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Humanitarian and Political Crisis in Manipur
Context:
The India-Myanmar borderlands, particularly the state of Manipur, remain a data-deficient region despite a long history of armed conflict, displacement, and humanitarian crises.
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- The ongoing Manipur conflict, marked by ethnic tensions between the Meitei and Kuki-Zomi communities, has led to significant gaps in documenting humanitarian needs.
- Restricted access, adverse security conditions, and the spread of misinformation have further obscured the true scale of vulnerabilities and devastation.
- Recent estimates indicate that approximately 58,000 individuals have been forcibly displaced, living in hundreds of relief camps across the Valley and Hill districts.
- Additionally, nearly 12,000 people fled to Mizoram at the peak of the conflict, while around 7,000 sought refuge in Nagaland, Assam, and Meghalaya.
A Zone of the Unknown
- Lack of Information: The conflict has resulted in a breakdown in the chain of accurate humanitarian information, particularly due to the physical separation of the Meitei and Kuki-Zomi communities.
- Official estimates only account for those in registered relief camps, omitting unregistered individuals living with relatives, in temporary shelters, or displaced across multiple locations.
- Inaccessible Healthcare: The conflict has drastically altered healthcare-seeking behaviour, especially in Kuki-Zomi-dominated hill districts, where major tertiary healthcare institutions in Imphal remain inaccessible.
Medical and Humanitarian Challenges
- Out of Pocket: Displaced populations in the Imphal Valley struggle with increasing out-of-pocket expenses for medical treatment, often leading to the discontinuation of care.
- Manipur’s healthcare system, already marked by disparities between the Valley and Hill districts, has deteriorated further.
- No Systematic Documentation: The absence of systematic documentation has resulted in underreported cases of mortality, malnutrition, and disease outbreaks.
- Threats to medical facilities and blockades on essential medicines remain largely unrecorded.
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- A study by doctors from the Regional Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS) found that 65.8% of respondents in displaced persons camps suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, while 24.8% experience moderate anxiety and 15.2% have severe anxiety.
Unmet Humanitarian Needs
- Basic Needs: Despite being more than two years since the first relief camps were established, basic humanitarian needs such as food, water, and shelter remain largely unmet.
- Worsening Situation: Dwindling resources, donor fatigue, and conflict-induced inflation have worsened conditions for displaced populations on both sides of the ethnic divide.
- Over 22,000 children living in camps face dire conditions, severely impacting their education.
- Unsanitary living conditions, daily water shortages, lack of access to nutritious food, and the absence of income sources are compounding the crisis.
Political Turmoil and President’s Rule
- President’s Rule: On February 13, 2025, Article 356 of the Constitution was invoked in Manipur, placing the state under President’s Rule.
- Manipur has experienced President’s Rule 10 times before, reflecting the fractured nature of its political landscape.
- Ethnic Divide: The state’s ethnic diversity, with 33 recognised Scheduled Tribes and multiple non-tribal communities, adds to the complexity.
- Populist Politics: The politics of populism, as outlined in the book Righteous Demagogues: Populist Politics in South Asia and Beyond (2024), further complicates the situation.
- The authors identify three broad categories of political populism: “Reordering” populism, which seeks to restructure the moral order; “Additive” populism, which campaigns for inclusion; and “Quotidian” populism, which seeks to create exclusive constituencies to preserve vested interests.
Way Ahead
- Rising above Partisan Interests: The State must rise above partisan interests and insulate itself from powerful ultranationalist and majoritarian agendas to effectively regulate State-society relations.
- Concerted Efforts: Concerted efforts must be made to demobilise and disarm armed groups across the divide, and accountability must be fixed for the atrocities committed during the violence.
- Normalcy: Establishing normalcy and durable peace in Manipur requires a negotiated political solution, not merely a law-and-order approach.
- Hill State: Declaring Manipur as a ‘hill State’ has been proposed as a solution to neutralise demands for separate administration by Kuki-Zomi-Hmar groups.
- However, this must be carefully assessed to avoid perpetuating structural oppression and injustice against tribal communities.
The humanitarian and political crisis in Manipur demands urgent action. The State must prioritise the restoration of trust, legitimacy, and constitutional order.
