Indian police on Monday charged a man with the rape and murder of a 31-year-old doctor, a crime which appalled the country and triggered wide-scale protests.

The discovery of the doctor’s bloodied body at a government hospital in the eastern city of Kolkata on August 9 sparked nationwide anger at the chronic issue of violence against women.

The suspect, named Sanjoy Roy, arrested the day after the murder and held in custody since, was formally charged on Monday with a confidential document of evidence submitted to the court.

“Sanjoy Roy has been charged with the rape and murder of the on-duty trainee post-graduate doctor inside the hospital,” a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) official told AFP.

Roy, widely reported by Indian media to be aged 33, and who had been working as a volunteer in the hospital supporting patients, would potentially face the death penalty if convicted.

Doctors in Kolkata went on strike for weeks in response to the brutal attack.

Tens of thousands of ordinary Indians joined in the protests, which focused anger on the lack of measures for women doctors to work without fear.

While most medics have returned to work, a small group began a hunger strike this month.

The doctors say the West Bengal state government had failed to deliver on its promises to upgrade lighting, security cameras and other measures to protect them.

India’s Supreme Court last month ordered a national task force to examine how to bolster security for healthcare workers, saying the brutality of the killing had “shocked the conscience of the nation”.

The gruesome nature of the attack drew comparisons with the 2012 gang rape and murder of a young woman on a Delhi bus, which also sparked weeks of nationwide protests.

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.

Malwan: A Shivaji statue inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi last year, collapsed on August 26, 2024.
| Photo Credit: PTI

When the statue of King Shivaji collapsed within eight months after it was unveiled in Maharashtra by the Prime Minister, the political wrangling began. The politics underlines the fact that it was not just a statue that fell, it reflects the fraying fabric of a State.

On December 4, 2023, Narendra Modi visited Malwan city in the Sindhudurg district of Maharashtra, where the Indian Navy celebrated its Navy Day. He spoke endlessly about the Maratha empire’s founder. Shivaji is inextricably linked to identity in Maharashtra. The statue reportedly cost Maharashtra government Rs.2.36 crore and it was installed by the Navy.

On August 26, 2024, when the statue fell, videos and photos went viral. Shivaji’s followers were livid. The State and Centre came under fire. Understanding the gravity of the situation, two ministers from the State cabinet, Ravindra Chavan and Deepak Kesarkar rushed to the location. Chavan is the guardian minister of Sindhudurg as well as the Minister for the Public Works Department. The Department had given the tender to the artist Jaydeep Apte.

As people started researching about the artist Apte, they found that he is inexperienced in building a statue of 25 feet. In an interview with a Marathi newspaper, just after Modi unveiled the statue, Apte said that he had no experience and had been making statues of two to four feet. So how did such an ill-experienced artist bag the tender? The buzz is that Apte is close to some of the right-wing organisations from Kalyan City. Chavan is from the Kalyan Dombivali municipal council area. The questions of favouritism are now being raised.

Also Read | Modi’s Mission Maharashtra

Apte said that he made this statue within a record time of a few months. The haste is being linked to Modi’s attempt to cover the ground ahead of the election.

The opposition slammed the governments for being corrupt, insensitive, and negligent on such an important issue. Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA), the opposition alliance, demanded the resignation of Chief Minister Eknath Shinde. The statements from the ruling side were bizarre, to say the least. Shinde, while condemning the falling of the statue, said, “The district collector has told me that there was a high-speed wind of 45 km/hr when the statue fell.” But in the coastal Konkan area, a wind speed of 45 km/hr wind is not considered high speed. Shivanand Bhanuse, the spokesperson of Sambhaji Brigade, an organisation of mainly Maratha community youth, told Frontline, “Shinde’s statement is a joke. This kind of wind speed is very normal. Instead of giving such reasons, he should have apologised.”

Not just Shinde, his cabinet colleague and Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis also made bizarre claims. He said, “An artist and Navy could not have anticipated the speed and the saltiness of winds in the coastal area.” Fadnavis was called out by the Congress leader Satej Patil for this statement. “We expect better answers from Devendra Fadnavis. Do not undermine the Navy for your faults. We are confident of the Navy’s work quality. It is your government who has messed up things,” said Patil.

Deepak Kesarkar, who is Minister for Primary Education and also chief spokesperson for Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena said, “This has happened because there must be something good coming up. We will build a 100-foot-tall statue in the same place.” This was criticised by everyone. Ulka Mahajan, State co-ordinator of Bharat Jodo Abhiyan, a civil society political initiative said, “The entire government has lost all sensitivity. They just think in numbers. You could not raise a 30-foot statue, why are you talking about a 100-ft one? To be more corrupt in the next tender?”

Also Read | Can the two Aghadis join hands in Maharashtra?

The only leader from the ruling side, who understood the gravity of the situation, and took a sensible stand was Mumbai BJP chief Ashish Shelar. He publicly apologised for the incident and said that in the coming days, these shortcomings will be fulfilled with a new and strong statue raised at the same location. “I apologised for the unfortunate incident to all the people of Maharashtra. The mistake will be rectified very soon and all the culprits will face the punishment,” reads Shelar’s statement.

Meanwhile, it has also come to the fore that the PWD’s local assistant engineer wrote to the Navy in the third week of August, telling them about the dilapidated condition of the statue and the urgent need to repair it. The statue was in possession of the Indian Navy. Also, the State government has announced the forming of a technical committee with the Navy to assess the reasons of the collapse. The artist and the consultant of the statue are booked under attempt to murder. Both are absconding.

The Maharashtra Assembly election is around the corner. As ruling leaders make controversial statements, the Opposition MVA has sensed the political opportunity and gave a call for a ‘Malwan Bandh’ on August 28. Congress leader Vijay Wadettiwar, Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Aaditya Thackeray and NCP (Sharad Pawar) leader Jayant Patil led the rally in Malwan. To oppose them, BJP’s local leadership also hit the streets. To make it a Statewide movement, the MVA has also given a call to ‘throw the shoes protest’ on September 1 and 2. It shows the matter is not going to rest for a while. 

Shivaji built the Sea Fort Sindhudurg in 1667. It is still standing in the middle of the sea, despite many storms and monsoon. People across the caste and the religious beliefs worship him.

In March, Wangchuk observed a 21-day-long hunger strike, that he called a “climate fast”, in support of Ladakh residents who have been demanding safeguards under the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution.
| Photo Credit: THE HINDU ARCHIVES

In anticipation of the upcoming Assembly election in Jammu and Kashmir, Sonam Wangchuk—educator, innovator, and climate activist—along with over 100 civil society members from the Union Territory of Ladakh, plans to undertake a foot march from Leh to Delhi. This peaceful protest will begin on September 1 and conclude on October 2, coinciding with Gandhi Jayanti. The Leh Apex Body and Kargil Democratic Alliance, two representative organizations from Ladakh, announced this decision at a press conference in Leh on August 24.

Over the past four years, these organisations have held numerous demonstrations demanding statehood with a legislature for Ladakh, separate Lok Sabha seats for Leh and Kargil regions, and the extension of the Constitution’s Sixth Schedule to Ladakh—a region carved out of the former State of Jammu and Kashmir on August 5, 2019. Despite Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s engagement with Ladakh’s civil society representatives in New Delhi and promises to address concerns related to climate, culture, land, and employment, concrete government action remains pending. On August 26, Shah announced the creation of five new districts: Zanskar, Drass, Sham, Nubra, and Changthang. In an interview with Frontline, Wangchuk, who conducted a 21-day hunger strike in March this year, expressed concerns about the ecologically sensitive region bordering the Line of Actual Control (LAC) with China. He stated that he would resume his hunger strike if the Centre failed to engage Ladakhi leaders in productive dialogue. Edited excerpts:

Also Read | Why the lotus wilted in Ladakh

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