The idea and implementation
of planned economic development is as old as the country's
independence. But this process has largely bypassed
the Northeast-at least in spirit. Literally, though,
one can still argue that the states in the Northeastern
region have been part and parcel of the planning process
that sets the direction and tenor of economic development.
The First to the Tenth Five Year Plans of the Northeastern
states have undoubtedly been made in the state capitals.
But the absence of a debate on the plans points to
the default of local participation in a meaningful
way, thereby rendering it largely a bureaucratic exercise.
Even more importantly, the idea of planned economic
development has undergone a paradigm shift in recent
times. The guiding motif is no longer self-reliance
as it was in the past, but interdependence on a global
scale. This directional shift has got all the more
reflected in India's 'Look East Policy' that marks
the beginning of an engagement between the Indian
economy and South East Asian economies.
This calls for an urgent
examination of where the Northeastern states are and
what we can do to be a part of the unfolding trend
and process of development. This is why we in MRFD
thought that an issue deserves to be devoted to the
exercise of examining the broad currents of development
economics as understood and embraced in the Northeast.
We begin this exercise by taking up the theme, POLITICAL
ECONOMY: TRANSFORMATIONS, CHALLENGES AND PROSPECTS,
with reference to the Northeast in general and Manipur
in particular. Considering the multi-dimensionality
of the issue of development, the five theme articles
examine the historical root of the process, its current
status as well as the internal contradictions (for
example, the perception of differential pace and scale
of development in the hill areas) unleashed by development.
As we begin from the specific (studies on Manipur)
and move towards the general, it becomes evident that
many of the problems of the 'specific' turn out to
be larger concerns of the region as a whole. Together,
we hope, this would lay the foundations of a development
discourse.
In the first article,
'Manipur's Economy: Historical Roots and Structural
Evolution', Ch. Priyoranjan Singh takes a view on
the transformations that the economy of Manipur has
undergone in the years since its existence as an independent
entity through the colonial period to the present
times. He argues that the economic problems of the
Northeast can never be meaningfully addressed unless
the structural dimensions of each state as well as
the region are first put in the right perspective.
He traces the historical, structural, distortions
suffered by Manipur's economy as well as how that
led to the emergence of a political economy with vested
interest in the perpetration of a tertiarized economy
with a weak productive base. During the pre-colonial
period Manipur had a stable food economy with high
surplus of agriculture along with an extremely weak
and subsistence manufacturing sector. The agrarian
sector was expanding. During the colonial period,
the closed agrarian economy was opened up and the
growth of the export sector led to the commercialization
of agriculture and the economy. A commercial class
of outsiders emerged. The economy was experiencing
export-led retardation. The colonial rule left an
economy with a strong agricultural base. However,
instead of capitalizing on further strengthening of
the agricultural sector, the process of tertiarization
was intensified thereafter at the cost of a rapidly
marginalized productive base. The consolidation of
the hold of the contractor-bureaucrat-politician nexus
sabotaged corrective measures towards real growth
and industrialization. This nexus is responsible for
the persistent high plan expenditure on adminis-tration,
health, education, roads and bridges at the cost of
industry and agriculture. He argues that the productive
base of agriculture and manufacture only can be the
springboard of a resurgent economy.
The thrust of Ch. Priyoranjan's
exposition raises the question whether high plan allocation
on non-productive sectors led to the politics of ethnic
divide on the issue of differential development. E.
Bijoykumar Singh, in his article 'Development Discourse
in Manipur: Hills vs. Valley', argues that development
experience of the valley and hills of Manipur is not
as different as it is often made out to be. Major
development yardsticks, such as, per capita income,
infant mortality, literacy, workforce participation,
all point to this. Development is a shared experience
and unequal distribution is an integral part of it.
He argues that development of the hills would have
been faster had the basic constraints like land tenure
system been tackled on priority basis. But the more
fundamental problem, both at the state and sub-state
level, has been the false paradigm model and co-ordination
failure, according to E. Bijoykumar. The false paradigm
model attributes underdevelopment to inappropriate
advice provided by well-meaning but uninformed, biased
and ethnocentric advisors. The focus now should be
on analyzing the weakness and strength of not only
Manipur but of the entire region. The closer we approach
the true paradigm, the more effective policy interventions
will be. He concludes that once the stakes are laid
out clearly, the heavy cost of coordination failure
will become obvious and efforts for co-ordination
will become more effective.
‘Tradition’ is usually understood in terms of a set of social practices which seek to celebrate and inculcate certain behavioural norms and values usually associated with rituals or other forms of symbolic behaviour. In itself, ‘tradition’ gives to a community or people a sense of ‘authenticity’ in terms of its ‘origin’ and ‘continuity’. However, as a reciprocal ‘other’ of ‘modernity’, it is also associated with being backward, primitive, non-scientific, and emotional. For instance, ‘development’ is often positioned as the demise of a traditional society and a movement towards ‘progress’. Cast as binary opposites, the relation between ‘modernity’ and ‘tradition’ is laden with value judgement, which produces descriptive and prescriptive behaviours and ways of life. This is clearly embedded in the sociologist Talcott Parsons’ schema of social behaviours (pattern variables), both in the individual and societal level—particularism/individualism versus universalism, achievement versus ascription, specificity versus diffuseness, and neutrality versus affectivity.
While sharing Ch. Priyoranjan's
emphasis on the 'productive base of agriculture' and
E. Bijoykumar's 'false paradigm model', M. Iboton
Singh takes a deeper scrutiny into the nature of state
planning. He brings out the significance of giving
emphasis on transports and social sectors and meaning
of industriali-zation based on agricultural production.
In the article, 'Political Economy of Manipur: Transformation
within the Mixed Economy Paradigm', he agrees that
the Five Year Plans of Manipur did very little for
development of medium and large industries. But he
contends that, while industrialization is undoubtedly
desirable, it was not meaningful to attempt to establish
large-scale industries in Manipur which, then, did
not have even the minimum baseline of social overhead
capital. Similarly, he also justifies the high priority
given to road construction and social services on
the ground that inaccessibility and social backwardness
has been the biggest hurdle in the way of the state's
development. But he concludes that the time has now
come to strengthen the productive base of the economy
by investing more in agriculture both in the plain
and hill areas. At present, in the absence of individual
land ownership in the hill areas, the cultivators
cannot have settled cultivation. So the most fundamental
requirement of agricultural development in the hill
areas, he opines, is the reform of land holding system
to confer permanent, heritable and transferable ownership
of land on the individual cultivators. However, the
question of land reform implicates different views
on land and land ownership amongst different communities,
on the one hand, and between the imperatives of modern
state and those of the traditional societies, on the
other hand. This has been a contentious issue. Indeed
land reform has been a part of the controversy around
the differential developments in different parts of
the region.
Eschewing the specific
(like differential development), the fourth contributor
Gulshan Sachdeva argues that the Northeast cannot
be kept isolated from the new trends and forces of
globalization. He holds that the failure of economic
strategy for the region is not because of economic
neglect but because of wrong assumptions and inappropriate
economic policy framework. According to him, the development
strategy has created a totally unbalanced economy
in the Northeast and further that the emerging development
pattern will not be able to face the forces of liberalization
and globalization. He argues for the treatment of
Northeastern economic problems in a normal way rather
than in a 'special tribal way'. He is for demystifying
the region, creating basic institutions of the market
economy and starting work towards linking it with
dynamic Asian economies.
The last contribution
from Amar Yumnam takes the issue on developmental
'paradigm' further by specifically situating it in
terms of political economy in the Northeast. In his
article, 'Development Intervention in the Northeast:
A Critique', Amar Yumnam debunks the overall economic
policy framework of the Central government for having
nurtured and fostered political competition rather
than economic competition. As a result, political
clout of a region/state has become the crucial factor
that dictates the national policy for regional development.
In its wake, the backwardness of states like Manipur
came to be treated on par with the backwardness of
some districts in Maharastra, Gujarat, etc. which,
according to him, may satisfy the static principles
of optimization but not the dynamic needs of building
a pluralistic nation. On another plane, he argues
that the failure of the Northeastern region to articulate
its development agenda has ensured that security concerns
emerged as the guiding principle for all policy interventions
of the Government of India in the region. He finds
the dominant articulations in the region limiting
as those are either particular community-centric or
specific area-centric. While observing that the long-awaited
articulation of an economic agenda for the region
is conspicuously missing, he cautions that the region
is ill prepared to face the challenges that increasing
globalization like the imminent opening up to the
East and the Southeast Asia poses.
In the KALEIDOSCOPE section,
Rekha Konsam's article on 'Lai Haraoba: Discursive
Practices and Cultural Contestations' goes beyond
the descriptive aspect of the Meetei religious practice
of Lai Haraoba, and gives a fresh reading of the same
in the context of Meetei identity. She discusses its
two concerns: communicating with the 'other world'
as also of re-imagining certain identities and re-constituting
certain boundaries. This issue carries only one article
in the KALEIDOSCOPE section due to constraint of space.
Lastly, in TAKE TWO section,
Gopal Guru reviews the previous issue of Eastern Quarterly
in his comment 'Strangling Modernity'. He highlights
the two-directional nature of modernity-of 'strangling'
and 'getting strangled'. He also highlights modernity's
lack of a creeping sense of shame when it attempts
to occupy different space.
We invite your critical
reflection on the views expressed in the theme and
other articles and active participation in taking
the debate forward.
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