[dropcap]I[/dropcap]t is a long felt need that our legislators and administrators are given required orientation lessons on the emerging social problems. They need to be updated with this knowledge for convenience in executing their chores. Without arming with this knowledge they will fail to feel the pulse of the people.
Identity politics and related issues are at play conveniently even right down in the lowest strata of our society. If our administrators are not sensitive to this trend we can expect unrest now and then as there are more chances of mishandling the problems. Today any minor incident can be entwined with the ethnic issue and this localized infection often turns into a metastasizing cancer.Contrary to the general belief globalization has indeed sharpened the ethnic consciousness of smaller groups.
Earlier many scholars assumed that economic and social modernization was gradually making the demarcation lines of various religious and ethnic groups blurred. They further assumed that the ‘emerging society would be tolerant, rational, pragmatic, progressive, humanistic and secular.’ However, this assumption was proved wrong. In the words of Prof Samuel P Hungtington, the second half of the twentieth century proved that these hopes and assumptions of the intellectual elites of the first half of the twentieth century, unfounded.
Today, we witness that the ‘who are we’ politics is growing its appeal with time.
In his book ‘The Clash of Civilisations and the Remaking of World Order, Samuel P Hungtington said that ‘we know who we are only when we know who we are not and often only when we know whom we are against.’ This is because we define ourselves in terms of ‘ancestry, religion, language, history, customs…’
So, given this background of our today’s society, in tackling problems the people at the helm should update themselves the situation and ground reality so as to avoid complication. Due to mishandlings of minor cases by the authorities concerned we often see sectarian hatreds that often spiral towards major conflicts.
