Manipur crisis speaks of failed governance, broken trust

On May 29, when Union home minister Amit Shah landed in Manipur, a conflict zone, he was met with banners welcoming him to Imphal. A section of the media gushed over the arrival of the “man with a mission”. No questions were asked about why the home minister had been missing for almost a month when violence, arson, loss of lives and property racked the state. Was it because law and order is a state subject? What happened to the double-engine government, asked the people (but not the media). What happened to its heavy security and intelligence network, which failed to prevent violence in the tiny Imphal valley?

Even as Amit Shah visited the hills on May 31, including hotbeds Kangpokpi and Churachandpur, Kuki villages were being set on fire. In Imphal, the chief minister was appealing to the Meitei community to keep the curfew and not block the roads. The internet ban was being extended till June 5.

The failure of the security forces to control the situation has already led to a large number of Kuki–Chin tribespeople to seek shelter in Mizoram, in Meghalaya’s capital Shillong, and wherever else they may have relatives. Manipur CM Biren Singh is widely perceived by them as being complicit with the rest of the Meitei community.

While making a presentation on poppy cultivation in the hills of Manipur, Singh had vowed that he would “wage a war” on poppy growers. On his Facebook page, the chief minister called the Kuki junglees and illegal migrants. There seems little doubt that he provoked the Meitei and alienated the tribes. Senior journalist Pradip Phanjoubam has gone on record to say that Biren Singh has, since his second term as chief minister in March 2022, pushed through rash policies without consultation. Biren Singh had become ‘arrogant’, he had said.

The ongoing civil war in Myanmar has complicated the situation further. Persecuted by the military junta there, many have fled Myanmar and sought shelter in both Mizoram and Manipur, where they have or feel a kinship. The Kukis here feel they are bound to extend humanitarian help and shelter to the refugees. But N. Biren Singh’s strident call to drive out all illegal migrants has caused resentment and fear.

It is not just a breakdown of law and order that one sees in Manipur, some observers believe. The easy availability of sophisticated arms and ammunition makes for well-armed outfits on both sides, each emboldened by the technologies of war to attack the other. They at least are convinced it is war.

Meitei extremist outfits such as the Arambai Tengol and Meitei Lupeen allegedly raided the Imphal police training centre and looted arms. It is now said that the weapons were actually handed over to them. It would be understandable, even expected, at this juncture for the Central government to ask the Manipur chief minister to step down, impose Article 356 (President’s Rule) and take control of the situation. But political considerations seem to dictate that Biren Singh should continue.

Words like “normalcy” or “peace” tend to make light of the grievous situation in Manipur which, to me, appears irreparable in the near future. The crisis of confidence is so deep that it would be naive of the Union home minister to expect that his visit will be the salve to heal these deep emotional, psychological and physical wounds. The challenge 0f rehabilitating victims and helping them to rebuild their lives from scratch is enormous.

The hill people say they can no longer trust their Meitei neighbours not to do them harm at some future date. The Meitei folks settled in the hills reciprocate the feeling and suffer from a similar estrangement. Can they now live together again under the same dispensation in the same state? Can the Kuki who escaped from Imphal return? Can the Meitei who fled from the hills ever return to the same mixed village?

Manipur is a tiny state and cannot be bifurcated without serious economic consequences. What appears to be more practical and feasible is to grant the tribes the autonomy to govern themselves, as demanded. The minority tribal peoples living in states with a non-tribal majority have always demanded Schedule VI status under the Constitution, which grants them the right to develop at their own pace and not be pushed into conflict with their customary practices. Several states have this arrangement already, and this is an option that the Manipur hill tribes now want more than ever.

Meghalaya continues to have district councils under Schedule VI even though the state is ruled by a tribal majority. In Assam, the hill districts of Dima Hasao, Karbi Anglong, West Karbi and the Bodo Territorial Region also enjoy a degree of autonomy and, above all, control over issues of law and order.

Under the Schedule VI dispensation, the Bodo Territorial Region is seen to have progressed better, developing more institutions of learning, including the Bodoland University and other technical institutions. However, the hills of Manipur — whether in the Naga-inhabited areas or the Kuki-Chin areas — have few to no institutions of learning. The medical college in Churachandpur is an apology of a teaching hospital and suffers from financial and manpower constraints.

Article 371 (C), which mandates the creation of hill-area councils (HAC), they say, has not been implemented in letter or spirit. The state government in Manipur has never been keen to share power with the HAC, so the councils have been functioning with little by way of financial resources or administrative authority. This is a deliberate ploy to keep the tribal peoples dependent on the state government, given the resources allocated for the hills are meagre and hardly worth withholding.

While poppy cultivation is a menace, as it has destroyed at least two generations of Manipuris (across communities), this threat can be eradicated through an alternative economic model. Poppy growers deserve sufficient time to give up their time-tested cultivation practices and get into productive agriculture that generates revenue without claiming lives. How this is to be done must be the brief of the hill MLAs.

What also needs to be revisited is the set of suspension of operation (SoO) agreements between various militant outfits. How much is really invested in getting these youth who took up arms to return to the mainstream? They need to be psychologically weaned from a lifestyle of extortion and easy money, and persuaded to sweat it out for a living. Successive governments, unfortunately have been happy to just sign these meaningless agreements without making the groups actually surrender arms into the safe custody of the state.

There is a load of governance deficit to be addressed in Manipur, certainly, and that is the expectation from the government in New Delhi as much as in Imphal, to acknowledge the Manipuri people spilling into the streets for the attention of Parliament. Organising extravagant events and spewing political rhetoric are simply not enough.