s apprehension must have reliable grounds in the information gathering machinery of the state. For the common people, a good enough premise that something is terribly wrong with some of these NGOs would be the conspicuous mushrooming of palatial houses belonging to NGO workers. If there is a political will, weeding out such NGOs is not a difficult task for the government. There are enough mechanisms to check the flow of funds of the NGOs. We would definitely like to see the CM`™s words translating into action.

The CM underscored the fact that awareness is the key to control further spread of the HIV virus amongst the population. It is true that with the introduction of Antiretroviral Therapy, ART, there has been considerable hold on HIV related deaths in the state. But then the goal of `zero discrimination`™ is still a far-fetch one. Discrimination exists at various levels of our society. This discrimination can be seen in the Leikai community, at social functions, at the work places and even within the family. Sometimes, discrimination can be seen at the most unexpected places `“ the public hospitals and clinics. It is said that people living with HIV generally do not feel comfortable in their visits to the ART centres of the state. A visit to such ART centres will ascertain the fact. It is disheartening enough to see people standing on queue just to collect their ART drugs. But to know that most of these centers are without proper resting place or even drinking water facility moves one to the verge of risking a conclusion that they have been discriminated and then forgotten. More often than not, there are complaints of `unwanted attitude`™ in the functioning of the State AIDS Clinical Expert Panel, a reviewing and decision making body on all cases referred by the ART centres regarding viral load testing and starting of 2nd line and alternative 1st line ART.

Some leading NGOs have been equally critical of the government`™s policy and functioning on the HIV/AIDS issue in the state. An outspoken NGO worker, L Deepak, who is the president of the Manipur Network of Positive People, speaking on a parallel observation of World AIDS Day had charged the government of neglecting the issue. He maintained that the government has failed to earmark funds for HIV/AIDS in the state budget. He said the current funding on HIV/AIDS are all global funding that comes through the National AIDS Control Organisation; and he further urged the MLAs, ministers and officials concerned to shun rhetoric and rather practice what they preach. That there is an unfortunate deficit of trust between the NGO workers and the government is a picture painted by these different takes on the issue. In order to be anywhere near the goal of `Zero new infection, Zero AIDS related death, Zero discrimination`™, the chasm of mistrust between the NGOs and the government must be spanned. A little bit of soul searching on both the camps with focus on the issue might do the trick. One cannot be overly optimistic but this is one case where one does not have much of a choice.

Leader writer: Senate Kh

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2014/12/fighting-hivaids-bridge-the-gap/

The chief minister, Okram Ibobi`™s appeal for coexistence, and by implication denouncing separatism, in his speech at the closing function of the Sangai Festival with none other than the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi as the star audience, brings back a thought IFP has often dwelt on in these columns. In a crux, he had said Manipur will not allow dismemberment of its territory even by an inch but will welcome coexistence not just in Manipur but with all in the neighbourhood. Appeals for peaceful coexistence have become commonplace today. That these appeals should at all become necessary is an indication that there are forces pulling the fabric of coexistence apart. There is another often heard appeal today and this has to do with tolerance. However, because of the multiplicity of connotations associated with the latter term, we are a little suspicious of this appeal. Although we are aware of the well intended spirit, there are other meanings, conscious or otherwise, inherent in the appeal itself. For one, tolerance presupposes that the object to be tolerated is offensive in nature. The equation sought hence is never one of equality, but of a superior entity putting up with an inferior counterpart even if this means having to make do with inconveniences, keeping in view longer term self-interests. The question becomes in this way reduced to making a choice for the lesser of two evils. Tolerance has another nasty connotation. It can portray a picture of passivity and inactivity. It can be taken to mean insensitivity and the lack of a natural sense of rights and justice, hence the failure to claim them. Some very often asked questions will illustrate: How can the people of Manipur tolerate corruption or violence the way it has? How can Manipur tolerate non performance by its governments the way it has?

We therefore prefer the word coexistence. The term first of all is value-neutral and there is no implied meaning of inequality buried in it. It suggests an equal partnership, where the different communities exposed to each other by circumstances of geography, economy and politics, live in a free interplay of ideas and customs. In Manipur, as in any other multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, multi-religion societies, such a formula will have to be the only route to lasting peace. The foundation for peace must be laid in a salad bowl scenario, where each ingredient remains distinct, but in their totality give themselves a new collective identity and personality. Adjustments, not tolerance, will no doubt become necessary to make sure the vital agenda of governance is given smooth passage. There will have to be, for instance, laws and norms applicable to all, just as all must be deemed to be equals before these same laws. But while an integration process cannot be overt, there will come about unseen, unobtrusive forces that initiate a meltdown of the different ingredients: The compulsions and bonds of economics being the most powerful of these. The salad bowl will then, at its own pace, begin to resemble a stew pot precisely at the marketplace which must have a lingua franca that no one can claim as their exclusive, a common currency, ethos, value system etc. Each ingredient will still retain their individual identities, but each of them would have acquired some of the tastes and smells of the other ingredients in the same stew.

Both these models of integration are beautiful. The individual can be beautiful but it is the collective which can transcend the ordinary and be in the realm of the grand. To push the analogies of the salad bowl and the stew, surely a single ingredient dish can never be as appetising as the multi-ingredient salad or stew. We can say the same of the society too. Isn`™t cosmopolitanism beautiful? Isn`™t the way Imphal is evolving beautiful too? So many different communities, bringing in so many different colours, flavours, skills, religions, cultures… And when they all come to be the ingredients of a composite identity of the place, that`™s when a new beauty, greater than the sum of its parts, will emerge. Of course, this integration must be allowed to happen at a pace the social organism will be able to absorb and internalise without detriment to itself. In this light, the current demand for an immigration regulatory mechanism should not degenerate into xenophobia but remain as an effort to ensure this optimum pace at which cosmopolitanism evolves without causing social tensions.

Leader Writer: Pradip Phanjoubam

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2014/12/beauty-of-coexistence/

It will come as no surprise that there is an exodus of young aspiring professionals away from the state. In a way this is good, for if and when they return, they will bring back new skills and outlooks. But there is also a fairly good chance that a majority of them will not return, for at this moment, job prospects befitting their skills and aspiration are virtually nil. Nor is there a climate for them to want to return and build enterprises from scratch. It is in this sense a very critical period for the state. Push matters a little farther and things can reach a point of no return, where the best talents leave permanently to find their fortunes elsewhere. If however the state does not allow the situation to drift beyond the critical point, who knows, in the years ahead, it may be time for a new renaissance, when the prodigals begin heading home. At this moment though, the picture is rather grim. As for instance, few jobs outside those offered by the government are worth today`™s wage standards, and the government job sector is super-saturated. Selection tests for a few dozen state civil servants, or lecturers, once or twice a decade, cannot come as any consolation to the ever growing number of job seekers. There are no signs that the situation can improve in the near future either. The government neither has the resource to create more direct jobs, nor the will or imagination to foster the growth of employment outside itself. All it can do, and has been doing, is to blame the bad law and order situation for its failures. Nobody can deny this is a factor, but it is precisely the government`™s duty to ensure the rule of law exists, and it can best begin by practising what it preaches.

The rule of law is another story, but the immediate challenge is about creating jobs and since the capacity of the government to employ has a definite ceiling, it will have to look at the private sector. For this sector is multidimensional with practically the sky as the ceiling. An article by journalist Michael Hasting, comparing the resurgence power of Vietnam and Iraq, is interesting in this regard. Hasting covered both the Vietnam War and Iraq War. While still on assignment in Iraq, he visited Saigon (now known as Ho Chi Minh City) for a story that compared to two wars. Forty years after the war, Vietnam is bouncing back. Its economy is buoyant, everybody is raring to go and win his share from it, and in the process contribute his share too. In comparison, forty years hence, he is not hopeful Iraq can emulate the same feat. Individual entrepreneurship was always very strong in Vietnam, unlike Iraq which was for too long hooked to easy petrodollars. Vietnam`™s economy was built around the enterprising spirit of its people, as well as the skill and discipline of its labour force. By contrast, Iraqis in general have come to be addicted to subsidies, so that in times of crisis, such as wars and their aftermaths, while Iraq had nowhere else to look for resurgence, Vietnam could draw strength from within and pick itself up much sooner. Moreover, unlike Iraq which is dominated by a revenge culture, Vietnam was much more practical and outward looking. Even in the midst of the bitter war against America, it was never bitter toward Americans, so much so that Ho Chi Minh was supposed to have written a letter during the war to the American President, Lyndon Johnson, that Americans would be welcomed back as friends after the war. And Americans are now indeed rushing back to Vietnam, not to make war but as tourists and businessmen.

The uneasy thought is, Manipur seems to be much closer to Iraq than Vietnam. It is possessed by a culture of revenge and bitterness. It is also almost completely dependent on government subsidies. Private entrepreneurship has been dwarfed, and at best it is about dishonest government contract work or else, with the exception for a few, has not risen above retail trade, which promise money perhaps, but no creative contribution to the economy. Its education system is in the pit, incapable of producing quality skills or knowledge. Parents who can afford the cost look away from the state increasingly for their children`™s education. These children may not feel inclined to return when they come of age, and they are not at all to blame. Shouldn`™t a rethinking process begin? Shouldn`™t the government be thinking of evolving policies to nurture back to health the general entrepreneurial spirit?

Leader Writer: Pradip Phanjoubam

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2014/11/enterprise-or-sloth/