By Amar Yumnam
Quality of life one encounters in everyday living and continued living is one the most important determinants of wellbeing of an individual and a group. In recent years, this has entered so much into the decision-making process of an individual and consequently economists today attach a major importance to the quality of life and its potentials assessments of any place. We should also be attaching importance to this in Manipur to sustain as a society and as a diverse community.
Quality of life is a product of a multidimensional characteristic of qualities respecting to political, economic, social, environment, cultural, education, employment and other important factors in an individual’s response to living in a context. Well, when it comes to the political quality of life in Manipur the better it is for us if we talk least of that. In other words, the political quality of life in Manipur and the neighbouring provinces is such that it is sickening and devoid of any quality of civilizational character. In a recent lecture at Stanford University in honour of Kenneth Arrow, Dani Rodrik questions the increasing relevance of the concept of ‘nation state’ in today’s world. Rodrik has raised this question with the rising heterogeneity of consumers in the world. The civilised world has reaped the benefits of diversity and increasingly appreciates the value of it in terms of development potential, realised civilizational level and widening the perspective for a wider world. In the case of Manipur, the opposite is just the reality. The diversity of community has become a weakness and a problem rather than a strength for onward social advancement. It has become an excuse to indulge in articulations devoid of any civilizational character and increasingly jeopardising our potential for enhancement of quality of life. Indeed, the quality of life has worsened deeper in Manipur in so far as the political component is concerned.
But in the preoccupation with the political issues, articulations and race for sacrificing the civilizational aura in it, we have completely missed one very important aspect of the quality of life components. The global concern today is with climate change and the changes towards undesirable directions of the environment. In the context of Manipur, the race in political arms race has completely made the people forget and conveniently behave unconcerned with what is happening in the environment in Manipur. We need not tax our mind to understand as to how we define environment in the context of Manipur. We can easily define it as the forests and the tree-cover in the land. We may move to any direction from Imphal, we can very easily appreciate with our eyes the disappearing forests, thinning mountains and deteriorating land quality in Manipur. In fact, the phenomenon is such that only the mountains where army camps are located would be the places where forests would be saved. If this turns out to be the case, we have only one option to save our environment. This is complete militarisation of the land and thereby convert every mountain top into an army camp. But we know for sure that this is neither feasible nor democratic.
The world is moving towards a direction of thinking on environment different from the one still prevalent in Manipur. We are still in the world where the landscape functions are segregated. The thinking world has left this mind-set behind and now perceives the landscape functions in an inclusive multidimensional way. In addition to the fast depletion of forests in the mountains of Manipur and the public non-concern with it, we also have a thinking in the valley where environment is concerned to be only related to the forests in the mountains of the land. We work as if the urban planning and development has nothing to do with the environment component of the quality of life. All the developmental interventions relating to construction and improving land quality in the valley have invariably compromised the continuance of the mountains in Manipur as mountains and the richness of the forests therein. To put in another way, the segregation of landscape functions in the mentality of the people and the policy making for development is leading to the double-degradation of the environment in Manipur. The degradation of the environment in the mountains is coupled by another in the valley. Even the value attached by our kings in history to street trees no longer prevails.
This is something we cannot afford to continue further. For instance, we must remember that we have an airport with rising flight density, and our rising developmental needs demand this. However, aircrafts are the biggest pollutants anywhere in the world. We have to be very conscious of this while thinking of the environment in the valley. The urban planning process definitely has to necessarily incorporate the environmental component of the quality of life. Unlike elsewhere, we do not see the emergence of the roof-top gardening as an aesthetic value either. While the urbanisation process is deepening with rising negative aspects of it, there is no emergence of quality of urban landscape as important component in designing and policy making.
While there is no perceptible component in planning connecting people with nature, the unfolding picture has nothing to encourage us. The deteriorating forests in the mountains would tell on the water system and overall quality of life for the entire province within less than two decades in difficult to reverse terms if the present trend continues. The recent experiences with the weather – the daily manifestations of climate- in Manipur have not been what the past lived experiences of the people tell us. The deteriorating environment would start impacting negatively on the health and behaviour of the people. We have to act before these happen. The sooner we listen and respond to this natural requirement the better for the society. The sickening political environment would sicken all of us if we allow it to extend to the environmental component of quality of life.