NON-ENTERPRISING ATTITUDE: ECONOMIC BANKRUPTCY OF ARUNACHAL

Until recently, our land has been described as 'Hidden Land', ostensibly for reasons such as remoteness and isolation of the whole area, rendered by the rugged-rocky, inhospitable terrain from the rest of the world. As the rays of the modernization dawn here too, every walk of life and outlook of the people have remarkably changed. This exposure to intricacies and complexities of modern-day life has, undoubtedly, widen the scope of growth of people; but having, for so long been, reeling under miseries and hardships inflicted upon us by unfriendly topography like difficult hilly terrain, undulating landscape and heavily dense, not excluding isolation from the rest of the world, we seem to blindly accept everything as a boon without much concern for the after-effects or hung-over. Our virgin minds have been lured and enslaved by the fruits of modernization; souls have been engulfed by lime-light of modern world. The tempting modern life-style has initiated a mad-dash rush towards modernization in every sphere of life. Unfortunately, the unsophisticated brain is no match to giant, rather boundless realities of this present world, and this uncontrolled infatuation with all its implications, in turn, has created ripples in our primitive minds, leading further to confusion, restlessness and turbulence.

Essentially, to get along and sail atop the tides of present world of globalization, it is indispensable that we introspect ourselves and re-orient our attitudes, aspirations and deeds for peaceful life, better future and prosperous Arunachal. Our approach to life-style, undoubtedly, is definitely catching-up with the global trends; unfortunately, our attitude with respect to socio-economic and political conditions, specifically, modern economics is as slow as snail’s walk and dismally poor.

Money has seeped into the traditional economy of the tribal and village society and disintegrated the age-old barter system. Though barter system still persists, the monetization of every aspect of rural economy is increasingly shattering and unwinding the well-knit fabrics of community-feeling and brotherhood. In addition, it has resulted in unsustainable resource utilization, further hampering the community/common pool resource. The society is passing through a dangerous phase- transitional phase- which marks both economic anxiety and social dilemma.

Population of the state is touching new high every year. Also, the proportion of unemployed youth, uneducated & educated and unskilled & skilled, together is alarmingly increasing. Despite growing awareness and changing outlook of the people, the mindset is still predominantly vaguely progressive, evidently dull and rigidly orthodox. Every body prefers to play safe-hands and accordingly run after govt. jobs- whatever the grade or level. Most of us are more than content to have even a clerical job. Truly, our general attitude is shamefully non-enterprising. Under these circumstances, with burgeoning job-seekers and shrinking govt. jobs, the state is heading towards an inevitable economic doomsday.

As economics predominantly governs the daily affairs of life, the economic uncertainty and economic anxiety among vulnerable, youthful minds of unemployed, non-enterprising citizens of the state is genuinely a cause of serious concerns. Certainly, the rampant corruption, intricate red-tapism and wide-spread insincerity, negligence and malfunctioning of govt.machineries and bureaucratic hierarchy are to blame for all the odds engulfing the state. Interestingly, the people are no less responsible for the state of affairs of the state. While, on one hand, we are dangerously obsessed with the thought of tribal pride and consider it against our ego and sentiments becoming shopkeepers, pulling rickshaws, etc, on the other hand, we talk of lack of scope and unavailability of opportunities; but the fact is that we are, as pointed out before, ourselves non-enterprising and very reluctant to seek-out for new ventures and create new avenues.

Regrettably, we never mind nearly exhaust ourselves physically, get excessively emotionally fatigued and mentally tired working long hours in our fields and jhums under skin-scorching sun and incessant rains and thunderous storms, not excluding many other sufferings still meeting merely our sustenance needs or resorting to such unlawful activities as theft, extortion and the like as is evidently growing rapidly among youth.

Hence, it is no wonder that Arunachal is a dead lot of consumers. Honestly, are we producing anything? Are we exporting anything to other states? Well. We can get plenty of excuses like lack of infrastructure, poor road connectivity, absence of market and so on. Notwithstanding these facts, honestly, we lack the spirit of entrepreneurship and business sense. Contrary to ours, the state of Mizoram is notably performing in the field of entrepreneurship and self-employment generation. The mizos are the most enterprising of all the north-easterns. Dignity of labour is ingrained in their thoughts and deeds. Any lawful economic activity is worth respect, irrespective of nature and type. This is what they exactly believe in, which, in turn, perennially infuses and nourishes them with the pride and satisfaction. Consequently, the per capita income and living standard is impressively high. In Arunachal, we solely depend upon others (People from other states) right from repairing of shoes and trimming of hair to construction of houses. Introspectly, we are ourselves responsible for unemployment situation. We are unconciously, yet knowingly helping in the out-flow of our states's money. While we enrich others, ourselves get impoverished. It's a sure economic bankruptcy for the state.

Therefore, it's time that we inculcate a sense of work-culture. We need to learn, know and feel a sense of pride and satisfaction for any kind of work. Work is worship; as long as it is a livelihood activity and not unlawful, it is no bad or inferior work; rickshaw-pullers, drivers, shopkeepers, hawkers and highly-paid, handsomely-dressed, white-collar job-goers are all same. In fact, what is essential is work ethics and respect for dignity of labour. Better late than never; but must or else........

ARUNACHALEE LANGUAGES: AT THE BRINK OF DEATH

A language serves as an outlet for human expressions, emotions, feelings and thoughts. It is the manifestation of evolution of human mind, which in turn, depicts the accumulation of ideas, facts, events, experiences, things, etc. through the times. Evidently, growth and development of any language is intricately associated with unwinding of vast unknown and multi-dimensional enlargement of knowledge-base. It represents the collective wisdom and communal consciousness of any group of people. Obviously, language is the core of civilizational evolution.
Arunachalee languages, therefore, are the foundation of our glorious existence, unending quest and relentless journey through the times. Our Indigenous languages serve as the repository of traditional and indigenous knowledge in terms of vocabulary, messages, perceptions and understanding of the Nature and its events and processes. Over the years, in our urge to quick modernization, the very foundation of our civilizational evolution is weakening and seemingly vulnerable. Arunachalee languages are being ignored and pushed to the verge of extinction. Consequently, the traditional and indigenous knowledge-base is shrinking, rather vanishing.
The sole reason for the diminishing popularity of our languages may be attributed to the lack of its use. There may be various reasons for non-use of our native languages, again, like being away from the native place since childhood, negligence of one’s own culture, and for that matter, language in the name of being sophisticated, so on and so forth. In today’s age of globalization, being away from the native place can’t be helped with. But then, this shouldn’t be any excuse for not knowing one’s own mother-tongue. If it is, then it shows a serious shortcoming on the part of parents concerned. Those children who are brought up far way from their native place would certainly not be perfect in so far as their knowledge and understanding about their tradition, culture and language is concerned; nobody is perfect; but the mere fact that they are trying should be worthy of appreciation. If it’s the case of negligence to one’s own culture and language in the name of modernization or sophistication, it’s totally absurd.
Interestingly, our Academia & Intellectuals are striving hard to create/develop a common script for our Indigenous languages, but this hasn’t met with much success owing to composite of such factors as severe disagreements & politicking among themselves, arbitrariness, obscurity, non-feasibility, impracticality, non-realistic and unscientific nature of those developed yet, though each one, undoubtedly, has devoted substantial span of years pioneering, researching and working on it respectively. Attempts are, meanwhile, on to sort-out the shortcomings and arrive at all-acceptable, amicable and wholesome solution. As such, periodically, workshops and seminars are held towards this end.
Having witnessed 2 or so such gatherings attended by imminent and esteemed personalities of our state, we have only dislike and regretful feeling for such gatherings. We wonder, what a sheer waste of time, energy and money? Essentially, these gatherings should aim at bridging the differences, cementing consensus and recognizing individual contribution. Unfortunately, influential and affluent wrest/hijack the occasions or platforms to reinforce their own work at the cost of rest of the contributors. Inevitably, nothing is achieved, and every good-will is destroyed and collective wisdom and communal consciousness get disarrayed.
However, the point here isn’t about highlighting the dismal state of affairs surrounding development of common script or settlement of differences. A script, no doubt, is needed, but the need of the time is the realization among masses of the dwindling indigenous languages and consequent implications associated with the loss of indigenous cultural legacy of our land, which is tremendously unique.
While, on one hand, we aren’t even a bit concerned about the dwindling of our native languages, on the other hand, we blissfully showcase our prowess and command over alien languages, as if knowing alien languages is some kind of Godliness or extra-ordinary achievement. No offence to any language, but the extent to which some alien languages like Hindi, Assamese and English have penetrated deep into the fabrics of the Arunachalee society is alarming. Today, the sight of an average Arunachalee guy/gal communicating or interacting with another fellow Arunachalee of the same tribe in either Hindi or Assamese or English is quite common. This apart, we have a whole lot of Arunachalee families today where the kids speak to their parents in some non-native language, even though the parents may interact among themselves in their mother-tongue. Talk about paradoxes! If the former case is disheartening, then the latter case is simply disgusting. This calls for a sincere introspection within ourselves as to where we went wrong?
Having said that, we must also clarify that by all these arguments, we don’t intend to urge upon the Arunachalees to shun away the foreign languages completely. In fact, the more languages one knows, the wider section of people one can reach out to. The crux of the problem lies not in speaking any alien language, but in replacing it with one’s own mother-tongue. One should know where to draw the line while speaking/learning any alien language, and that it certainly shouldn’t be at the cost of one’s own mother tongue.


---NYALI ETE,
& LOD NAKKU
(Assistant Surveyor Works), Civil-Hydro-Power,
Govt. Of Arunachal Pradesh, Itanagar