TODAY -
Highwaymen in the Hills
Economic Times | Abheek Barman | Nov 15, 2011
What do these outfits want? Their demands are varied, from autonomy along clan or tribal lines to plain extortion. One organisation, called the Senapati District Students’ Association, used to stop vehicles at gunpoint, take money and even issue a receipt for payment received. The only constant is the presence of weapons with these folks. Seven, the geographical location of Manipur is crucial to understand its peculiar problems. It shares a long border with Burma.
Now, Manipur cannot just get up from its uncomfortable location on the map and move to someplace more salubrious. It has to solve its problems with a little help from others and get to where most of the other northeastern states are: stability, peace and growth. There’s a joke in Manipur: a man comes home with two live fish and asks his wife to cook them for dinner. “There’s no kerosene or gas for the stove and no money for firewood. Go, throw the fish back in the water,” she says.
This is extremely important: in Meitei society, women play a very important role as organisers of things as diverse as protest rallies and weekly markets. The thugs will have to be disarmed. That has to be done by the state police, the administration and civilian pressure groups. This will not be easy, but Assam and Nagaland prove that it can be done.
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* This Post is uploaded on November 15 2011
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