Writings of Thingnam Kishan
-Introduction to Four Essays -
- Part 1 -

By: Alternative Perspectives *

Written in a serious engagement with the political and economic condition of he calls 'subjugated heritage,[1] Thingnam Kishan's essays, published in four issues of Alternative Perspectives (formerly Alternative Frames), give a reading of India's Look East Policy (LEP) and poses a series of questions concerning the political economy of its being deployed as a tool of global capitalism.[2]

His writings focus on the general framework of political economy of underdevelopment by critically examining what may be called the 'provincialising' of the North East as a peripheral economic formation.

Though brief in his engagement with these issues surrounding the North East in general and Manipur in particular, the essays are manifest of a testimony to the fact that the woes that have been with us for years, with which we have been bearing for more than half a century, are, in the final analysis, symptoms of a condition, a heritage of being nourished to be always peripheral.

This is perhaps the strongest inspiration that shapes us in order to take on these questions again and afresh in many ways of which this programme on a Tribute to Oja Kishan and his ideas is one small but significant step.

To introduce the essays, in a way that is legible to the general readership, which again is the purpose of this short piece, is an attempt that aims at discussing as well as enriching, and perhaps, generating a normative imagining of what actually constitutes the notion of development.

In light of the rise of what is known as neoliberal programme that is, liberalization, privatization and globalization, one can look into the ways in which the general format of development visualised through these strategies take the shape of what may be called a 'political theology' in the neoliberal economic thinking.

This theology becomes an inevitable consequence of the crisis precipitated by the capitalist logic of development and is now a new mantra of global imperialism to which all weaker economies have to suffer a permanent dependence, deformed prescriptions of the global giants, a subjugated diligence and the marks of disability for a long time to come. This is what is primarily discussed in all the essays.

To begin with, the essay, 'India's Look East Policy: Origins and Conceptualization',[3] critically examines the link between LEP and the neoliberal programmes by focussing on the historical development of capitalism due to overseas investment generally termed in Marxist understanding as international finance capital or metropolitan capital.

The advent of India's LEP simultaneously with the phenomenon of 'economic liberalization' in India[4] is a predominant feature of the working of contemporary world economy, which, for Kishan, is the chosen logic of capitalist development, or to be precise, a phenomenon of capital export.

During the period of colonialism and its aftermath, which is generally known as decolonization, countries of Africa, Asia, excepting a few, and Latin America that produce primary materials become underdeveloped that is, they remain structurally constrained, disabling them to develop as full fledged economy to the effect of permanent dependence to the external and stronger economic powers.

The essay argues that this phenomenon of capital export or overseas investment acquire an intensive turn in the present craze for globalization. One interesting aspect of the essay is to set a fine balance between the history of the global capital in colonised countries in other parts of the world in the past, on one hand, and the prescription of a format of development for the North East through LEP by India and its capitalist cognates and their imaging of the North East as a new zone for realizing the interests of the global capitalism, on the other hand.

This could be unfolded on a brief look at India's security and capitalist interest on the North East and its adjacent Southeast Asian countries. The background of the policy can be traced to the crucial rupture in the India's development model that took the form of a serious balance of payment crisis and other immitigable trade failures in the beginning of the 1990s when in their effort to maximise the effect of the short cut strategies and escape the unavoidable capitalist fate, India's neo liberal political and economic[5] devotees faced to test their Brettomvood[6] passion.

It was at this juncture that it became much cherished for them to caress the dictates of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.[7] Consequently, India adopted economic liberalization and it had to wake up to the calls of global capitalism and formulate conjunctive policies of which LEP is one brand of the capitalist conscience.

LEP had become a new security pack of India to ensure a free movement of the global capital in the 'East' through a series of political and business network across the entire Southeast Asian countries. In the words of Kishan, 'Substantive efforts towards closer political, economic and military ties underscore the logic of India's LEP.'

In this light the essay assesses LEP in terms of the circumstances compelling India to look towards a 'framework of integration with Southeast Asia.[8]

to be continued....