By Amar Yumnam
In times of crises, nothing gives as much solace as the classics are. Anyway, that is exactly why they are called classics. One best novel to read is the A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. The opening paragraph of it has made to the evergreen insight into social life: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”
Paining Heart:  But there are both a comedy and a tragedy in the classics as one reads depending largely upon the circumstances of social life the reader lives along.  The tragedy is all the more real and painful if the tragic elements are more prominent in the social context of the reader than the constructive ones. This seems to be exactly the case in Manipur. It is as if we are passing through the worst of times, age of foolishness, epoch of incredulity, season of darkness, winter of despair, and we all moving in the direction of Hell, with the noisiest authorities superlatively indulging in acts of evil.

Despite the trauma of the Industrial Revolution, there were discernible signs of scope of recovery for the downtrodden and a key character in Dickens’ Tale could feel before passing onto the other world thus: “I see Barsad, and Cly, Defarge, The Vengeance, the Juryman, the Judge, long ranks of the new oppressors, who have risen on the destruction of the old, perishing by this retributive instrument, before it shall cease out of its present use. I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss, and in their struggles to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long years to come, I see the evil of this time and of the previous time of which this is the natural birth, gradually making expiation for itself and wearing out.”  In a way very resembling of Henry Vaughan’s Dead Be Not Proud, the lady left her world feeling thus: “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go than I have ever known”.  In the case of Manipur today such optimism for the future would be plain luxury.

Non-Emergence of Productive Entrepreneurs: We learn from the development history of the world that periods of crises are equally periods of opportunities. The opportunities are to be exploited and the dividends from those efforts would replace the pains of crises in due course. But the utilisation of opportunities as instruments for advancement and moving out of the crises had never been an easy task. Besides not being easy, the task could not be undertaken by any one. The challenging circumstances would bring into the forefront a group of people ready to brave the uncertainties and carry forward the human challenges of taking the societal evolution forward. This group of people are known as entrepreneurs.

Here we must hasten to add that entrepreneurs are not a single dimensional group of people and they do come in different shades. There are those who think good and who are good in “the use of imagination, boldness, ingenuity, leadership, persistence and determination” in adding to the goods and services available for social purposes. These are what are called in Economics as productive entrepreneurs. They are the group of people largely responsible for the levels of development achieved by the now developed countries of the world.

But as mentioned above, entrepreneurs can come in different shades, and there could be non-productive and destructive ones as well. This latter group has become more relevant for appreciating the situation in Manipur. This land of jewels has had more than her share of crises, but ironically the kind of productive entrepreneurs has failed to emerge in this land. We need to seriously delve into this issue.

In the case of the now developed countries, the entrepreneurship genre emerged from the general public. The prevailing social, political and economic milieu was such that the productive entrepreneurs would always prevail upon the opposites. But unfortunately in the case of Manipur the atmosphere has been so continuously and consistently compromised that the space for play by the productive entrepreneurs has shrunk below viability. Their space has suffered from twin blizzards. One they have been made targets of splinter groups of opportunist organisations. Two, the entrepreneur class (the destructive type of course) in Manipur in recent times has become synonymous with the class that takes decisions for the state. This being the case, the scope for emergence of any entrepreneur of the positive variant has been stunted. The political lipstick of the land has only added woes to this scenario. But as Ralph Waldo Emerson writes in one of his essays: “So use all that is called Fortune. Most men gamble with her, and gain all, and lose all, as her wheel rolls. But do thou leave as unlawful these winnings, and deal with Cause and Effect, the chancellors of God. In the Will work and acquire, and thou hast chained the wheel of Chance, and shall always drag her after thee. A political victory, a rise of rents, the recovery of your sick or the return of your absent friend, or some other quite external event raises your spirits, and you think that good days are preparing for you. Do not believe it. It can never be so. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.”