More than a year since an ethnic conflagration flared up, resulting in 221 deaths and the displacement of nearly 50,000 people, something remains rotten in the State of Manipur. The conflict has now spread to hitherto peaceful districts such as Jiribam even as the Imphal valley and other areas have seen rising extortion and abductions. The increase in armed militias in both the valley and hill areas, who are armed with weapons looted from constabularies, has contributed to this situation. For the past year, the Union government has sought to maintain a tenuous peace by subjecting the State to a de facto imposition of the provisions of Article 355 of the Constitution, without officially announcing them, even as it continues with the same political leadership so as to provide a fig leaf of power to the Chief Minister who is from the Bharatiya Janata Party. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been barely involved even to seek a humanitarian pause in the conflict and to work towards a peaceful resolution, while Home Minister Amit Shah routinely calls up security briefings, but to little avail. In the latest meeting with a host of security and administrative officials, the Chief Minister was not invited. The Union government’s indecisive vacillation and the State government’s inability to rise above its leadership’s ethnic biases have ensured that the Manipur conflict remains on a slow burn even as the electorate in the State has already given a strong message on this situation. In the general election, the Opposition Congress party scored a decisive win in the Inner and Outer Manipur constituencies, despite the blatant intimidatory tactics by the militias to deter voters, especially in the valley.
The writing on the wall is clear. The persistence of the status quo is doing little to resolve the conflict and is only furthering the ethnic divide. The Union and the State governments must heed the people of Manipur’s call for change. A change in leadership is now inevitable at the helm of affairs of government but a mere shifting of chairs will not suffice. There must be a renewed attempt to curb the antisocial militias and to disarm them in the hill areas and in the valley, while simultaneously ensuring that civil society actors, who are committed to peace and amity cutting across ethnic sections, are empowered to talk to each other and work out the modalities of bringing back normalcy. The representatives of the governments in the neighbouring States and the newly elected parliamentarians can also help in bringing about a reconciliation between the hostile ethnic groups. But all this can happen only if there is a decisive change in the current state of affairs in Manipur.