Day: March 4, 2011

One of the foremost problems before the Government of Manipur is the rising youth unemployment. From last count, the figure has crossed the seven lakh mark. This in a population of 24 lakhs is close to 30 percent. If not for the traditional social support systems, such as the joint family which takes under its umbrage siblings unfortunate to be with poor income or even no income, this figure would have spelled social disaster long ago. But the absorption power of even the most resilient social support system would naturally have a limit. Manipur’s may be nearing this limit or perhaps crossed it already. The never ending mindless violence on its streets may just be one indicator of this. This being the case, it is imperative for the government to come up with imaginative measures to address the problem when it comes out with its budget vision for the coming year. This obviously should not be about artificial creation of employment in the government, but of nudging the relevant sectors of the economy to foster self-sustaining economic enterprises with employment capabilities. Needless to elaborate as it is common knowledge, this would entail coming up with policies to expand the employment market beyond those directly employed by the government. As it is, the government’s employment market is supersaturated.
The other uncomfortable fact is, in the past decade, the government has been making unprecedented recruitment in the police department. These moves obviously would be with the concurrence of an obliging Central government in consideration of the raging insurgencies in the state. In a way this can result in a dangerous Pavlovian conditioning. At the unconscious level, or perhaps even at the conscious level, recruitment opportunities in a corrupt environment would ultimately come to be interpreted as a reward, causing a vested interest that would want insurgency kept simmering alive. But it is known this reward is much more complex. If a survey were to be done of the most lavish mansions in Imphal city, however garishly built these are, or properties acquired by Manipur domiciles in various metropolises in India, chances are, they would belong to a police officer or others with close links to them. The vicious cycle would thereby ensure the conditions for insurgency are never totally put to rest.

This vicious cycle would go conclusively only if employment channels have been generated the normal way. There would be few who would doubt this would have to be by invigorating the state’s fledgling private sector. The room for expansion of this sector at this moment is tremendous, and indeed a churning is already in progress and despite the tremendous hurdles they are faced with, it is amazing how so many small and micro enterprises keep spring up everywhere. Mobile repair shops, photo studio, refrigerator repair workshops, tyre retread centres and indeed, practically all services that an ordinary consumer needs in living a normal life in the state would be available in small unassuming box shops in some corner of the Imphal city. Given a little governmental support, these enterprises can become the answer to the state’s unemployment problem. This support can first of all be in the shape of providing tertiary services, regular electricity, water, good roads etc. It will also have to be about very importantly, easy credit facilities.

We do hope the government would evolve a policy to address this onerous issue. The matter will have to be pursued as per an official policy and blueprint, and not by any adhoc extension of assistance as if in a charity should be the resort. The latter style has never succeeded or sustained the energy necessary to carry on for long. There probably would be losses in the beginning in terms of loan defaults, business bankruptcy etc, but the government should factor in these drawbacks in its original policy blueprint and then envision its own breakeven point. This exercise cannot also be a purely monetary cost benefit exercise too. The government’s rewards, apart from recovering its direct investment which is important no doubt, is also to see the employment burden on its shoulders lighter, and ultimately disappear.

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Now that the Union Budget 2011-2012 has been announced, it is now time to focus attention to what shape the State Budget for the same year, which will be presented soon, would look like. Drawing up the state budget for obvious reasons should be considerably easier. For one, it is much less grand and ambitious. For another, many of the factors that would determine the shape of government’s policies for the coming year are known, and equally many of the objectives the government would seek to achieve are predictable. But within the ceiling predetermined by circumstance and the limited nature of the canvas, there are plenty that can be done and our leaders should ensure are done, which is why there is a need to create an informed discursive atmosphere aimed at clearly demarcating what are the consensual voice of the people on what they want, as well as critical assessments by the enlightened sections of the society, in particular the state intelligentsia, of these voices as well as how these can be addressed rationally through government policies.

The practice in the past has been to bring out a document which in its essence is nothing much more than a balance sheet of state government’s projected account for the coming year, with little indication of how this document can be even vaguely seen as a vision statement which not only spells out what is in store for the coming year but also opens up windows and doors to the future beyond just the following year. Just to give an indication of a very obvious example of what is meant by this let us consider the idea of the “Look East Policy” at the national level. This idea, it will be recalled, was floated sometime in the early 1990s and has lived on till this day, generating debates on what shape the policy should take, the good it can do as well as the bad that can result out of it. In the inability of the government to do this for all these years, the fault is also very much with the intelligentsia which has consistently failed in setting the public agenda for the government to pick up from. In fact, they have also been miserably failing in generating any public interest in the budget document. This has incrementally distanced the budget exercise from the public and continually reinforced the sense of it being alien and abstract, decipherable only by its pundits. Nothing can be more harmful than this.

By contrast consider the intense media discussions on the Union Budget in the run up to the day of its presentation in the Parliament on February 28 and then the equally intense post-mortem analysis after the document and its entire content was made public. Although the actually budget document would not have quoted any of these discussions directly, there is no gainsaying that much of the substance of these discussion would have had direct and indirect influences on the final shape of the document. In any case, the architects of the budget papers would have had a ready reference of public opinion and aspiration, as well as critics’ assessment of the economy and the remedial measures they preferred to fall back on. This is the atmosphere which has always been missing in the case of the budget preparation process in Manipur. Those who write it would on one hand have had little to refer back to in assessing public opinion and aspiration, and on the other be under little pressure that they would fail to impress the critics as there seems to be none.

So here we are on the eve of another state budget presentation, with the discursive spaces in the media still blank on the issue. If there has been anything as visible public opinion on the governance issue, it is defined by what may be called the dreary pull of mediocrity, making people to come out open only in matters such as salary hikes, service perks etc. Middle class Manipur has come to be trapped in a pathetic predicament whereby popular imagination cannot overcome extremely limiting and myopic outlooks that sees little beyond narrow self interests. The belief in a larger common good of society, not necessarily by abandoning self-interest, but by distinguishing between mere self-interest and enlightened self-interest, has it seems waned. This is depressing for no other reason than that it is a recipe for the ultimate total decay. This is another reason why an active and enlightened intelligentsia is all the more vital. This is one of Manipur’s biggest challenges today.

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