​Too little, too late: on Manipur and the Home Ministry’s self pat   Politics & News

Conflict resolution and peace building, or the absence of both, and the prolongation of strife are dependent upon certain conditions. If there is a “winning side” in the conflict that seeks to restitute and reconcile with the losing side, then there is a guarantee of peace. If there are no winning sides but a honourable compromise is worked out between two sides, then too there is the possibility of lasting peace. There are also situations when conflicts are not resolved but a tenuous yet steady peace is maintained through dialogue and discussion. But a situation where violence raises its head time and again, and when actors in the conflict continue to be hostile without even talking to each other, cannot be described as “peaceful”. The Union Home Ministry (MHA) has patted itself on the back by claiming that the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government has managed to “build bridges of unity in the North East… to usher in .. peace with unprecedented success”. But if the Manipur situation where outcomes of the conflagration that raged in May 2023 continue to roil the State with sporadic skirmishes, and recurring crises are anything to go by, then the statement is not only a false claim but is also in line with the regime’s efforts to portray success where failure is apparent in order to win the battle of perceptions.

Soon after this year-end report of the MHA came out, the beleaguered Chief Minister of Manipur, N. Biren Singh, issued an apology for the ethnic violence in the State. This, in any case, is too little too late in the day as his government does not seem to enjoy the confidence of at least one particular ethnic community in the State. For the MHA to portray that the northeast is on the path to peace and prosperity, even as the embers of the ethnic violence in Manipur refuse to die down and restrictive measures are being reimposed, can only be described as burying its head in the sand. In December, the Union government had also reimposed the Protected Area Regime amid “security concerns arising out of influx from neighbouring countries” — a reference to refugees from civil war-torn Myanmar. The MHA also said that it will map demographic data along the Myanmar border to help in the fencing of the international border and stopping infiltration. Again, it will be a grave mistake to bracket refugees fleeing the Myanmar junta’s repression as infiltrators and this might exacerbate already fragile ethnic relations in border States such as Nagaland, Manipur and Mizoram. The MHA must instead focus on getting its act together in conducting the census and working with the State governments to bring out a humane policy of addressing the refugee situation. Short of doing so, the Ministry’s encomiums to itself will be smug self-satisfaction devoid of all meaning.