TataSky's : Heads I Win, Tails You Lose
DTH Policy: Manipur's Chronic and acute disease of pretence as social principle

Amar Yumnam *

Our family has been a believer in the credibility of TataSkys DTH television networks for quite a few years and until a few days back. We were taken in for a suck now we realise by the name Tata with whatever little we have learnt of the name and related exposures to the significance of it during our student days in Bombay.

But TataSky DTH in Manipur sucks. It was towards the beginning of this year that messages were sent to all the connections for converting to the Set Top Box and accordingly we also did through services of the centralised system they have got in Manipur.

Well right from day one we realised that the Set Top Box being supplied was not defectfree and failproof. Since it involves an important and significant cost of time we were managing somehow with the one given to us. But one day very recently it became impossible to manage and I went for a new one. The service agency in Imphal said we had to get a new one and I did agree. I paid for a new one.

Now the bluff comes out. I was told that all the recharges I had done earlier for all the favourite channels would be of naught. Further since only a few free channels are included in the new package I had to pay anew for any favourite channel. This was the height of ridiculousness. First they did not bother to provide a failproof Set Top Box to begin with.

Second for anything the customers should be losers and they invariably the gainers. This is why I say TataSky DTH in Manipur sucks. On further introspection what really pains me is that most almostlike of agencies and functionaries in Manipur work on the principle of pretence and deep bluff. We can give examples of this galore.

Let us remember what the Head of the People read as Chief Minister had told the people both in public and in person that the Passport Office would start functioning in Manipur within weeks. That was the beginning of the year. Now nothing has happened as yet. Any society demands that the democratic Head of the People should walk the talk and should by no means indulge in fabricated statements.

The most unfortunate thing in this and which I do not want to believe is that people now talk of the provincial government having been bribed by the outsourcing agency responsible for handling the issuance of Passports. This very allegation weakens the social fabric and the scope for emergence of a credible relationship between the governed and the government. It is happening at a time when Manipur necessitates an effective and credible governance for fruitful development and meaningful participation in the evolving globalised economic scenario.

Let us look at the mobile phone networks in Manipur as well. Any connection is founded on a contract between the service provider and the customer. But any network provider in Manipur is efficient at most about 30 to 35 per cent of the promised potential and accordingly charged. This is where the bluff arises as even the imperfect and failed connections are the ones for which the customers have paid for.

Now look at a central government agency. The country has had the fortune of so many misdeeds coming to the fore thanks to the reports of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India. But in the case of Manipur it is as if all the agencies have been functioning with complete sanctity despite the large scale public talk of widespread and deep corruption. This however does not stop whether to believe or not of the people talking in tea stalls and private gatherings about the rates quoted by the persons of the agency responsible to perform the CAG functions in Manipur.

So irrespective of whether a private agency the provincial government or the central government people perceive deception to be the principle of functioning and performance in Manipur. This is where the social trouble lies. This kills the capability of both market and government to deliver exactly like what has happened in Africa undermining the effective workings not only of governments but of markets as well. The lack of an adequate value foundation also comes down in the end to matters of dollars and cents.

Mancur Olson concluded that the sums lost because the poor countries obtain only a fraction ofand because even the richest countries do not reach their economic potentials are measured in the trillions of dollars. Much of this was attributable to a prevalence of opportunistic behaviour encouraged by an absence of suitable normative traditions in the presence of faulty institutional design..Though the lowincome countries obtain most of the gains from selfenforcing trades they do not realize many of the largest gains from specialization and trade.

They do not have the institutions that enforce contracts impartially and so they lose most of the gains from those transactions like those in the capital market that require impartial thirdparty enforcement. They do not have institutions that make property rights secure over the long run so they lose most of the gains Developing countries with sound policies and highquality public institutions have grown much faster than those without.... Put simply failures in policymaking institution building and the provision of public services have been more severe constraints on development than capital markets.

This is where I would reiterate the necessity of a rediscovery of culture in a society which prides itself of a rich culture. Besides infrastructure and other ingredients for development economists with development orientation are increasingly emphasising culture as a stronger determinant of development outcomes than the conventional interventions.

Recent global research reveals that the same interventions would yield better development outcomes in highertrust societies than in lowertrust ones. Our tragedy lies in the fact that consequent upon the character and functioning of both private and government agencies Manipur today is a society with low social trust. There is both imperativeness and urgency for corrective actions at the governance sector and appropriate regulation mechanisms to make the private sector accountable and behave the atmosphere of collusion between government and the market to loot the people has to be corrected. Sooner the better for the society.

A recent study on the significance of culture in development writes expression of selfinterest A free market might be described as in some ways the institutionalization and legitimation of bribery on a grand scale but the social approval for acts of bribery nevertheless must not extend to every area of society. Is this what has been prevailing in Manipur