Not only infrastructure, Manipur needs empowerment of tribal people

Relief, rehabilitation and development packages are three cornerstones of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s much expected gratis from the peace ground of Churachandpur.

The last two years of ethnic violence and majoritarian angst against the Kuki-Zo community need to be healed with a human touch. Probably, it requires a two-pronged strategy of equitable development and peacebuilding.

It is very encouraging to learn that the Kuki civil society and armed groups, after an extended suspension of operations with the Centre, opened pathways to peace with justice.

Peace with justice in the context of the hills, inhabited by Kuki-Zo people, must be a meaningful response to the experience of discrimination vis-à-vis the valley areas. Asymmetry of representation in the state assembly and control of the valley on the hills over the decades only created a deep sense of marginalisation.

In his much-acclaimed book Infrastructures of Injustice, Naga scholar Raile Rocky Zipao showed how structural injustice does not bring expected fruits out of infrastructural development as it does not create many trading opportunities, markets and cannot soften hard ethnic boundaries in the context of Manipur. Infrastructures like roads, health and schools in the hills, specifically to the tune of 1300 crores for Kuki-Zo inhabited districts, cannot bring much relief to a populace that had suffered huge ethnic violence.

The contentious issue of devolution of funds to the hills remains opaque. The logic of the infrastructural state cannot address the issues of all such structural injustice and everyday majoritarian violence.

Deep-seated prejudicial terming of Kuki-Zo as narco-terrorists, illegal immigrants and their attached religious, linguistic and cultural connotations have already created much distrust between Kuki-Zo and Meitei communities. Memories of violence need to be smoothened by a more deft construction of bridges, in which the Centre can play an effective role by discarding such misplaced notions officially or otherwise. Further evicted villages of the indigenous Kuki people need to be restored across the hills. Added to this, non-recovery of sophisticated weapons and use of not-so-neutral forces in conflictual contexts have already created concerns that need to be urgently redressed. The history of current violence must teach a lesson in neutrality for the state actors, and it must also create a sense of self-restraint among non-state actors as well.

Manipur not only needs infrastructure, but it also needs empowerment of the tribal group through various constitutional provisions. Provisions of the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution of India, autonomy for tribals and other such measures ensuring tribal rights over their land need to be guaranteed. An atmosphere of mutual appreciation of each other’s socioeconomic needs must be created by expanding people’s rights as enshrined in the Constitution. Those who are serious about peace need to think of a political solution by way of empowering the Kuki-Zo and Naga tribes, and not a mere ceasefire. Else, the future won’t hold much promise, and the past and present will have to bear with distorted narratives that perpetuate regimes of repression and uneasy coexistence.

May the hills get more justice, and then peace can dawn. May the valley shine in its glory of harmony and fraternity between groups living side by side. May Manipur, the land of jewels, return to its pristine love, energy and creativity once again.

(The writer is an author and a professor of philosophy at North-eastern Hill University, Shillong)