At a time when the State of Manipur is so highly polarized between the hills and the valley, the Cabinet’s decision for a cease-fire with the Kuki UG outfits is quite significant, and that cannot be misconstrued as fanciful. The emphasis should be on the need for keeping channels open with the major outfits operating in the State. The declaration came amid rising concerns of the people over the modality of the ground rules to be framed as the State Government has made little progress towards bridging the sectarian divide in Manipur. With the Govt’s nod to negotiate with the outfits having enlivened the political scene further, it should move discreetly with an intense initiative to shape the negotiation and hold talks with all the outfits. The initiative to the peace process is laudable after disasters in various forms have filled Manipur. To react positively to such discourse to take place, the Chief Minister of Manipur, O. Ibobi Singh, can meet the milestone intended to promote peace and unity in the State. He is a good man, a good politician with a very difficult job to solve thorny issues. His job must be to ensure the transparency of the cease-fire ground rules to safeguard the hill people so that the smaller communities also will not suffer any longer. Too much is at stake and no opportunity should be squandered. But one cannot do anything about it until one recognizes the sublime horror of what is really happening in the hill districts—such as the recent gunning down of ten KLA cadres by the NSCN (IM) at Tangkhul Hundung in Ukhrul district.

For one thing, the valley based guerillas who believe they are on a mission ordained by their ideology, and would rather die fighting for self-determination than settle for a compromise has placed the State Govt in a dismal situation. Suppose, when rebels from only one camp are in attendance in the talk, the exercise becomes less credible and looses much of its teeth. Still, despite the many hurdles, an effort - a pragmatic effort by men of vision, impartiality and integrity has to be made to end the ceaseless arm-conflicts between the outfit themselves, and between them and the army, and any strategy in this regard must discard the carrot with stick. It will be a stepping stone that will help the State authority to make progress towards a goal as such. If dialogue fails to deliver result, those who stick to guns will have to be tackled relentlessly, and with honesty of purpose, a quality that is missing in both New Delhi and Imphal. Restoration of peace and stability must be seen as a joint responsibility of the Centre and the State, and for this to happen, the former should be honest to end the blame game. The trust-deficit between the two has to be overcome, and any personal differences between the politicians and bureaucrats settled to build co-operation as the key to success in the eventual solution to insurgency problem in the State.

Problems of the other side: Series of deadlock have persisted between the State Govt of Manipur and various tribal students’ bodies over a wide range of demands for the development of the hill districts. Because of all these, we, the people of Manipur don’t seem to belong to the same State when the land is just enough for a State within the Indian Union. The British had only left an unfair legacy. To be realistic, the people of the remote areas of Manipur hills are still to come into closer contact with the plain people for mutual understanding. Unfortunately, no venture worth the name has been launched to make a happy note between the hill and valley people so far. Only political agenda to bargain something from either side figured in any platform. For this reason, we tend to say that too much of politics—making pledges, doing nothing will lead vulnerable communities to greater mistrust and prejudices, while, in fact, one thing is clear that no community, big or small in Manipur is no longer so gullible as was in the gone decades. Political slogans are really earthy and throaty which make a direct human impact—sometimes hit one on the raw—unlike impersonal banner-borne. Any slogan which is worthy of inventiveness is rare. Some of them in the past decades bore the hallmark of thunder and a foreboding of upheaval. Unsavory slogans on sectional line will be to the embarrassment of the other. Of all these, only sincerity and love can win the hearts of the people of Manipur when a huge majority of the hill people are still in the dark in every sphere of human civilization though countable number of them belonging to officer classes and muscle powers are now well off. The case of the unrepresented tribes of Manipur cannot be overlooked, and they need immediate attention of the Govt. All communities living in Manipur must be equal in all respects.

To quote Ezekiel Issac Malekar, Secretary of Judah Hyam Synagogue, New Delhi, Jews have been living in India for the last 2000 years. He told the visiting Israeli Prime Minister, Mr. Aron Sharon in 2005, as the head of the Jewish community of India that they in India consider themselves as Indians first and Jews second though Israel is in their hearts, India is in their blood. India is the only country in the world where they find eight major religions co-existing without coming into conflict with one another. Shouldn’t it be the case with us in Manipur? Today, one of the factors responsible for the mistrust that has cropped up between the hill and valley people is that in this age of competition in education to acquire scientific and technological knowledge, hill children are deprived of even minimum requirement of facilities like infrastructures and teachers, resulting in sub-standard school education. The propaganda that hill villages are inhospitable for valley teachers who were first appointed against the posts created for the hill schools is all baseless. It amounts to the imperial policy of fooling the poor people even in this age. Indeed, why is the Govt not coming up with a definite transfer policy? Why this ambiguity for so long?

In such course of human life, a home-sick Brahmin friend of the writer who taught at Kachai High School situated to the west of Ukhrul town once recalled how much affection he got from his students and their parents, how he was well-treated and how abundant were lemon fruits at Kachai during his teaching in the school in 1987. At first, he thought his place of posting was a world apart from his home in rural Imphal, distinguishable from his faith and vegetarian diet. He felt an emotional pain to be mixed with the local populace. In a dramatic shift from his initial rejection of the local environment, he soon recovered from his home-sickness, and regained his composure and strength to forget all his worries and pangs of life due to the hospitality of the village folk, fluent in Meiteilon. It was an advantage for him to communicate with every one of them in the village comfortably, and he went on to teach there for long nine years. More so, the Tangkhul people are known for their hospitality, hard-work and generosity, they are endowed with. And that, the hill people were never xenophobic in their attitude and outlook has been established. The writer, however, doesn’t mean to create a story that his friend was on a foreign soil or in another State of the north-east of India. It is to reveal the pain he first felt due to his wrong perception. The disturbed relation between the hills and valley in the decade has caused a lot of inconvenience to both the people of hills and valley with repeated bandh calls and blockades on the national highways as the major issues of the State.

The disturbances are on with no solution in sight. One undeniable fact is that people of the hills and valley, though they are geographically divided, are always inter-dependent on one another in terms of business transactions. If the hill people stop buying goods from the valley, business activities will be paralysed at Imphal, and the same crisis will deepen in the hills. As both sides will suffer greatly, the relation is inseparable. Road conditions in the valley are also deplorable with potholes at every step on the roads but the road conditions in the hills are unimaginable, or no road and bridge exist in the practical sense. Therefore, the crises of the hill students should be heard meaningfully for timely execution of any schemes for the development of the hill areas. It is high time the Central Government intervened in the road construction to improve their quality and open new roads in the hills with central funding. It is disappointing to see that construction of roads and bridges are left unfinished with no certainty to resume construction of the unfinished roads and bridges. While we appreciate the Central Government for sanctioning fund to the tune of hundreds of crores of rupees every year for road construction, we also would like the Union Government to monitor construction at different work sites as the State Government is always failing. Due to lack of central supervision, the contractors mostly do not complete the works, with a half work done for their reputation by violating the agreement signed before the execution of the works.

The raw deal between the contractors and the engineers culminated in the fund embezzlement and virtual stoppage of all works- doing shoddy repair works and using delaying tactics on construction and repairs that were needed for the roads and bridges. Now, we have the RTI Act to monitor how Ministers and MLAs spend the allocated fund per year through PMGSY. No one dares challenge them as the public are unaware of all these. Then, we have the chief information commissioner of Manipur who can help out. It has to be seen how far the act will be effective in Manipur.

If it is misused, it will blunt its effectiveness. When some sure start schemes for development of the hill areas get materialized, the angst of the hill people will cease. Social activists of the hill districts contend that the Meitei dominated Government is neglecting them for sectarian reasons, and bad feelings at times boiled over into angry accusations. In all this turn of events, some civil society organizations from the valley area operate as the “shock-absorbers” between the communities. The role played by them in the unity building is also laudable and pragmatic. The Government’s lack of accountability is more a result of the unfitness of the representatives than bureaucratic inefficiency. With the exception of few starred questions, the voice of hill MLAs seldom boomed in the State Legislature. Something which can be translated as one way of starting confidence-building measures among the divergent communities require to be initiated so that all the cliques that nearly divided the communities can be sorted out step by step, with the main thrust in mutual respect of both the hill and plain people. Every effort is desirable in which the hill people will not find the urban Imphal to be too cliquey and elitist as in the metropolis.

In the 60th year of Indian independence from the British, we in Manipur have a time to look forward for things yet to appear before us. The country was able to have achieved an annual 8-9% growth rate becoming one of the super economic powers in the world. On the other hand, the widening chasm between the rich and the poor, the urbanite and the rustic continues to grow in Manipur, not just in the hill districts but the in State at large. It is on such a threshold that the 60th birthday of Indian independence as a free nation found us. So, where do we go from here? We must be active players of a new order that is possible only if we resolve to shun violence or self-destruction.

Our land is a State where standing rules are not obeyed even by those who framed them. The land is synonymous with lawlessness. Each one plays the game in accordance to the cards one is dealt with. What we have experienced all these years is the goons’ raj terrorizing poor common people. We are deeply concerned with the nexus between law-makers and extremists. Their clandestine activities have been exposed to the public to brook no forgiveness. It is pitiful that there is no prospect to end the misery of the people who suffer from unlawful taxes, long power cuts and deplorable road conditions.

One core thing is becoming important and drawing us to its attraction and that is, the new society we speak about shall increasingly be driven by a new force; a new dimension called information which will be our guiding spirit. This shall be the new energy to drive the bold new world that we shall rapidly be experiencing.

As constituent communities of Manipur State, we must share a dream, something worth fighting for, and we must search for leadership or leader: someone to believe in. Not the ones that breed militancy, corruption and communalism. We cannot ignore or deny the potential pitfalls that await our tryst with destiny.