Under siege

Under siege

To understand what the Tipaimukh project could bring to the state, one must put it in context. Imphal is in a valley surrounded by hills on four sides. In the valley the Meitei people are predominant. Legally, they do not have the right to purchase land in the hills.

The hills are inhabited by 29 major tribes. These tribes fall largely into two groups the Nagas and the Kuki-Zomi-Chins. Besides these, there are some smaller communities. Though the Nagas share a sense of common history and kinship, as do the Kuki-Zomi-Chins, both the communities are internally differentiated.

Some districts like Ukhrul and Tamenglong are dominated by the Nagas, others, like Churachandpur, are predominantly Kuki-Zomi-Chins.

For more than five decades, the communities have experienced armed conflicts. The armed groups from both communities fight the state, some fight among themselves. Some groups engage non-violently with the state.

The insurgents have various demands -- independence, new states within India, greater autonomy, greater rights, territorial integrity or simply development on their own terms. Some groups are powerful enough to run parallel governments -- imposing taxes and running administrative and judicial systems. Experts have counted up to 35 insurgent groups.

Sharp divides
There are sharp economic divides that feed the friction. In the valley, access to the rest of the world is relatively easy. Income levels are far higher. Markets for every primary commodity that the hills can sell, from rice to wood to bamboo, exist in the valley. In the hills, the only form of livelihood is agriculture -- a mix of swidden (jhum) and settled. Forest and riverine products supplement agriculture. The economic disparity between the valley and the hills fuels the divide between the communities.

There are sharp political divides too. The Naga underground has been asking for an integrated Naga homeland by merging districts of Manipur that are Naga-dominated with neighbouring Nagaland.

Mainstream Meitei society, largely based in Imphal, as well as valley-based underground organisations, is against this demand. They ask for the territorial integrity of the state to be maintained.

The underground groups of the Hmars, a dominant tribe of the Kuki-Chin-Zomi group, have been at war with the Nagas over territorial claims too. The battles between Kukis (including the Hmars) and Naga underground groups, going back to the 1980s and 1990s, have led to massacres that still scar people's psyches.

Middle path
Social organisations, student unions and women's groups often play the role of intermediaries. Even though they too are often divided along ethnic lines, they are the only forces in the state that try to encourage a climate for dialogue and negotiation, cajoling underground groups to come to the negotiating table.

These, for instance, are the groups that have come together to protest against the Tipaimukh project. Usually, the state government accuses these groups of supporting the underground and covertly fomenting its agendas. But indisputably they provide the only modicum of democratic politics in the state.

Against this setting of immense distrust the government wants to build the Tipaimukh Multipurpose Hydropower Project.