Significant silence on Manipur Perfecting ‘othering’
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The chicken neck syndrome continues and the practise of ‘othering’ has been fine tuned to a level that is nearing the stage and understanding of perfection. For over 14 months Manipur has been literally on fire, with buffer zones criss-crossing the land and impacting on the lives of the common people. Yet Delhi continues to hum the tune that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is closely keeping a tab on the situation and which has been eagerly lapped up by Imphal under a Chief Minister who has been described as ‘co-operating’ by none other than the Union Home Minister. The line that the Prime Minister has not spoken a word on Manipur has been silenced with the sentence that he has mentioned Manipur twice in Parliament and in the Independence Day address to the Nation on August 15 from the Red Fort last year, yet Imphal has been silent on why the Prime Minister has not granted an audience even to its first among equals here. For 14 months Manipur has been on the boil and yet the script continues with no indication that it could see a change in the coming days and this is what has irked the people, best exemplified by the fact that the voters roundly rejected the BJP candidate during the Lok Sabha election in the Inner Manipur Parliamentary Constituency while in the Outer the people rejected the candidate supported by the saffron party. This should have said so many things of importance but as things have transpired, this has failed to cut ice with the people who matter. The indifference continues and even as Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman unveiled the road map to a ‘Viksit Bharat’ while presenting the budget for 2024-2025, no mention was made of taking up any sort of measures to assist the over 50,000 internally displaced people who are languishing in the relief centres set up across the length and breadth of the State. The Finance Minister did talk about the devastating floods that submerged many parts of Assam, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Sikkim, but gave a miss to Manipur, which was at the receiving end of unprecedented and heavy rains in quick succession during the last week of May and early part of July this year. Nothing on rehabilitation packages for the internally displaced persons as well as the floods that submerged many parts of Imphal. This was how the budget reflected the reality of where Manipur actually stands in the overall scheme of things of Delhi. One is left wondering whether the omission has been noted by the State Government or not, but the silence on Manipur can also be interpreted as a failure on the part of Imphal to highlight the ground reality to the Centre effectively. Making things more dicey is the fact that there is nothing to suggest that efforts are being put in to take the State to the road of normalcy and this is the ugly reality with which Manipur has had to survive for the last 14 months.
It is not only in the budget presentation that Manipur was omitted, but the place was nowhere there in the Presidential speech delivered some time back. A fact which should be acknowledged and this is when one is reminded of the chicken neck syndrome-an outlook where the gaze of Delhi has always refused to look east of the Brahmaputra and now where its vision is engineered and doctored only by geo-political necessities. An outlook which has been given a life and vigour by the conduct of a para-military force and it is this reality which perhaps led former Additional DG of the BSF PK Mishra to say that a particular Central para-military force must be removed from Manipur to deal with the current situation. As of now, the fighting seems to have ebbed but this is no guarantee that things will continue like this for good. Violence can erupt any time, best exemplified by Jiribam recently and this is where the claim that normalcy has started returning to Manipur found not takers here at all. How can one say that Manipur has started the walk towards normalcy when over 50,000 folks are still surviving in relief centres, how can one say that Manipur is anywhere near normalcy when no Meitei would dare take the Imphal to Dimapur route, cause it has to pass through Kangpokpi ? How can one say that situation has improved when no Kuki will dare enter Imphal and return to the place they once called home ? This is the reality and when political leaders of the day refuse to accept this reality, then it hurts. This is what is happening in Manipur right now and this falls perfectly in line with the omission of anything to do with the place and her people in the budget speech of the Finance Minister and earlier the Presidential address.
It is not only in the budget presentation that Manipur was omitted, but the place was nowhere there in the Presidential speech delivered some time back. A fact which should be acknowledged and this is when one is reminded of the chicken neck syndrome-an outlook where the gaze of Delhi has always refused to look east of the Brahmaputra and now where its vision is engineered and doctored only by geo-political necessities. An outlook which has been given a life and vigour by the conduct of a para-military force and it is this reality which perhaps led former Additional DG of the BSF PK Mishra to say that a particular Central para-military force must be removed from Manipur to deal with the current situation. As of now, the fighting seems to have ebbed but this is no guarantee that things will continue like this for good. Violence can erupt any time, best exemplified by Jiribam recently and this is where the claim that normalcy has started returning to Manipur found not takers here at all. How can one say that Manipur has started the walk towards normalcy when over 50,000 folks are still surviving in relief centres, how can one say that Manipur is anywhere near normalcy when no Meitei would dare take the Imphal to Dimapur route, cause it has to pass through Kangpokpi ? How can one say that situation has improved when no Kuki will dare enter Imphal and return to the place they once called home ? This is the reality and when political leaders of the day refuse to accept this reality, then it hurts. This is what is happening in Manipur right now and this falls perfectly in line with the omission of anything to do with the place and her people in the budget speech of the Finance Minister and earlier the Presidential address.