By Sanjib Kr Baruah/Imphal And Churachandpur
It is 3pm and the sun is blazing down. The lush green plains and paddy fields readied for sowing are in the shade of the mountains. A smartly dressed Rameshwar Basnet, 48, wearing sunglasses, staggers out from a hutment, seemingly quite drunk. Almost zombie-like, he asks: “Daju (elder brother in Nepali), could you lend me a tenner?”The situation in Manipur is a nightmare for both the North Block and the South Block. The North Block houses the home ministry, while the defence and foreign ministries are in the South Block.Our preparedness on the IndIA-Myanmar border to increase our deployment and surveillance is adequate to ensure that we are able to prevent any infiltration that can take place from the international border. — Lieutenant General Harjit Singh Sahi, commander, III Corps
Basnet (named changed) is a resident of Kanglatongbi, a Nepali-dominated settlement near National Highway 37, located in a ‘buffer zone’ demarcating Meitei and Kuki areas. One could only guess what would make a man want to stay drunk all the time. After all, prolonged unrest has its own way of extracting a toll.
Edging close, a CRPF trooper, a rifle cradled in his thick arms, quietly says: “Why does the media not report about how bad things really are? You all say things are normalising. They are not.”
After decades of insurgencies—Naga, Meitei and Kuki—Manipur had seen the green shoots of peace for the last six to seven years. But, the current ethnic turmoil has taken the state back to where it was. Moreover, it could be much worse as, unlike in the past, the social fabric is in tatters. Sapam Bishwajit Meitei, an Imphal-based senior advocate, says: “For the last few years, the long-suffering people saw hopes of peace returning and businesses flourishing. But these latest flare-ups have taken the state back to the late 1980s and early 1990s. Civil strife has set in. One can only hope and pray that sense prevails.”
The situation in Manipur is a nightmare for both the North Block and the South Block. The North Block houses the home ministry, while the defence and foreign ministries are in the South Block. The crisis in the border state may have compelled India’s defence secretary, Giridhar Aramane, to rush to Myanmar’s capital Nay Pyi Taw on June 30 for a two-day visit. Manipur shares a 398km-long, heavily forested and porous international border with Myanmar; most insurgent groups active in the northeast have their main bases and training centres in Myanmar.
An official press release said that Aramane met Myanmar’s military ruler, General Min Aung Hlaing, and his defence minister, General (retired) Mya Tun Oo, and discussed issues relating to maintaining “tranquility in the border areas, illegal transborder movement and transnational crimes such as drug trafficking and smuggling”.
A new dimension to the geopolitics in Myanmar is the entry of the US with its $136 million funding for pro-democracy groups and humanitarian aid. The possibility of the funding translating into military help to pro-democracy activists cannot be ruled out.
China is observing the unrest in Manipur closely. State-owned media have published numerous articles deliberating the issue. The headlines are telling: “Next Ukraine? The gunshots sounded for the division of India…”; “The Indian ethnic conflict situation is completely out of control”. China’s influence with the Tatamadaw (Myanmar military) complicates things further….
After the truth-shower 