By Amar Yumnam
One important development of Economics since the 1990s is the discovery that `History matters`. But I must hasten to add that this is not history for the sake of cultural arrogance and remembering the dates of rule of a king or otherwise howsoever important the dates are. Economists now attach importance to the yesterday, day before yesterday and the days even earlier as determinants of the character and direction of events today. This new understanding and approach for appreciating the dynamics of a society is now being emphasised irrespective of space. The trajectory of any development process in any geographical context is accounted for to a large extent by what events that space had experienced in the past. Similarly the development dynamics of any society at any point of time is explained by what social norms and habits the members of the society have acquired individually, collectively and in interactional dynamics over decades. Thus history matters both for geography and society. This arises because of several reasons. `First, cognitive selections developed over time can be seen as shaping a collective memory, being one part of reducing choices for actors due to historical reasons. Second, firm-specific investments might also be a part of such path dependence, sensitive to earlier historical events. The third reason relates to strong interrelatedness in complex organizations, which also would include technological interrelatedness`.
Now it becomes necessary and important for us as to what has been the most path-dependent characteristics of Manipur during the last few decades. The significance of this endeavour arises because of the dogged refusal of the society of Manipur to evolve towards a direction indicating greater sincerity, higher social justice, and widening and deepening trust among the population. While the social changes or rather qualitative deterioration has been our worries, what has been happening in my own locality is almost like products of experimental research.
The collective behaviour in my home locality has been strongly dominated by the violent, repressive, imposing and absolutely rent-seeking approaches of a group supposedly looking after the property and interests of the sylvan deity of the locality. Now the dynamics of the composition of this group is very revealing. It has been dominantly composed of members from a clan which has been successful as participants in the highly corrupt governance process during the last four decades or so. This successful participation in the corruption process of the administration of the land has definitely established certain kind of aura for the families of this clan; one best example of their success relates to the public distribution channels of Manipur. Since wealth has been accumulated more by faulty means than through globally appreciated and socially acceptable means, the actors simply did not possess deep qualities of commitment to social transformation. Instead they have rather been characterised by pseudo drive for indulgence in supposedly common interest while the inner ethos was one of assuming the collective for granted. From among the collective too, there were people who could be easily sucked into the mechanism as the scope for economic and social advancement has been very limited. This latter group could be easily mobilised by offering regular country-liquor with the ill-gotten wealth and mis-using the property of the local deity in the name of common interest, and help in projecting a positive image of the social-thieves.
It is here the relevance of the character of governance in Manipur over the decades arises. How could such a group emerge with impunity and sustain itself? This takes us to the `mithibong mitambal` who politically represented our locality during the 1990s coupled by the head of district police during that period. The mithibong mitambal found it very convenient to collude with these lumpen elements and had no qualms in indulging in any nonsense as desired by these elements for purely personal gains and social looting. The head of the district police during the period was someone who some people describe as the most-decorated officer. This person was marked by his ready indulgence in violence, flamboyance with absolute disrespect for the rule of law and thought he could get anybody along his lines of liking irrespective of reasonableness or otherwise. Now both the mithibong mitambal and the police officer are no longer in limelight, and with them the wealthy lumpen elements have found themselves in a position of inability to sustain their modus operandi.
Now what is the worry when these elements have their aura compromised? It is the path-dependent nature as reflected in the behaviour of the contemporary youths in the locality. As growing teenagers they have learnt that one could still prosper and accumulate wealth at personal levels by adopting a pseudo interest in common welfare. Indulgence in spreading lies and revealed preference for violent approaches are absolutely salient among them. This is what sucks our society. This is the challenge for the society, which demands responsiveness from governance. I only hope that this character in my local society is not a generalised feature of Manipur. Or am I wrong in wishing for this?