Disconnect between PR and people The tussle will have no winner

It is not a question of who will win, for there can be no winner in this case. On the one side is the PR administration hell bent in going ahead with the Sangai Festival and on the other hand are the internally displaced persons who have come out as one to oppose the holding of such a festival when thousands are still languishing in different relief centres set up across the State. Just how intense is the opposition to the proposal to hold the festival can be gauged from the vast sit-in-protests staged at different places as well as the intense stand off witnessed at the Sangai Festival venue. Two injured in the stand off is the initial report that has been received but it is not the number that matters at this moment, but the intensity of the opposition as well as the determined stand adopted by the PR administration. In such a stand off, it is Manipur which loses. Already the social media is rife with many pitching in and voicing their personal stand on the issue and this is where it would be wrong to view the Sangai Festival of year 2025 as just a tourism festival or a festival that comes once in a year. To the Government this is the time to demonstrate to the outside world that everything is fine and good in Manipur and normalcy is just a handshake away but to the IDPs this is nothing but an attempt to sell a fabricated tale. For over two years thousands of people have been languishing in different relief centres, with nothing to show at the ground that efforts have been taken up to ensure that they can return home anytime in the coming days. To Manipur and her people, it has been a case of merely surviving in a state of existence where the National Highways have literally been made off limits. The buffer zones continue to exist and check posts have been set up at all these sites to ensure that people from either side do not cross into the territory of the other. Normalcy is still a mirage and far from acknowledging the truth, here is a case of the Government trying to normalise the abnormal, is the stand of the IDPs who have come out against the proposal to hold the festival. As noted in an earlier commentary here, the politics of normalcy is blatantly visible and this is something which Raj Bhavan should acknowledge. Much more than likely that the opposition to the proposal to hold the Sangai Festival would not have faced such a stiff opposition if New Delhi had lived up to its assurance and thrown open the National Highways to all sections of the people. Likewise the opposition would not have been that intense if efforts taken up to allow the IDPs to return to the place they once called home had been visible to the people. This is where it becomes important for Delhi and Raj Bhavan to acknowledge the truth that nothing of substance has been taken up to ensure normalcy and if only such efforts had been taken up and transparently at that, then the opposition to the Sangai Festival would not have been that intense.
This is not the time to play politics, a politics of conveying the wrong message that everything is fine now in Manipur. It is this which Manipur cannot accept. The point is simple and clear. This is not the time to host a festival and in the process convey the message that normalcy has returned to Manipur. At best it could mean that Delhi and Raj Bhavan have refused to accept the reality and want the world to believe that under Central administration, everything is hunky dory in Manipur. At worst it means that the PR administration gives two hoots about the sentiments of the people and does not care to think that people have been left homeless for over two years. And it is the latter which the IDPs have taken note of. The politics that is being played over the misery of the people is not acceptable. Being the Government and with all the resources at its disposal, the PR administration will go ahead with the festival, but it should not be forgotten that the spirit of holding the festival stood defeated the moment the IDPs started voicing their opposition. And this will certainly not go down well with the dispensation at Delhi, for Manipur with all its flaws and shortcomings is not blind to the fact that whatever comes from the men in positions of power at Imphal are things that have been fed from Delhi. The disconnect between the people and the power centres is too glaring to miss.