A Layman's Guide to Policy Focus for 2010-2020

Amar Yumnam *

The beginning of a new year, new decade and new century is always a time for new resolutions and fresh assessments. They say beginning of a new year does not necessarily imply change just as much as change in the politicians in power does not necessarily constitute change in government.

But fresh assessments and new resolutions do give us an opportunity to ponder, and in the best of circumstances can have the potential of forming the beginning of change. It is with this perspective that I would like to indulge today in what should be the focus of policy in Manipur in the forthcoming decade.

It is the innate desire of human beings to attain higher levels of well-being and to escape from risks of poverty to the comforts of welfare. In a structured society, achievement of these objectives can be hard unless policies are framed and executed by government for the convenience of people to perform their socio-economic functions. This is so particularly in a place like Manipur.

From Valley-Centric to Mountain-Centric: My first preference for policy focus during 2010 – 2020 would be a paradigm shift in government interventions. For long, the orientation of development expenses has been rather Imphal-centric or valley-centric at best. Though there have been flashes of attention to the mountains in the recent past, these have not been sustained and been very far and between to have any impact.

I cannot help falling in love with the mountains. Since focus cannot be provided in a loose fashion, I would be irresponsible if I do not identify the areas where we should be focusing on while endeavouring to develop the mountains. I would only talk of two areas.

First, all the mountain areas of Manipur should be linked by all weather roads with the State capital. I would love to meet my girl-friends staying all along the most interior areas of the State any time of the year, and as and when I feel like visiting!! I know many aspire for such situations.

Here we already see the foundations being laid by the efforts of the people themselves. In this the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme and the Prime Minister's Grameen Sadak Yojana have turned out to be the harbinger of the foundations of change. We see new roads being carved out in the mountains by the villagers themselves.

The responsibility of policy now lies in converting these new roads into permanent and maintained means of communication with the politico-business centres of the State. If we could achieve this during the next decade, the potential positive social implications are tremendous. The health, educational and economic implications are particularly important.

My second area of focus in the mountains would be in relation to education. Whereas the valley had experienced a boost as well as a boom in education provision, the mountains are yet to experience the kind of educational boost needed for contemporary social transformation.

Besides this generalised drawback, there are educational woes being faced particularly acutely by the poorer sections of the people in the mountains. They suffer from double squeezes.

First, they do not have the kind of facilities in their localities whereby they can ensure sustained education in the mountains. Secondly, they do not have the resources to maintain their children's education away from home. Here the particular binding is the necessity of exporting their children's ration and fees during periods when the mountains are accessible. This is where my first policy focus becomes particularly relevant.

A Qualitative Focus: The above interventions needed for the mountains are mainly quantitative. But as we always say, the quantitative is never complete without the qualitative and vice versa. So the quantitative aspect is to be accompanied by a qualitative component. This qualitative component is relevant for the State as a whole, and should have at least the following components.

The qualitative aspect relates mainly to governance. Governance reform is an area where achievements are both easy and difficult. Easy if fully committed by the powers that be and ready for the initial risks involved. But the payoffs are great and good for the society. Governance reform is difficult and rather impossible to perform if the powers that be are not sincere and un-ready to face the initial hiccups.

Now the areas for governance reform. To begin with, the mind set of governance needs to be widened to cover both the valley and the mountains of Manipur. The failures of governance have converted the contiguous existence of valley and mountains into non-contiguously rival reality.

Along with this change in mind-set, there has to be ensured a necessary decline in the level of corruption in the layers of governance. This corruption is hurting the mountains as well. We have to ensure that corruption in matters of development in the mountains is somehow put under check; complete removal is unthinkable at this moment.

Further I would wish for the emergence of a governance in the land where the administration responds to social issues with promptness and commitment; a responsive and responsible governance is being longed by the people for times longer than necessary.

The last qualitative component I would like to mention has to do with the role of the intellectuals in the land. The democracy as we have been practising has failed to deliver. Now the time is ripe to dissect this failure from every possible angle. We cannot leave the affairs of the land only in the hands of the ministers and bureaucrats.