Thangkhanlal Ngaihte
No one can deny the widening chasm between the people of Manipur hills and Imphal valley. The Meiteis have been obsessed with “territorial integrity” since 2000 and are intolerable of dissent from the hills. The hill people, comrising various tribal communities, feel neglected and discriminated against.
What fuels this feeling is the over-concentration of infrastructural projects and institutions (including those relating solely to tribal affairs) in the Imphal valley. This, of course, is not the most important factor, but very emotive for insitutions like Manipur University, Central Agriculture University, Regional Institute of Medical Sciences and Jawaharlal Nehru Hospital, apart from the fact that all key government offices are located mostly in the valley. The hill districts have none.
While Imphal and its suburbs enjoy civic and health amenities, sports facilities, including a fullfledged stadium, the state’s second town, Lamka, does not even have a proper football ground. All that it has is a “public ground” for general purpose.
When the government first proposed to set up CAU, there were demands for its location in one of the hill districts. Major institutions like this always bring with them collateral benefits to the area. When the state hosted the National Games in 1999, the expectations were that some of the 27 or so events would be hosted in district towns other than at the Khuman Lampak stadium in Imphal. This has been the norm in other states, but hopes were belied.
This naturally causes disaffection. The skewed picture, development-wise, of the hills and plains may not yet have been such a polarising factor had the inter-community relations in the state not been so bad. In a situation in which the hill tribals do not identify themselves — ethnically, socially and religiously — with the state’s dominant community and structure and feel left out in all spheres, the mismatch is all the more telling.
In such a situation, it seems fair to expect that the government would be accommodative of the hills’ demands and would bend over backwards to assuage their hurt feelings. After all, demands for better representation and a more proportionate share in the development pie are integrative in nature. It is a demand to be accepted, to become part of the mainstream and integrate within it. But chief minister Ibobi Singh and his ministerial colleagues apparently do not see it that way.
Take the case of the National Institute of Technology, proposed to be set up in Manipur this year. This was part of the package promised by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during his visit to Imphal in December last year. As the Central government okayed the project, whose construction cost was pegged at around Rs 35 crore, the state government started looking for a suitable location. Naturally, it prefers the plains over the hills, citing security reasons and all that. And naturally, demands came from the hills that the institution be housed, for a change, in a hill district. Most of the 20 or so NITs all over the country, it may be mentioned, are located not in the capital cities but in regional towns. Also, they are deliberately scattered all over the country as one major aim is regional development.
A peculiar situation arose when the locals of all the three or four localities in the Imphal valley where the government wanted to locate the institute vehemently opposed it, citing that it would encroach on fertile lands and settlements. The locals of all the proposed sites — Kyamgei, Lilong and Lamphelpat/Langol — organised strikes, set up committees and pleaded with the government to locate it elsewhere.
Meanwhile, the proposed institute has provoked another round of agitation in the hills, for opposite reasons. The people of Lamka (60 km from Imphal) organised bandhs and strikes, demanding that the institute be set up there. The Churachandpur District Students’ Union said they had already identified at least two possible sites for it. An online signature campaign, spearheaded by people from the district living outside the state, is also on to press the government to locate the institute in Lamka.
But the state government is unmoved. It denied the institute to those who welcome and demand it; and tried to force it upon those who don’t want it. In the process, it achieved a rare feat of antagonising both the parties, as a local newspaper put it.
The Ibobi government had a golden opportunity to assuage the feelings of alienation pervasive in the hills without it having to exert itself, and defang some of the anti-state campaigns in the process. But it has already squandered that chance. Instead, it helped provide yet another powerful rallying point to all those disintegrative forces who claim all the time that Manipur is Imphal and the hill districts, “outer Manipur”. It, wittingly or unwittingly, vindicated the nay-sayers.
For starters, it was none other than the sitting Tipaimukh MLA, Ngursanglur, who cited the NIT episode in Lamka recently to highlight the step-motherly treatment of the hills by the state government. More are coming, and the government has only itself to blame for it.
www.zogam.com
No one can deny the widening chasm between the people of Manipur hills and Imphal valley. The Meiteis have been obsessed with “territorial integrity” since 2000 and are intolerable of dissent from the hills. The hill people, comrising various tribal communities, feel neglected and discriminated against.
What fuels this feeling is the over-concentration of infrastructural projects and institutions (including those relating solely to tribal affairs) in the Imphal valley. This, of course, is not the most important factor, but very emotive for insitutions like Manipur University, Central Agriculture University, Regional Institute of Medical Sciences and Jawaharlal Nehru Hospital, apart from the fact that all key government offices are located mostly in the valley. The hill districts have none.
While Imphal and its suburbs enjoy civic and health amenities, sports facilities, including a fullfledged stadium, the state’s second town, Lamka, does not even have a proper football ground. All that it has is a “public ground” for general purpose.
When the government first proposed to set up CAU, there were demands for its location in one of the hill districts. Major institutions like this always bring with them collateral benefits to the area. When the state hosted the National Games in 1999, the expectations were that some of the 27 or so events would be hosted in district towns other than at the Khuman Lampak stadium in Imphal. This has been the norm in other states, but hopes were belied.
This naturally causes disaffection. The skewed picture, development-wise, of the hills and plains may not yet have been such a polarising factor had the inter-community relations in the state not been so bad. In a situation in which the hill tribals do not identify themselves — ethnically, socially and religiously — with the state’s dominant community and structure and feel left out in all spheres, the mismatch is all the more telling.
In such a situation, it seems fair to expect that the government would be accommodative of the hills’ demands and would bend over backwards to assuage their hurt feelings. After all, demands for better representation and a more proportionate share in the development pie are integrative in nature. It is a demand to be accepted, to become part of the mainstream and integrate within it. But chief minister Ibobi Singh and his ministerial colleagues apparently do not see it that way.
Take the case of the National Institute of Technology, proposed to be set up in Manipur this year. This was part of the package promised by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during his visit to Imphal in December last year. As the Central government okayed the project, whose construction cost was pegged at around Rs 35 crore, the state government started looking for a suitable location. Naturally, it prefers the plains over the hills, citing security reasons and all that. And naturally, demands came from the hills that the institution be housed, for a change, in a hill district. Most of the 20 or so NITs all over the country, it may be mentioned, are located not in the capital cities but in regional towns. Also, they are deliberately scattered all over the country as one major aim is regional development.
A peculiar situation arose when the locals of all the three or four localities in the Imphal valley where the government wanted to locate the institute vehemently opposed it, citing that it would encroach on fertile lands and settlements. The locals of all the proposed sites — Kyamgei, Lilong and Lamphelpat/Langol — organised strikes, set up committees and pleaded with the government to locate it elsewhere.
Meanwhile, the proposed institute has provoked another round of agitation in the hills, for opposite reasons. The people of Lamka (60 km from Imphal) organised bandhs and strikes, demanding that the institute be set up there. The Churachandpur District Students’ Union said they had already identified at least two possible sites for it. An online signature campaign, spearheaded by people from the district living outside the state, is also on to press the government to locate the institute in Lamka.
But the state government is unmoved. It denied the institute to those who welcome and demand it; and tried to force it upon those who don’t want it. In the process, it achieved a rare feat of antagonising both the parties, as a local newspaper put it.
The Ibobi government had a golden opportunity to assuage the feelings of alienation pervasive in the hills without it having to exert itself, and defang some of the anti-state campaigns in the process. But it has already squandered that chance. Instead, it helped provide yet another powerful rallying point to all those disintegrative forces who claim all the time that Manipur is Imphal and the hill districts, “outer Manipur”. It, wittingly or unwittingly, vindicated the nay-sayers.
For starters, it was none other than the sitting Tipaimukh MLA, Ngursanglur, who cited the NIT episode in Lamka recently to highlight the step-motherly treatment of the hills by the state government. More are coming, and the government has only itself to blame for it.
www.zogam.com
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