NEWS that the Centre has sanctioned Rs 947 crores for the relief of Manipur’s victims of violence might delight those in the business of governance because not all the funds will go towards the proposed project. As is the practice in India’s North East development funds are not accounted for. Funds tend to leak into private pockets of ministers, bureaucrats and even militant outfits. Of the 947 crores, Rs 424 crore would go towards operating the relief camps set up after the outbreak of violence in May 2023. Another amount of Rs 523 crore is being used to rehabilitate the displaced persons. Answers to RTI queries reveal that 58,881 people are displaced. This is a huge number and the fact that it happened in the first place shows the utter incompetence of the Biren Singh government to handle the situation with alacrity the moment it happened on May 3, 2023. Before so many deaths were inflicted, women raped and homes burnt, especially in and around Imphal, the central government should have acted with speed and imposed President’s Rule so that the Centre can take control of the situation. What was needed at the time to douse the fires was an independent law keeping force that would treat all trouble mongers with the same yardstick and not bend over backwards to please any single group. Unfortunately, the Central Government played politics and allowed Biren Singh to continue despite knowing that he favoured a particular valley-based militant outfit that appeared to have been trained to wreak vengeance on the Kuki-Zo people.
The outbreak of the riot is linked to the Manipur High Court’s order to speed up granting of Scheduled Tribe status to the Meiteis who are largely Hindu by religion. Only later the Manipur High Court was told that it had overstepped its brief and had no locus standi to pass such an order. By then the violence had escalated and people had to literally run for their lives; more so the large number of Kuki-Zos working or staying in Imphal and the Meiteis living in Churachandpur and Moreh areas. In no other state of this country is there an example where people of the same state have drawn clear boundaries beyond which the warring parties are not to cross. Hence the Kuki-Zo were relegated to the hills and the Meiteis to the valley. Life was completely disrupted with children and youth having to give up their education and live in relief camps for years. Many babies were born and grew up in those relief camps with just the bare necessities of life provided to them. A total of 7894 homes were completely gutted, 2646 homes were partially destroyed, but, only about 3000 pre-fabricated houses have been constructed and most of them in the Imphal valley. The homes that went up in flames in Imphal valley belonged to Kuki families that have lived and grown up there for decades. They could not salvage anything including important documents.
The human rights violation during this Manipur crisis is beyond imagination. Even if Manipur was to limp back to ‘normalcy’ the losses suffered by many during this conflict can never be recovered. There’s the economic loss but more than that the gruesome deaths inflicted by one group on the other will remain a constant reminder of people of different ethnicities being forced to live under an iniquitous rule where the government is run by the majority community with no empathy for minority groups. That’s the stark reality of Manipur.
