By Amar Yumnam
The significance of leadership in a nation's progress is well established and accepted among development thinkers around the globe. This is not just because of the persons playing the role of leadership, but rather because of the perspectives they provide to the nation and population. Ultimately, it is ideas that rule the world. The South East Asian countries could show the world the possibilities of growth based on the sheer strength of perspectives and ideas. China's emergence as the major economic power today is because of the perspectives and ideas the country had adopted. As the twentieth century's leading philosopher Bertrand Russell said, economic power is a derivative power. The people are to be led to pure, hard and effective labour by the perspectives provided by the leadership. It is from this labour that the economic strength of the land would emerge.
Manipur's Leadership, The Idiots: Given the relative as well as the absolute economic strength of Manipur today, it is imperative that the land and people are given a perspective by the leadership of the land so that the derivative economic power can be built up, albeit slowly. It is in this context that we observe and study minutely what the leaders speak on important occasions. One such occasion was the Statehood day recently observed. On this occasion, we were exposed to two speeches by two cabinet ministers both by the print and the electronic media. I, for one, was utterly disappointed by the absolutely disgusting and perspectiveless utterances of the ministers. The time is long gone when any Tom, Dick and Harry minister could speak anything and get away with that. Since the times are critical and because of the sincere social sector interventions from about the 1950s to the 1970s, a fairly strong base of critical analysts have already emerged and been created in the land. One may win elections, not because of the owned merits, but because of the weaknesses of the democratic process in place. One may thus become minister as well. But given the complex and critical realities we are passing through, we expect any and every one of them to at least display application of mind and attempt to provide a perspective to get out of the mess we are in. But what we have been put through all along was to bear with rubbish occupation of space and time. The utterances emanating from the mouths of the ministers were all devoid of any perspective, either of history or of future whereas the occasion was for reflection on the past and provision of a vision for the future. The occasion was not a political occasion but a national one. But the speeches and the contents of the speeches belonged nowhere. However these are the people playing the role of leadership here in our own land and at this crucial juncture.
Overall Grudges: The Indian policy for the region and towards the region has been a matter for active anguish for the people here. Every time we hear about tourism development, Look East Policy statements and such related issues, the pretensions are well established. In this age of globalisation, we have a condition where foreigners are subject to procurement of special permission for entering and the government is talking of tourism. What a ridicule on us collectively!!! The region and India have been together for well over sixty years, and the region has contributed its might in sporting and other arenas to bring glory to India. But India still has to cultivate a culture of trusting the region. India is imagining to herself the role of playing a global player but does not think it fit to relate the region with the rest of the world. Well such a petty and low level mind-set can never be a foundation for a nation's efforts to build capacity for emerging as a global power. A nation is a whole of the parts. Unless the parts are fully strengthened, the whole will always remain weak in one way or another. This building of holistic strength necessitates a strong culture of trust, which of course is vastly absent in India's policy making today. The time is now to allow the region to flourish in every direction by giving the freedom to collaborate with foreigners on myriad fields. One step in this direction would be to remove the restrictions on the entry of foreigners in right earnest.
The Coupling: While we have been thus maintaining grudges against Indian policy making in the region, it now seems that the continuance of largely nonsensical policies are fundamentally because of the lack of perspective in the regional leadership. In a large polity, it is expected that the central leadership are supplemented and complemented by the regional leadership in the evolution of national and regional policies. This is the ethics of policy making in a nation.
But, as mentioned above, the regional leadership is characterised by an absence of a thinking mind. Such a leadership would never be contributing to national policy making, and naturally the region would pay the price for this in terms of absence of relevant policy interventions. National distrust coupled by the idiocy of the regional leadership has been playing havoc in the region for rather too long.
This article was published on The Sangai Express