More than a case of illegal entry : Probable tip of the iceberg
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: September 01, 2012 -

Police conducting operation for individuals illegally staying Manipur at Khuyathong on 31 August 2012 :: Pix - Bunti Phurailatpam

In all probability, it is just the tip of the iceberg. It is something much more than a question of rounding up 43 foreign nationals for entering the State illicitly but is an indicator to the subtly changing demographic composition of the place.

Five years hence and the 43 foreign nationals rounded up would have easily blended into the social and political realm of the land and people, hugely impacting on every spheres of life.

Rewind a decade or two back and clearly the number of such foreign nationals who have successfully blended and assimilated with the indigenous people would run into thousands.

A scary reality and this is more so in a place like Manipur where each ethnic group is asserting itself and commandeering its rights and authority over the limited land and resources against other ethnic groups.

A near perfect recipe to set up one group of people against the other.

It is anybody's guess why the State Government decided to crack down on the illegal migrants but it is nevertheless significant to note that this coincided well with the instruction given to the Assam Government by the Centre to expedite processing the 2.37 lakh cases of illegal migrations from Bangladesh and pending in the 36 tribunals of the State.

The crackdown by the Congress Government in Manipur also timed well with the announcement of Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi that the process of updating the 1951 National Register of Citizens would be completed in three years.

That it also came in the wake of the series of clash between indigenous Bodos and Bangladeshi migrants is also noteworthy.

Not surprisingly all the 43 foreign nationals pulled up in the crackdown were from Bangladesh and Myanmar.

Manipur shares a porous 398 kilometre border with Myanmar in the east while to the west and south it shares boundaries with Assam and Mizoram, which in turn share a long, porous border with Bangladesh.

To the east, Moreh is perhaps the biggest township on the side of India bordering Myanmar while to the west Jiribam sub-division is the direct gateway to Assam.

The possible entry points cannot be clearer than this. Geographically well placed for cross border human migration but it would be foolhardy to subscribe everything to Geography.

Assam is the living example of the extremely dangerous turn that vote bank politics can take and it would be naive to even entertain the idea that this would not happen in Manipur.

Political will and sincerity and a sharp social awareness is perhaps the best antidote against any process that would destabilise the demographic composition of the land.

The Assam Rifles has been entrusted with the task of guarding the border, apart from counter-insurgency operations, and given the ground reality, perhaps it would be in the fitness of things for the political leadership to sensitise them to the gravity posed by illegal migrations from across the border.

There are enough literature to understand the grave impact that large scale, unchecked migration can have on the indigenous people and if the political leaders of Manipur are not able to understand the trauma of Assam then nothing would.