S. Phangnon Konyak is the first Naga woman to become a Rajya Sabha MP. She is also the first vice-chairperson from Northeast to the Rajya Sabha and last week, she also became the first woman from the Northeast to preside over Rajya Sabha’s proceedings. That it took 76 years in post-independent India for a Naga woman to become a member of the distinguished House of Elders, is a tad surprising. However, that it happened under the aegis of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is hardly surprising. When it comes to women-led development and his Northeast outreach, the tremendous work done by PM Modi has no parallels.
NE, particularly Manipur, has been a matter of heated debate for the last few weeks. As is typical of the Opposition, it has embarked on a diabolical game of politicising the events in this beautiful state for narrow political gains. The Modi government has always stood for accountability and good governance. Let it be known that what has transpired in Manipur, as per keen political observers, in the last few weeks, is a dangerous mix of various things — rampant poppy cultivation and drug abuse in many areas by notorious narco traders, the hills versus plains controversy, ethno-religious conflict, border tensions arising from influx of illegal migrants from Myanmar and all these spiralling into violent lawlessness, after the Manipur High Court judgement in April 2023, that said the state government should consider inclusion of Meiteis under the Scheduled Tribe (ST) category.
The Manipur police had registered a case against unidentified armed persons under sections of abduction, gangrape and murder at Nongpol Sekmai police station in Thoubal district on May 18, 2023. The CBI, last week, took over the FIR registered by the Manipur Police as its own, as per the agency’s procedure. CBI has already deployed a special investigation team (SIT) in Manipur under a DIG-rank officer. At least seven arrests have been made with respect to the horrific incident of the gangrape of two Kuki women, with every BJP leader demanding nothing less than capital punishment for the culprits. The federal agency is already handling six other cases of violence in the Northeastern state and a few more women officers and forensic experts are expected to be sent soon. Buffer zones have been created to prevent the escalation of conflicts and a huge amount of illicit grenades, rifles, live cartridges and ammunition have reportedly been seized from militant groups. Over 50,000 people from Manipur have been rehabilitated and evacuated to safety by the Modi government. The Central government has also asked the Supreme Court to transfer the trial of the Manipur violence case outside of Manipur, for a free and fair trial. The Centre has also requested the apex court for completion of the trial of the entire case, regarding violence in Manipur, including the gangrape case, in six months.
On instructions of the Ministry of Home Affairs, the campaign for capturing the biometric footprint of illegal Myanmar immigrants in Manipur by September 2023 has resumed with greater vigour. A team of officials of the national crime records bureau (NCRB) started assisting the state government officials in capturing biometric data of illegal immigrants in Sajiwa, in Imphal East District, last week. Look at the stark contrast — while the BJP and the Modi government handed over the Manipur case to the CBI voluntarily — on the other hand, you have a thoroughly insensitive Trinamool Congress (TMC) government under an equally insensitive and rudderless Mamata Banerjee, who spent taxpayer funds to petition the Kolkata High Court repeatedly, against a CBI probe in the gory Hansakhali gangrape case of 2022, involving a senior TMC leader’s son. The Kolkata HC, however, ordered a CBI probe, with the Mamata government having to cut a sorry figure.
Now the moot question is — has the BJP done enough for Manipur? Yes, the BJP government has been working tirelessly round the clock, with over six rounds of talks between the warring Kuki and Meitei factions. Union home minister, Amit Shah, held several all-party meetings on the Manipur issue in the last few months and has been in constant touch with various stakeholders for a peaceful resolution. He has stationed himself in Manipur very often in the last few weeks at regular intervals. In sharp contrast, under the erstwhile Congress regime, when similar violence took place in Manipur, the Congress did not even deem it fit to send their Union home minister but simply sent their Minister of State for Home Affairs Rajesh Pilot, to diffuse the situation. Pilot, at that time, was there in Manipur for just three hours and returned back to Delhi in a jiffy, in a brazen example of insensitivity and callousness.
That Prime Minister Modi has visited the Northeast more than 50 times and his Cabinet ministers have visited the region over 400 times in the last nine years is a testimony to the fact that PM Modi never allowed the “tyranny of distance” to prevent his government from working for the welfare of the Northeast. Don’t forget that former PM, Manmohan Singh of the Congress, was a Rajya Sabha MP from 1991 to 2019, from Assam for 28 long years, but he did not visit Assam even six times during this period.
Congress MP, Gaurav Gogoi, moved the No Confidence motion against the Modi government last week. But let it be known that Gaurav’s late father, Tarun Gogoi, was the chief minister of Assam for the longest time from 2001 till 2016. Despite being CM for 15 long years, he did precious little for the people of Assam. In fact, it was thanks to the Modi government that Assam and Tripura got onto the broad gauge of the Indian rail network for the first time in 2016 and Sikkim got its first full-fledged airport only in 2018. Again, work on the Bogibeel Bridge started in 2002 but the Congress abandoned work on this bridge when it came to power at the Centre in 2004. This combined road and rail bridge over the Brahmaputra river in Assam, between Dhemaji district and Dibrugarh district, is the longest rail cum road bridge in India and can withstand earthquakes of magnitudes up to 7 on the Richter scale and is also Asia’s second longest rail-cum-road bridge, with a serviceable period of around 120 years.
Likewise is the case with the Dhola Sadiya Bridge where construction began in 2011 but mid-way through, the Congress abandoned it and the construction was completed yet again in 2017 by the Modi government. This is a beam bridge connecting Assam and Arunachal Pradesh and is the first permanent road connection between northern Assam and eastern Arunachal Pradesh. Clearly, mainstreaming the Northeast via infrastructural connectivity has been PM Modi’s big achievement.
The limited point is this — successive Congress governments at the Centre did absolutely nothing to mainstream the Northeast with the rest of India. That arduous task has been deftly consummated by PM Modi and his team. Not surprising therefore that the BJP romped home to victory for the second time in a row in the 2022 Assam assembly elections. In the 2023 Tripura assembly elections, while the Congress was reduced to just three seats, the BJP won consecutively for the second time in a row, with a solid 32 seats. Since Manipur became a state on January 21, 1972, clearly, the last six years under the double-engine BJP government have been the most peaceful in Manipur’s 51-year-old history, barring of course the last three months. But to focus only on the last three months and not give credit to the BJP’s double-engine government for the excellent work done in Manipur in the last six years reflects the Opposition’s rabid hypocrisy.
More than anything else and beyond electoral politics, the events of the last few weeks in Manipur are largely a simmering legacy issue and the result of the Congress party’s abject lethargy, when it ruled NE for the longest time. For instance, the Assam accord of 1985 was signed when Rahul Gandhi’s father, Rajiv Gandhi, was the PM but nothing was done to empower indigenous Assamese people. That work was done by the Modi government. Again, the Mizo accord was signed in 1986 when Rajiv was the PM but not a single promise of that accord was fulfilled by successive Congress governments. Those promises were fulfilled by none other than the responsive Modi government. The Tripura accord was also signed in 1988 when Rajiv was the PM and yet again, nothing was done for decades together for the native Tripuris. The Karbi-Anglong and Bodo accords were signed when PV Narasimha Rao of the Congress was the PM but it was only in 2020-21 that the elections to the Bodo Territorial Council and Karbi-Anglong Autonomous Council were held, under the aegis of the committed Modi government.
How many times did Rahul Gandhi visit Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Mizoram, Meghalaya, Nagaland or Tripura since 2004, when he became a MP, before he was disqualified recently? Barely. Don’t forget, Rahul’s Bharat Jodo Yatra ended on January 30, 2023. Assembly elections in Tripura were held on February 16, 2023, but Rahul did not visit Tripura even once. Again, assembly elections were held in Meghalaya and Nagaland on February 27, 2023 and yet again, he did not visit Nagaland even once. As for Meghalaya, he had a whistle-stop tour for a few hours at Shillong. That shows the lack of commitment on the part of the Congress party which has now suddenly woken up from deep slumber and has been whipping up passions, just when things are returning to normalcy in Manipur. Again, don’t forget, in 2010-11, under the Congress rule both at the Centre and in the state of Manipur, there were times when crippling curfews lasted for anywhere between 124 to 139 days at a stretch. How many times did Rahul Gandhi visit Manipur in 2010-11? Not even once!
Today, under the aegis of the Modi government, AFSPA has either been, or is being removed from 15 police station areas in seven districts of Nagaland; 15 police station areas in six districts of Manipur; and 23 districts entirely and one district partially in Assam. Specifically speaking about Manipur, the BJP won 32 seats in the Manipur assembly elections in 2022 while the Congress was reduced to a measly five seats and that defeat must have deeply hurt the party, which is now using Manipur violence to settle political scores. Even in the 2023 assembly elections in Nagaland, which has over 93 percent Christian and tribal population, the BJP and its ally, the NDPP, won 37 seats overall, while the Congress got zero. The electoral annihilation of the Congress in the Northeast is complete and that is precisely why it is using the Manipur issue to regain lost political capital, by stoking the embers of discord.
As for PM Modi, thanks to his dynamic leadership, seven lakh farmer families in Manipur are getting hundreds of crores of rupees under the PM Kisan Samman Nidhi Yojana, six lakh families are getting benefits under PM Garib Kalyan Yojana (PMGKY), 80,000 houses have been built under PM Awas Yojana (PMAY), free medical treatment has been given to 4.25 lakh patients under the Ayushman Bharat Yojana (PM-JAY) in Manipur, over 1.5 lakh free gas connections and over 1.3 lakh free electricity connections have been provided in Manipur, and 30,000 toilets have been built. Oxygen plants which were built during Covid, in virtually every district of Manipur, are a testament to how relevant the state has been to the Modi government, in the larger scheme of things.
The violence broke out in Manipur on May 3, 2023, when a ‘tribal solidarity march’ was organised in the hill districts by the Kukis, to protest against the majority Meitei community’s demand for ST status. While hearing a petition filed by members of the Meetei (Meitei) Tribe Union, noting that successive regimes had been dragging their feet on the inclusion of the Meitei community in the Scheduled Tribes (ST) list for over 10 years now, the Manipur High Court directed the state government to consider the request of the community’s inclusion within four weeks, and send a recommendation to the Union government for its consideration. That is the “tipping point” that started the violence, as per experts. Thousands of people turned up at the ‘tribal solidarity march’ called by a students’ body in all the ten hill districts of Manipur, to oppose the demand for inclusion of Meitei community in the ST category, say observers. The All Tribal Students Union of Manipur (ATSUM), which had called for the march, said it had been organised to express dissent to the “persistent demands of the Meitei community for its inclusion in the ST category”, gaining momentum. While the lawmakers of the valley areas are openly endorsing the Meitei demand, those in the hills are opposed to the same.
It is pertinent to note here that the Meiteis inhabit the Manipur valley, which constitutes barely 10 percent of the geographical area of the state. Meiteis claim that they are facing difficulty in view of the large-scale illegal immigration by Myanmarese and Bangladeshis. Compounding the problem additionally for the Meiteis is the fact that they are not allowed to settle in the hill areas as per the existing law. Tribal villagers (Kukis) from interior hill areas came in buses and open trucks to the nearest hill district headquarters to attend the rallies on May 3, 2023, as per eye-witnesses. In Naga dominated Senapati town, the district headquarters with the same name and located about 58 km from the capital town of Imphal, the local bodies forced total shutdown of markets and suspension of public transport from 10 am to 1 pm to ensure that maximum number of demonstrators participated in the rally on May 3, 2023. Thousands joined the processions, waved placards and raised slogans opposing ST status for the Meitei community, which has already been marginalised for decades together. Kukis on the other hand, say experts, have benefitted due to colonial era laws dating back to 1907. At Churachandpur, the second-largest town in the state and a Kuki stronghold, as per observers, Kukis defied prohibitory orders and gathered at the public ground and took a rally till Tuibong peace ground, to show their support to ATSUM, the police claimed. Additional security forces were rushed to the town from other parts of Manipur to control the situation after the vandalisation of a venue where chief minister N Biren Singh was scheduled to address a programme. Similar rallies were also held by Kukis at Tengnoupal, Chandel, Kangpokpi, Noney and Ukhrul where even school students participated, the police said. Meanwhile, counter blockades were put up in the valley districts, including at Sugnu in Kakching district, in support of granting ST status to Meiteis. Protesters shouted slogans demanding ST status for the community and protection of reserved and protected forests.
The Scheduled Tribe Demand Committee Manipur (STDCM), which is spearheading the movement for the inclusion of the Meiteis in the ST category for more than a decade, said the demand is being made not merely for reservation in jobs, educational institutions and tax relief. It is more about protecting the ancestral lands, culture and identity of the Meitei people, who are threatened constantly by illegal immigrants from Myanmar, Bangladesh and by the Kukis, as per STDCM functionaries. The Meitei community, largely Hindus, account for 60 percent of the total population in Manipur but occupy only 10 percent of the land. On the other hand, Kukis and other tribes who are largely Christians by faith, account for only 40 percent of the population in Manipur, but occupy and inhabit 90 percent of the state territory. Clearly, as per political observers, it is the systematic marginalisation of the Meitei Hindus over decades together, which finally led to the events as they unfolded post May 3, 2023. While violence against women has to be condemned and there can be no excuses whatsoever for condoning it, equally, the question that begets a response is — why did the Congress, which ruled India for the longest time at the Centre, never bother to give the Meiteis their rightful dues or accord them their rightful place in Manipur?
Kukis in Manipur have always wanted a semi-autonomous region, while Meiteis have only wanted ST status. Many Nagas of Manipur want to be part of “larger Nagaland” or Nagalim, as they call it, according to political experts. The Modi government is working tirelessly to reconcile the diverse interests of these warring groups. The Suspension of Operation (SoO) agreement was signed in 2008 under which the then Congress government at the Centre was to rehabilitate key Kuki insurgent groups, but as always Manmohan Singh and his cabinet led by Sonia Gandhi, snoozed on this subject, widening the fissures between Kukis and Meiteis, as time flew by.
Launching a scathing attack on the Congress, Union MoS for External Affairs, RK Ranjan Singh recently said, “It is the maladministration, corruption and disparity in development between the Kuki dominated hill districts and Meitei dominated valley areas that led to the unrest in Manipur, with hilly areas being the economically developed ones and the valley being the neglected one.” Congress ruled the State for the longest time till 2017. PM Modi, in just the last nine years and the state BJP that has been in power in Manipur in just the last six years, have done more for the welfare of Manipur, than what was ever done by the incompetent Manmohan Singh-Okram Ibobi Singh duo of the Congress.
“In the hill districts inhabited by Christians, an attempt is being made to fulfill the constitutional commitment of the ‘right to education’,” RK Ranjan Singh, who is also the MoS for Education, said recently. “Under the new education policy, we are trying to expand and provide and make the constitutional fulfillment of the right to education,” he added. Even as over 4600 schools have reopened in Manipur and normalcy is returning, the Opposition led by the likes of the Congress and the TMC, have been attempting to weaponise the narrative around Manipur, with irresponsible politics via a futile visit on July 29, 2023. TMC leaders can travel from Kolkata to Manipur which is 1490 kms away, but why can’t this incompetent bunch travel from Kolkata to Howrah, which is just 19 kms away? Why can’t this bunch travel from Kolkata to Malda, which is just 329 kms away? The reason is simple — In Howrah and Malda, it was the BJP’s women karyakartas who were paraded naked. So, the TMC or the Congress or any of the 26 Opposition parties, who have come together, driven by no common agenda but only by their visceral hatred for PM Modi, simply do not care. The Opposition is scavenging on the wounds of the people in Manipur, when the Modi government is doing all it can and all it should, to heal them. The fact that all eight Northeast states have been voting in large numbers in the last nine years for PM Modi’s inclusive model of governance speaks volumes about how the Modi model has truly ensured last mile delivery in NE, to those who were barred from even the basic amenities of life, under successively repressive regimes of both the Congress and the Left, for decades together.
Sanju Verma is an Economist, National Spokesperson for BJP and Bestselling Author of “The Modi Gambit”. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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