Alternative Arrangement model : Politics of pull and push
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: October 06 2011 -

One thing is clear. The United Naga Council has not been sleeping. The timing appears to have been laboriously worked out, if the 20 days deadline given to the Centre on the Alternative Arrangement model on September 29 is anything to go by.

This means that by October 20, the UNC would have resuscitated the 62 days economic blockade of 2010 just four days before the by election to some of the seats in the Autonomous District Councils is held on October 24.

The statement 'to agitate in the manner it had resorted to last year if the demand for an Alternative Arrangement outside the Government of Manipur is not fulfilled' within the 20 days timeframe submitted to the Centre on September 29, says it all.

The decision to sever all political and administrative ties with the State Government was adopted in the Naga People's Convention held at Senapati on July 1, 2010 and the immediate factor for this can be traced to the election held in the hill areas under the Manipur (Hill Areas) District Councils (3rd Amendment) Act 2008.

This was something which the UNC had vociferously opposed and the election to the ADCs after more than 20 years in 2010 provided the perfect launchpad for the Alternative Arrangement call and this time too the UNC has made sure that it times well with the by election to some of the ADC seats where no elections could be held last year.

That the Alternative Arrangement model as well as the 62 days economic blockade came close on the heels of the tough stand adopted by the State Government to bar the entry of Th Muivah to his birth place at Somdal village in the first week of May last year is something that cannot be dismissed entirely as a co-incidence.

So far unsaid but nevertheless which looms large over the Alternative Arrangement model and the boycott of the election to the ADC last year is the Greater Lim aspiration championed by the NSCN (IM) and which has been passed down to the Naga frontal organisations in Manipur and Nagaland.

The UNC is one of the most prominent social organisations representing the Naga community to have taken the Greater Lim call to the streets of Manipur, more particularly to the National Highways that are the only existing lifelines of the State.

In as much as the Alternative Arrangement call may be a protest against the election to the ADCs under the 2008 amendments, it is also a call for the demand of a Greater Lim. This is something which cannot be simply wished away.

Come October 20 and Manipur may well come under a situation which has never been experienced before—surviving under three simultaneous economic blockades on the National Highways.

So another first, albeit of the dubious type, is awaiting to be added to the hat of Manipur. The politics of economic blockade and by extension, the highway politics, is today no longer perceived to be solely a protest against the policy and programme of the State Government but is increasingly seen to be a model based on ethnic divide.

A defining reflection of such a politics is the propensity to identify the Government with the majority community and the outcome of such a mindset is the perceived alienation from the political process of the State. Whether this has come about by the factor of push or pull is perhaps the immediate need of the people and the State to seriously look into.

By identifying the State Government with a particular community, in this case the Meiteis, any protest against the Government usually ends up as a protest against the majority community.

To the architects of such a thought process, this will serve their purpose, albeit personal and highly selfish and dangerous, but to the common people, the average man and woman on the streets, this means forced to box with a shadow on the wall, which can only hurt the people.

This is where the pull factor comes into prominence. The push factor also needs to be studied for in the generally understood political set up, where only a few are able to carve out a position to enjoy political benefits, with more room created as one moves down the pecking order, the possibility of driving out contenders cannot be dismissed at all.

The question is whether any serious studies have been conducted to identify the push factors and who have moulded such factors.

The politics of economic blockade or highway blockade has come to rest on the premise of the politics of pull and push and this is all the more reason why campaigns on misinformation and hatred need to be nipped in the bud, pronto .