Highwaymen in the Hills

Abheek Barman

What do these outfits want? Their demands are varied, from autonomy along clan or tribal lines to plain extortion. One organisation, called the Senapati District Students’ Association, used to stop vehicles at gunpoint, take money and even issue a receipt for payment received. The only constant is the presence of weapons with these folks. Seven, the geographical location of Manipur is crucial to understand its peculiar problems. It shares a long border with Burma.

The areas close to Manipur on the other side of the border are the Kachin and Shan states, near-autonomous territories in Burma that are only loosely administered by its government. For decades, the principal revenue sources in this wild place have been guns and drugs. A bit of both find their way into Manipur, one thing that helps explain the epidemic of drug-addiction that swept the state in the late 1990s, after cross-border movement was liberalised.

Now, Manipur cannot just get up from its uncomfortable location on the map and move to someplace more salubrious. It has to solve its problems with a little help from others and get to where most of the other northeastern states are: stability, peace and growth. There’s a joke in Manipur: a man comes home with two live fish and asks his wife to cook them for dinner. “There’s no kerosene or gas for the stove and no money for firewood. Go, throw the fish back in the water,” she says.

As the man throws the fish back in the water, the fish shout, “Ibobi Singh zindabad.” Now, chief minister Okram Ibobi Singh has to start reclaiming authority from the thugs by breaking the roadblock. This is not difficult: there are laws that allow state governments to do these things, and Ibobi Singh needs to leverage his executive authority to do this. New Delhi must strengthen Singh by repealing the AFSPA in Manipur.

In recent years, the military has been moved from some of the more peaceful areas and insurgency deaths have actually fallen: in 2010, the number was down to 134; higher than Nagaland’s, but lower than Assam’s. This will break the ice between people and government. Irom Sharmila will come out of jail to a hero’s welcome. She should be welcomed back into the mainstream, either in politics or as a leader of civil society movements.

This is extremely important: in Meitei society, women play a very important role as organisers of things as diverse as protest rallies and weekly markets. The thugs will have to be disarmed. That has to be done by the state police, the administration and civilian pressure groups. This will not be easy, but Assam and Nagaland prove that it can be done.