Just 30 days left to step into 2026 Normalcy still a far cry
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Year 2025 is fast coming to an end. In just another 30 days, the world would have stepped into a new year and Manipur will not forget President’s Rule whenever anyone looks back to 2025, 30 days hence. And if 2025 will be remembered as the year of the PR, then many will understand Manipur in two distinct time line, first as the one before May 3, 2023 and the other after May 3, 2023. In short the history of Manipur will never be complete without a look at 2023 and the days that have followed. Hope and optimism usually accompany the coming of a new year, but will 2026 be any different for Manipur from 2025, 2024 or 2023 ? The answer lies with Delhi, Imphal and the people themselves-the people on either side of the clash divide. What is needed is sincerity of purpose and not double talk. It also stands that in the days after May 3, 2023, it is the power players who have pushed aside the interests of the people and have taken it upon themselves to pursue an agenda, an agenda that has refused to take the interests of the common people into consideration. A clear indication that even today, Delhi is still groping in the dark to find an answer that will take Manipur anywhere near the understanding of normalcy. A look back at the reality should tell its own story. In the first few months of the clash, when people from either side were killed, when people were still being driven out of their homes, Delhi looked on, other than pumping in thousands of troops. That this did not help matter at all can be known from the days that followed May 3, 2023. The popularly elected Government was allowed to carry on, but in effect it was Delhi which had come on board, best exemplified by the fact that the Unified Command was given to a man hand-picked by Delhi and who was tasked with the job of heading the Command as the Security Advisor. Chief Secretaries and DGPs are appointed at the discretion of the Chief Minister, but there was nothing to show that the Chief Secretaries and the DGPs who came in after May 3, 2023 were appointed at the discretion of the then Chief Minister. The Union Home Minister and the External Affairs Minister did talk about foreign hands in the continuing turmoil in the State, but that has not stopped Delhi from extending the SoO pact, particularly with a group whose chief is noted as a former MP of Myanmar. At the height of the clash, Editors and representatives of the All Manipur Working Journalists’ Union, were told in no uncertain terms that cracking down on poppy cultivation was not the job of the Assam Rifles, with the addendum that reports of such plantations were regularly fed to the State Government. Now it is somewhat encouraging to see that Assam Rifles troops are engaged in destroying poppy plantations, if the statements received from the security forces are anything to go by ! These are some of the developments which can be recalled instantly when one looks back at the days since the evening of May 3, 2023.
Thirty days hence and if one were to look back at 2025, then surely the flop show of Sangai Festival and the renewed thrust to the demand by the IDPs to let them return home will be remembered. And as pointed out on more than one occasion, the IDPs cut both ways for a large number of Kuki-Chin-Zo folks have also left Imphal and the other valley districts. In as much as the IDPs driven out from Churachandpur, Kangpokpi, Moreh and from the places bordering the hill districts are still surviving in the relief centres, a number of Kuki-Zo displaced folks too are surviving in different relief centres, with quite a number of them having gone to Delhi, Bangalore, Shillong and Guwahati. The National Highways are still off limits to the Meiteis. It will take time for normalcy to return, but what are the steps that have been taken up to restore anything that comes close to the understanding of normalcy ? Only Delhi can answer this, but it should not be forgotten that it is the lack of any such initiatives that has irked the people no end. Obvious that year 2025 will end like 2023 and 2024 with nothing to suggest that the path has been paved for Manipur to start walking the road to normalcy and only a miraculous turn of events will alter this narrative. Another year is set to end and will obviously end like 2023 and 2024.
Thirty days hence and if one were to look back at 2025, then surely the flop show of Sangai Festival and the renewed thrust to the demand by the IDPs to let them return home will be remembered. And as pointed out on more than one occasion, the IDPs cut both ways for a large number of Kuki-Chin-Zo folks have also left Imphal and the other valley districts. In as much as the IDPs driven out from Churachandpur, Kangpokpi, Moreh and from the places bordering the hill districts are still surviving in the relief centres, a number of Kuki-Zo displaced folks too are surviving in different relief centres, with quite a number of them having gone to Delhi, Bangalore, Shillong and Guwahati. The National Highways are still off limits to the Meiteis. It will take time for normalcy to return, but what are the steps that have been taken up to restore anything that comes close to the understanding of normalcy ? Only Delhi can answer this, but it should not be forgotten that it is the lack of any such initiatives that has irked the people no end. Obvious that year 2025 will end like 2023 and 2024 with nothing to suggest that the path has been paved for Manipur to start walking the road to normalcy and only a miraculous turn of events will alter this narrative. Another year is set to end and will obviously end like 2023 and 2024.