Manipur’s myriad problems do not certainly present a straightforward visage, layered as they are in a maze of hierarchical quagmire of problematic propositions, and each of the hierarchy again mired in their own strata of endless problems and sub-problems. A splintered students’ movement with each splinter scrambling to hog limelight; a splintered public space where numerous civil society organisations, CSOs, are in a mad contest to grab the biggest slices for themselves; a splintered militant underground movement where each is unable to develop a perspective which can tally with those of their peers; an established order that has allowed the vital agenda of governance slip out of its control; a government bankrupt of idea and funds beyond easy redemption. There can be no doubt about it that these are all the ingredient of a failed state. It is no consolation that our neighbouring states, even where there are no emergencies of ethnic conflict currently, are faring no better.
It is also interesting to note that in the global context, the West is extremely wary of failed states, as these can become dangerous spawning grounds for mutant thoughts and ideologies that see them as former colonial oppressors therefore legitimate targets to avenge their miseries of failure. It is in this context that many analysts view the West’s extended honeymoon with Pakistan, and several Middle Eastern and Northern African countries. It simply cannot afford to let Pakistan or these other nations degenerate, for the danger this poses them are tremendous. Experience in Afghanistan and the Middle East have taught them this.
Those of us in Manipur should not find it difficult to understand this logic. The overall picture of our own problems is awesome and thoughts of a comprehensive solution are extremely prone to despair. The answer is undoubtedly only in a leadership with dogged persistence, capable of thinking out of the box to come up with creative approaches, and a willingness to last out the severest of political and economic winters. Only such a willingness to withstand the test of fire can hope to deliver.
The story of Poland, and the manner it got over its years of hardship and political tumult at a time the fall of the Iron Curtain was imminent, is inspiring in this regard. Remember Lech Walesa, the “Solidarity Movement” leader of the country in the 1970s and 80s. The Nobel Prize for Peace that he won in 1983, in retrospect, must have been one of the best deserved in the award’s history. He got Poland out of a mess much worse than what we are in today. A book about Poland of the 1970s, written during the peak of the “Solidarity Movement” called “Passion of Poland” by a journalist, Lawrence Weschler, a staff writer of the respected American magazine The New Yorker, the magazine on which the now defunct Illustrated Weekly of India is supposed to have been modelled, is surprisingly being still reprinted and sold online.
The graphic picture of Poland of the time, although much worse than what we are in today, is still strongly reminiscent of our own predicament. Incisive jokes heard in the streets of Warsaw during its years of turmoil, reproduced in the book, recreate the subtle nuances of inter community relationships. They also tell of how divisions and frictions between communities are accentuated by scarcity, the lesson being, plenitude can ease a lot of social problems.
It was a time the government was totally bankrupt and even essential commodities began disappearing from the shops. Long queues would form outside ration outlets even at the hint of arrival of new stocks. In one of the jokes in the book, one such queue forms outside a ration centre even before the shop opened. After two hours of the queue, an official emerges and announces: “Jews step aside and go home, no bread for you today.” After another two hours the official reappears: “non-Communist go home, no bread for you today.” After yet another two hours the official emerges to announce: “Comrades go home no bread today.” One angry Communist in the queue remarks to another: “Why do Jews always get preferential treatment.” True enough, scarcity does make us lose perspective of our problems.
In another joke in the book, a woman with a shopping bag walks up to a store and asks: “Any sausages.” The prompt answer was, “No.” Butter? No, Soap? No. Bread? No. Disappointed the woman walks away. Two grocers behind the counter look at each other in amazement. One grocer exclaims to the other: “Whew, what a memory!” In the decades of turmoil, hardship and uncertainty Manipur has been through and at a high point currently, as in the picture portrayed of Poland of the 1970s, few actually remembers what normality once was like. Manipur’s current abnormalities and scarcities, its queues outside petrol pumps at the slightest rumour of strikes and blockades; its periodic doses of bloodletting stories; its slow but certain descent into a soulless darkness where horrifying news of torturing and killing innocent women and even toddlers are nothing to be ruled out. To make it worse, these horrifying abnormalities are today coming to be normalised.
Editor, Imphal Review of Arts and Politics and author
