UNLF vows to fight for integrity, freedom
Source: The Sangai Express

Imphal, November 25 2012: Contd from previous issue .

Talking about economic issues, the UNLF asserted that to repress the indigenous peoples collective consciousness, and in order to destroy the identity and united vision of the indigenous peoples of Manipur, the most important step of India is to control and subordinate the economic livelihood of Manipur people.

Instead of releasing the creative productive forces of the indigenes of the state, India had turned the lakhs of indigenous peoples into consumers of goods produced elsewhere in India and make Manipur a captive market.

Apart from extraction of natural resources, large colonies of outsiders are striking roots in the virgin lands of the region, for example, labourers for Loktak Project had been settled in a new village called Jibon Nagar at Leimatak.

India would stop nowhere to exploit the virgin resources of the land.

That the Tipaimukh Dam shall generate 60,000 megawatts of power is a blatant lie, it alleged.

More than eighty thousand precious timber shall be uprooted, some 3,500 square kilometres of dry land shall be submerged under water.

Many indigenous natives shall be displaced from their homes.

New outsider colonies of labourers, protected by Indian military shall mushroom up engulfing the Jiri valley.

No big dams like Tipaimukh Dam should be allowed to be built in Manipur.

Instead of environmentally disastrous mega dams, mini and micro hydel projects should be encouraged.

Tipaimukh is only a symbol of India's colonial exploitation of the land, it further alleged.

Altogether 7,000 square kilometres spread of natural gas producing areas have sold off to foreign companies by the Government of India.

The entire area covered is about the size of Manipur valley.

If oil is being explored, the produce shall not belong to the sons of the soil.

This is the enhancement of the colonial subjugation of the people.

"All people should remind themselves of this abject exploitation of our future resources and fight collectively with the indigenous communities of the Zeliangroung and Hmars etc.

and we must fight with them for protection of our natural resources", the outfit exhorted.

For the last sixty years all plans that are decided at New Delhi, are being implemented on paper at the local government level.

Whatever cooked up in New Delhi has never been conducive to the local nature of indigenous growth.

This has also impelled the indigenous highlanders to get extremely suspicious of the actions and behaviours of the legislators and bureaucrats at the state capital at the valley, and the hill brothers are prone to believe that all developmental efforts had been concentrated in the valley alone.

Corruption and exploitation of spoil system by both local rulers and their masters at New Delhi had created this myth, which resulted to the hill people blaming the plain people.

But it is a fact that both Hills and Plains are made to suffer in the development models of the Indian state.

Whereas true economic development is absent under the colonial policy, all funds that are generated towards development are to help suppress the revolutionary movements, and the sycophants and slaves of the Indian masters eat off major sections of the developmental funds.

Only the agricultural economy and the works of peasants and labourers had given us reasons to be proud of them.

With the indigenous peoples compelled to purchase all manufactured and produced goods from India, Manipur being reduced to a captive market is undebatable.

The so called budgetary grants are always already siphoned off outside Manipur under the system.

Only those who had benefitted from this (captive market) syndrome is the business and political class spawned by the Indian system.

In order to provide some relieve to this state of affairs of deprivation of the general mass, the UNLF had started the Phunga Marup, a sort of indigenous micro-financing systems to help the poor.

"The UNLF promises to help out every section of our plural society under this scheme", it pledged.

One silver lining in this gloomy situation is the honest sacrifice of the sons of the soil who had worked outside Manipur coming back home and starting a software development company and its related IT enabled services in Medical Transcription (MT), Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) and other job oriented enterprises to help the native economy to grow.

A few medical professionals who had worked outside have also returned to help their brethren in their homeland.

Under the alleged India's colonial rule, the deep malaise which the people is experiencing is the anarchic system of education.

The National Education Policy of the Indian state and its relevance with the conditions of Manipur should be questioned.

Under this system, there is nothing suitable for the conditions of Manipur.

There is no possibility for development of Manipur human resources under these conditions.

Since many schools are without students, the government is gradually merging the empty schools with one another, which therefore is inducing a trend of abolition of the schools.

As for the hill region, school premises are rare, few and far between.

But even these few schools had become the abode of the Indian occupation forces.

The unfortunate parents of the children had made alternative arrangements to have rickety rooms for their children's education, unable to oppose such forces as the Assam Rifles.

Many educational institution campuses have turned into camps of the Indian occupation forces.

The Indian state is violating its own laws of preventing the use of school campuses as areas for security establishments.

The Indian self proclaimed principle of the right to education is therefore a mockery of itself.

"This is an insult to the Manipur people.

This kind of alien subjugation of Manipur is making havoc of our human resource development efforts.

We shall experience this system as long as Manipur remains India's colony", it alleged.

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