How conflict is bleeding Manipur dry

A fundamental difference between venom and poison is how toxins enter the victim’s body. As a venom evolution expert describes it, “If you bite it and you die it’s poison, but if it bites you and you die, that’s venom.” The telltale sign of venom is that it is introduced via a wound.

In much the same way, Manipur is a State that is now seeped in venom. Ethnic conflict was the wound and that has been allowed to fester in so many damaging ways that it is now difficult to point to where the toxin is not present.

In 2023, a year documented as the worst year of Internet shutdowns ever recorded, India stood head and shoulders above all other countries with a record 116 shutdowns. It was not a one-off: it is the sixth consecutive year that India tops the list. Of those 116 shutdowns, it will come as no surprise that the maximum number of Internet blockades was seen in Manipur. The State’s longest shutdown lasted a bewildering 212 days.

Also Read | Eyes wide shut: How the state turns away from Manipur’s realities

Internet shutdowns are intentional disruptions, gating or completely blocking access to the Internet within a location. In our interconnected world, it impacts how we work, study or even access medical attention. And crucially, how we document conflict and crisis. As protests have risen in the last few days, the government has reached to this all too familiar tool: Internet operations were banned for five days in September, citing a law and order threat.

How do you measure the cost of violent conflict? Economic damage is certainly one. One estimate is that the cost of India’s Internet shutdowns in 2023 was $585.4 million. With 47 of those 116 shutdowns occurring in Manipur, it is fairly clear which State bore, and continues to bear, the brunt of the financial damage.

Sadly that is only one layer of the economic devastation wreaked on Manipur by wilful misgovernance. In July 2024, rural Manipur experienced the highest retail inflation in India, surging up to 10 per cent. Much of this is down to a crushing and continuous increase in essential food prices that is not unfortunately an anomaly. Manipur has experienced higher inflation rates every month since violence broke out in the State in May last year. Through 2023, the State’s villages saw Consumer Price Index (CPI)-based inflation rates jump to 12.32 per cent in May, 12.98 per cent in June and a still elevated 12.06 per cent in July. For a State where over 70 per cent of its population lives in rural areas, inflation is bleeding every family dry, no matter what their ethnic identity may be.

What about the economic cost to businesses? What do months of unending violence mean for an agriculture-based economy like Manipur? So much of its small-scale industry, from bamboo to handloom to handicraft is people-intensive. In the last nine months, movement of labour has been hit, production and sales quite naturally have been dealt a blow, and then there is the familiar problem of layoffs. A wholly different cottage industry seems to have sprung up, as combing operations yield sniper rifles, pistols, guns, short- and long-range mortars, grenades, and long-range rocket bombs. All in a State that, as far as we know, still has a bona fide Chief Minister, a group of ministers, a governor and the might and muscle of a Unified Command overseen by the Home Ministry.

One would be hard-pressed to understand why the State, and Central leadership, have chosen to let this venom spread. It is akin to running the risk of losing a vital organ. As the Central government’s own Invest India website describes it, Manipur, India’s ‘Gateway to the East’ through Moreh town is the only feasible land route for trade between India and Myanmar and other Southeast Asian countries. What has traditionally been the entry point for all connectivity to Southeast Asia, whether it is the Trilateral Highway or the Trans Asian Railway, is now living under the reality of rocket attacks and drones flying over villages. The ‘gateway’ State is now choked and villages have turned to darkness in order to keep themselves and their children safe as drones fly overhead through the night.

Also Read | Singing in the dark: How artists from Manipur are reacting to the conflict

The venom is spreading to other parts of the body. In FY24, GST collections for the State contracted by a quarter (24 per cent) to Rs.1,095 crore, even as India’s overall GST run saw a healthy double-digit percentage rise. More damning numbers: Manipur’s tourism sector has not been spared either. Data from the State’s Tourism Department logged 1,61,420 tourists in 2022-23. By the following year, the number had shrunk to just under 37,000 visitors. Conflict is clearly not a flattering look for any State.

Now it has a rather different set of grim numbers that are rising. By May this year, 12 months into the conflict, the death toll stood at 226. As fresh violence erupts, 11 deaths have been recorded since the start of September. There are no numbers yet that fully estimate the cost of arson, a figure that stood in the thousands last year. The year 2024 has seen houses, primary health centres, schools and military vehicles torched.

Feeling of powerlessness

There could be two possible reasons for this studied, stubborn disregard of a State in crisis. Either the State and Central governments do not know how to resolve an exigency that has now spiralled out of control, despite throwing the inevitable tools of Internet shutdowns, Unified Command and a purported Suspension of Operations agreement at the problem. So much so that the State government now seems to have turned on its own overlord, the Centre, to protest its feeling of powerlessness.

Or, the current government sees a tactical advantage in allowing things to burn the way they are. Students have taken to the roads to protest, suspicions run high, fear rules the street and there is a firmly entrenched sense of hate and division. Perhaps the ruling establishment will turn to its most recent experiment of flipping States into Inion Territories, as it did in Kashmir.

Manipur is neither India’s largest State nor the richest. Indeed at last measure, it was the third-poorest State in India, with a per capita income of just Rs.7,630 per month. Mark that up against a State such as Telangana for example, where the figure stands at Rs.25,727 per month and the root of the crisis is crystal clear. Much of what has come to pass is the State’s failure to provide economic progress and equity. The anger and discord are by-products of deep-rooted systems of discrimination and exclusion among communities in Manipur.

Whichever way this emerges, there is a greater lesson here. What was once hailed as more of the infamous ‘Chanakya’ strategy where the BJP led NDA consolidated its position in 2019 with a combined tally of 19 across the 25 Lok Sabha seats of the eight Northeastern States, its position has now been reduced to 15 with losses in the recent general election most acutely visible in Manipur. People from the Northeast are realising that the Prime Minister may don the headgear and beat the drums, but the last 12 months of unabated violence, death and displacement have proved that the tyranny of distance remains too far for a single visit, or for care.

Mitali Mukherjee is Director of the Journalist Programmes at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford. She is a political economy journalist with more than two decades of experience in TV, print and digital journalism. Mitali has co-founded two start-ups that focussed on civil society and financial literacy and her key areas of interest are gender and climate change.