By Amar Yumnam
An editor of a leading English daily in Manipur has commented in his Facebook input that the promise for making power available for at least twenty hours a day to the people of Manipur and made by the head of the people of the land has turned out to be the biggest joke of the year just ending. I am not surprised by his comment but by the fact that he is still not arrested for his social media comments unlike what has been happening elsewhere in the country, particularly in the only “city” of India (Mumbai); may be the name change from Bombay to Mumbai has also affected a nosedive in the cultural ethos of the public and the administration there. Otherwise the country is now marked by so many unexplained and unwarranted crimes occurring at an increasing pace and in an unaccounted way; it is as if there is a massive decline in governance quality accompanied by deterioration of social ethics. The rapes in Haryana, Facebook arrests in Mumbai, a schoolteacher breaking the hand of a nine year old student in a school in Vishakhapatnam, stabbing the eye with scissors of a teenage boy in Bhopal and such incidents now stain the already weakening growth rate of the country. Manipur too is experiencing increasing crimes against women in recent periods, the latest being the dead body being found near the Zoological Garden. What happens in Manipur is even more troubling for various reasons. First, historically the society here has condemned any show of strength on women. Second, the social ethos of Manipur has been true to history and the cultural dynamics are a testimony to that. Now this is an issue which we cannot and should not leave only to the care of the law enforcing agencies of the land for a sustainable address. This is a social issue and the society should address it collectively with a sustained assessment of the prevailing ethos and community feelings. This is a disease which can ultimately claim the whole society and in a much more dangerous way than the demographic debate now raging. The urgency of the problem should not be lost sight of as well.
My purpose in this intervention is not with all these but with the promise of power for twenty hours a day. I have no grudge if the promise by the Chief Minister turns out to be the biggest joke of the year ending soon; hopefully it is not going to be the end of the world either due to galactic merger or the end of the Mayan Long Count of more than 5000 years. While I would certainly long for a place where the head of the people could crack jokes and play along with the people, but in the present context I am not able to. The implications are too big and involve the effectiveness of governance. When governance issues are involved the progression or otherwise of the society necessarily gets entangled. This is exactly why I am not able to treat the present promise as a joke and forget about it.
Here I remember an example set by a Nobel winning economist in a context of time consistency of commitments and policies. A teacher might fix a test for her class on a particular date. Accordingly, all the students would come ready for the test on that stipulated date. But what would happen if the teacher does not hold the test on that day? The students would no longer take any future date announced by the teacher seriously and their preparedness for the test would decline. This would ultimately reduce the effectiveness and use of the test announced and conducted by the teacher. The morale of the story is that the success of a policy depends not just on the implementing government but also in a large way on how the public perceive the outcome of the policy would be like. If the general public believe that a government would perform and implement a policy to fruition whatever the circumstances, the policy would generally be a success. In the otherwise case when the public do feel that the government would not implement the policy to fruition, it would not be a success. So even a good policy would fail if the public feel that it would fail. However, a bad policy can be implemented successfully if the general public feel that the government would do it come what may.
It is in this context that the significance of the success or otherwise of the promise for making electricity available arises. It has long been a fortune of the people of Manipur that no promise of the leader for social assurances has been kept. It extends to both provincial and central leadership, including the promise of Dr. Manmohan Singh on the Armed Forces Special Powers Act. It needs this cycle to be broken such that any policy of the government would be a success as the people of the land feel and ensure it to be a success. Besides, the present head of the people of Manipur is a person capable of rising to the occasion, as exemplified by the widening of the road passing through the Singjamei Bazar. But here he needs to be wary of the public description of him of this success and the non-performance on promises like the one of power supply. People say he is assertive when it comes to projects involving contract works and not when it comes to the general well-being and conveniences of the population. I know as a person of history, he definitely would not like the future to recall him only in this way. I for one would definitely cherish a memory where he is remembered for his social promises being recalled as an epitome of governance effectiveness and laying an atmosphere for success of government policies – a recipe for governance success and not one to be treated as public joke.