Blackening the Jewel of India

Rongreisek Yangsorang *

Manipur (a land of amazing grace, charming people and bountiful nature, and diversity with multiple dialects and tribes, each with its own distinctive culture and traditions) was described by late Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru as "A Jewel of India".

But, today, it has become a land of anarchy with the murderers as the real threat to the integrity of the state and the well-being of its people. And worse is still to get to a shop, negotiating with dug-up earth and tarless streets of Imphal Bazaar as most of its entrance and exit are closed for years together to the chargin of the people.

A writer of insight from Meghalaya once said it is a place not worth for living in, with garbage piled up along the roads and foul smells everywhere. When everything goes wrong on all fronts, the morale of people too becomes bad.

It is true that the land is torn apart by strife, and no soul is safe here knowing not the turn of the next days. There is a complete absence of concerted effort of the civil society organizations to defuse the difficult and dangerous situation.

Their responsibilities are great for the many roles they have to play because law enforcement agencies are ineffective when the whole state is in utter ruin, and they cannot do to help much.

The killing of innocent migrant workers at different places in the valley in Mar, '08 has blackened the Jewel of India, undoubtedly, an international fame in sports and dance.

The beleaguered state is now synonymous with murder, extortion, kidnapping and intimidation for warning visiting tourists, businessmen and migrants to turn back as they will be in a murderers' land. It may well serve as an instrument to stop the inflow of non-Manipuris in the state.

During a visit to Bengali High School, Imphal some days ago for a purpose, but not related to the affairs of the refugees taking shelter there, I, at once, began to feel for them, recalling the carnage that shook the entire hill districts of Manipur in 1993 when refugees spent much of their time in different relief camps in mental anguish with the anxiety to abandon the camps to reconstruct dwelling houses for a dignified living.

The turn of the same carnage has come back. The inmates of the camp set up at the school were mostly from Bihar, and one advantage for them was to find a solace in the dutiful chowkidar, a Bahadur. He was closeted by a few increasingly despondent inmates, sharing a bench together with him in a dark two-roomed quarter that he should let part of it to them.

Families and singles were sheltering in the school rooms with scanty clothes, and without much essentials as in stark prison conditions. It is not intended for going in detail of life in the camp as it would only risk sprinkling salt on the wounds.

The kindest thing that can be said about their plight is to treat them as fellow citizens of the country, not as alien elements. Many right thinking persons and intellectuals in the state were quick to react to the holocaust and its far-reaching consequences. What is imminent is that when goods from the mainland stop arriving at Imphal, the people of the state will suffer greatly.

How disastrous it will be if the migrant workers are pushed back by the use of force! If that happens, it will be like watching Manipur busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre, and Manipuris living in the mainland India will forfeit their fates. Only by an act of the state assembly, can the migrants be encouraged to re-emigrate to their own states.

In the fiery radio talk weeks ago, it was termed as the catastrophe of the state in which the workers were serially butchered for no fault of theirs, but failed to suggest the strategy to be adopted to face it appropriately and boldly. Rationale and well-educated comments have been made through the press by condemning the inhuman act of killing innocent migrant workers.

Moreover, for the first time, nearly all the valley based UG outfits have denied their involvement in such serial killings of innocent workers from other states, and they even condemned the heinous crime. Now, it is important to enquire of their problems at the camps, and the prospect for their departure from there.

Whether the situation has been brought under control for the refugees to get back to their respective places of residence must be the concern of every right thinking Manipuri who believes in the spirit of universal brotherhood and peaceful co-existence of all communities in the troubled North-East region of India tucked away between China, Burma and Bangladesh, and linked to the rest of India by the so-called chicken-neck at Siliguri in North Bengal.

The growing fear is that in 15 or 20 years, on the present trends, the population of migrants and their descendants will be increasing at an alarming rate. The whole areas of Imphal city, towns and parts of towns across the valley districts will be occupied by different sections of the migrants and migrant-descended population.

Some decades later, those born here and hordes of new arrivals will constitute the majority wherever they settle in large numbers. This is the "great fear" of the locals, and is worth debating.

It is this fact above all which creates the extreme urgency of action now, of just that kind of action which is the hardest for politicians to take, action where the difficulties lie at present.

The rational first question for a people confronted by such a prospect is to ask: "How can its dimension be reduced?" The answer to the simple question is by stopping or virtually stopping inflow, and by promoting the maximum outflow of the migrants.

The two should form the official policy of the state government of Manipur. If all immigration ends today, the rate of growth of the migrant-descended population would be substantially reduced.

Hence, a state law to encourage re-emigration with grants and assistance should be framed to enable migrant workers to choose either their respective states or go to other states anxious to receive the manpower and the skills they represent.