Manipur and the democracy of the "others"

Chingya Luithui *

With the election and the political intrigue of government formation over, for most individuals in Manipur, it is back to the everyday grind of their "normal" lives—a normality defined by inefficient governance, corruption, ethnic divides and its concomitant politics of the "others", diktats of armed groups, martial powers of the police and armed forces, infrastructural deficiencies, etc, to name a few.

An essential strain in Manipur is the inability to bridge the sense of "otherness" each community feels, and the failure to accommodate the different perspectives that result from this.

Take any issue in Manipur: be it infrastructural deficiencies, the pathetic education and healthcare system, issues of land and territories etc; in every community, be it the Chin-Kukis, Meiteis, or Nagas, there is an immediate tendency to feel victimized without really analyzing whether these are issues common for all or whether there are shared experiences and, if at all, common solutions can be identified. There exist an ironic situation where problems are owned as "ours" in so far as it allows one to feel unjustly treated but not when it comes to the question of taking responsibility, then it becomes the property of the "others".

Then the blame game starts. Tribal groups will point fingers at non-tribal groups and vice versa; people in Imphal will blame those not from Imphal; valley-based organizations will accuse hill-based organization and so on. It is a pervasive malady that has infected each an every level of social interactions in Manipur. This tendency becomes a problem in itself. It leaves no one accountable, especially those who hold the reins of governance.

Tied into all these, and a root cause, is a very distorted understanding of democracy in Manipur. Simply put, the hallmarks of democratic governance is one which guarantees the rights of citizens, where rulers are accountable, the process of governance is transparent, and in which everyone participates on an equal footing in decision-making, and specifically which ensure the consideration and inclusion of minority opinions in all processes and thereby restricting and preventing the hazard of an individual or a dominant group hijacking the system for their gains, particularly at the expense of others.

Unfortunately, as it stands right now, "democratic" governance in Manipur is all about the power of the majority along with which come privileges of doling out favours to the "us" and, conversely, of exercising dominance over the "others". This majoritarian mindset has removed public institutions and the process of governance from the reach of those who genuinely need access. It has led to a situation where legitimate concerns are unaddressed and viable options left unexplored.

Unfortunately, once majoritarianism takes hold, there will always be an expendable minority of the "others" at every social level and at whose expense a few inequitably benefits.

For instance, it has been a constant assertion of the various communities living in the hill areas of Manipur that they are discriminated and inequitably treated when it comes to the distribution of development schemes and projects vis-à-vis those settled in and around the valley areas.

Whether this is true or not is another matter; however, in such a context one often sees the formation of an "us valley" collective which readily spring to the defence opposing such claims of the "others" from the hill areas. But move away from this scenario, say toward an issue confined to the valley area itself, then interestingly even within the "us valley" collective, one notices a number of fissures that indicate the "otherness" of some. The same is true for the hill areas.

However, a general feature that can be noticed in the "othering" of some is that often they are the weakest, the most vulnerable, and the poorest within a given social set up. In other words, how otherness is defined depends on the locus of privilege and power one enjoys and is able to exercise.

This trend of "us" and "them" has been so effectively milked in Manipur’s political arena that it has become institutionalized which further feeds into the vicious cycle of divisive politics. It has obstructed the implanting of meaningful democratic institutions like free elections, rule of law, transparent and accountable bureaucracies etc.

As a result, political parties (including informal political groups) have hijacked all available democratic space and transformed into instruments of control; it has further stunted the growth of independent political thinking and severely impeded the exploration of innovative practical solutions.

The priority then is clear: to build democratic institutions that are inclusive. However, the processes toward this have to be principle-based and the initiative has to come from the people themselves.

A principle-based approach would allow room for levelheaded, and unemotional, exploration of fundamental issues such as the question of land and territories, territorial integrity, equitable distribution of political seats and economic benefits etc. It would allow recognising and respecting the differences in the identity of each ethnic community and being practical in regard to their different, and sometimes contesting, political aspirations.

The starting point in all these has to be the acceptance and respect of the principle of the right of each community to self-determine. Unless this is recognized and acknowledged, it will be a futile exercise; Manipur will remain stunted at the puerile level of the politics of surviving with much of its people indifferent as it does not offer them anything that substantively improve their lives.