Manipur’s Quiet Fracture: Displacement, Distrust, and the Limits of Politics

In a relief camp in Lamka, Churachandpur, Neisi Misao (name changed) sits on a plastic chair, her fingers tracing the charred edges of a family photo album. Her home was burned down two years ago in the early days of the violence. Since then, she has shared a tarpaulin shelter with five other families. “They talk of governments. We talk of food,” she says, her voice low. Her youngest child has not been to school in over a year. At the camp’s edge, a teenage boy helps patch a leaking roof. He says his family is waiting for word on when they can return. “They say peace is coming. We don’t know what that means.”

In Manipur, where violence has redrawn the map of lives and livelihoods, the question of governance is not abstract. It is a matter of survival. Three months into the President’s Rule, after two years of ethnic conflict, the state remains caught between slogans of unity and the grim arithmetic of displacement. The recent bid by 10 NDA legislators to form a “popular government”—claiming the support of 44 MLAs—has brought the crisis back into focus. For many in the Valley, this move is seen as a return to normalcy. For the Hills, it signals a potential return to a government they view with suspicion, if not outright fear.

At the heart of this fracture lies a dissonance: the language of politics, popular mandates, territorial integrity, and constitutional order has little bearing on the ground realities of a state where homes remain burnt, schools stand empty, and markets have thinned to a trickle. The promise of free movement, declared with fanfare by the Home Minister, lies in tatters after the March 8 incident that left a 19-year-old dead in Kangpokpi. The symbolic protests over a bus concealing the word “Manipur” have deepened the chasm between the Meitei-dominated Valley and the Kuki-Zomi-dominated Hills.

This piece is not about the political choreography in Imphal or Delhi. It is about the ordinary people, displaced families in relief camps, small traders earning a living, students whose futures are stalled, women who continue to protest, and community leaders who speak cautiously, if at all. It is their stories that reveal the limits of a governance model that promises peace without justice and a popular government that may have no constituency beyond the Valley.

Lives in Limbo

In Kangpokpi, where the March 8 “free movement” order unravelled into chaos, the memory of violence lingers. A 19-year-old boy, Lalgouthang Singsit, was shot dead when security forces fired at protesters. The highway, once a symbol of connection, is now a boundary. A woman, Kimneizou (name changed), a woman leader in Kangpokpi, watches from her doorstep. “They sent buses through our village without asking us. We see it as provocation.” For many in the relief camps, the prospect of a “popular government” elicits little more than a shrug. A farmer in Lamka asks, “What does it matter who rules from Imphal? No one came when our houses burned.”

The markets reflect the same desolation. In Lamka, Lalboi arranges wilted vegetables on a wooden crate. His supply lines from Imphal were severed long ago; now, he depends on trucks coming in from Mizoram, bringing produce sourced as far as Assam. The journey—once a straightforward route through Imphal—now winds across state borders, crossing into Mizoram, then Assam, and back into Manipur’s southern districts. A trip that used to take a da,y now stretches into a three-day journey covering over 700 kilometres, with goods often arriving damaged, delayed, or priced beyond what local buyers can afford. Costs have doubled, customers have thinned, and debts have mounted. “We sell less every day, but the debts grow,” he says, almost matter-of-factly.

Across Manipur, inflation has surged. Small businesses and informal credit systems have shuttered as the backbone of rural economies has collapsed. GST collections have fallen sharply; the tourism sector has all but vanished. For traders like Lalboi, the issue is not who holds office but whether the trucks will move again. “Whether it is President’s Rule or a new government, it is the same for us,” he says. “The trucks are not moving. That is what matters,” he laments.

In a makeshift classroom in a relief camp, a volunteer writes the alphabet on a whiteboard. Children recite it with little interest. At the back, 17-year-old Thangminlun sits quietly. “I wanted to be a teacher,” he says. “Now, I don’t know.” Across the state, thousands of students remain out of school. There is no official data on learning outcomes since the conflict began; surveys like the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) have not been conducted, leaving a critical gap in understanding the full impact of the crisis. Many schools, particularly in the Hill districts, were converted into relief camps when violence first erupted, and despite talk of normalcy, they have yet to reopen fully.

Education is a victim, too. Access to university admissions and competitive exams has become a logistical and financial burden for students from the Hills. The cancellation of the SSC Combined Graduate Level Examinations in Churachandpur and Ukhrul districts by the Staff Selection Commission (North East Region) has deepened the sense of exclusion. District authorities in Churachandpur had submitted reports confirming the feasibility of holding exams safely. Still, service providers cited “law and order concerns,” forcing candidates to travel long distances—often a full day’s journey to Aizawl, the Mizoram capital—at a cost of at least ₹10,000. For many of the students affected, most from poor and displaced families, the cancellation is not just a logistical hurdle but a blow to aspirations already weakened by insecurity and loss.

The impact is not just a lost academic year. For many students, it is the erosion of faith that education offers a way forward. A teacher in Kangpokpi points to the drawings her students bring. “They draw guns,” she says. “Not because they understand politics, but because that is the world they see.” It is a quiet, unspoken transmission of conflict, a childhood shaped by what violence makes visible.

In Imphal, the Meira Paibis march again, demanding an apology from the Governor over the “Manipur” bus row. They chant, “Manipur is indivisible,” holding banners aloft. Many are in their sixties, custodians of an idea of unity that has become increasingly fraught—one that has come to symbolise the Valley’s political aspirations rather than a shared, inclusive future.

In the Hills, the mood is different. Kimneizou, a woman in Kangpokpi, offers a quiet observation. “We have protested, but no one listens. The government speaks to our leaders, but not to us.” The words reveal more than fatigue. They point to a political arrangement where the concerns of women, particularly in the Hills, are mediated by male leaders, often in closed-door meetings in Delhi or Imphal. It is a system that demands patience from those who bear the weight of the conflict, but rarely grants them a voice in shaping its resolution.

The burdens in the Hills are layered: caring for the displaced, salvaging livelihoods, and navigating the persistent fear of renewed violence. Their silence is not in agreement. It is exhaustion and a measure of the distance between those who chant in the streets of Imphal and those who wait in the camps of Churachandpur.

Competing Narratives, Shared Loss

For Meitei civil society groups like COCOMI, the crisis is framed as a struggle to defend Manipur's “indivisible” identity. In their view, the violence is not a breakdown of governance but the result of “narco-terrorism,” “illegal immigrants,” and a larger conspiracy to fracture the state. At the May 3 “People’s Convention” in Imphal, their resolution declared Manipur “was, is, and shall always remain an indivisible entity,” a phrase that has since echoed across Valley protests. In meetings with the Ministry of Home Affairs, COCOMI leaders demanded the lifting of the President’s Rule and the return of a government that, in their words, “truly represents the people.” Their stance leaves little room for reconciliation with the Kuki-Zomi, whom they accuse of secessionism and armed provocation.

For their part, the Kuki-Zomi communities hear the language of “territorial integrity” as a refusal to acknowledge their suffering. For them, the demand for separate administration is not an abstract political claim but a response to the collapse of protection and trust. After two years of violence, displacement, and the impunity granted to groups like Arambai Tenggol, the Hills see the prospect of a BJP-led government not as a promise of stability but as the return of a system that sanctioned their marginalisation.

As Neisi Misao, a woman in a Churachandpur camp, puts it, “No one came when our homes burned. No one comes now. And they ask us to trust them again?” The “free movement” initiative announced by Home Minister Amit Shah, meant to symbolise reconciliation, ended in the death of 19-year-old Lalgouthang Singsit in Kangpokpi. For many in the Hills, the image of an empty state-run bus pushed through barricades under heavy security was less a gesture of peace than a performance staged for the cameras.

Naga voices, though more measured, watch with quiet unease. A student leader from Senapati, who spoke on condition of anonymity, says, “We are not in the fighting, but the fear is real. We know it could spread here. We see the weapons moving, the roads blocked, the anger rising.” The Naga districts, while not directly drawn into the violence, remain wary of its spillover and sceptical of the state’s ability to contain it.

In the Valley, the rhetoric is clear: Manipur must remain united, and those who challenge this are enemies of the state. But in the Hills, the talk is of survival. The phrase “popular government” circulates in Imphal as a sign of restoration; in Churachandpur, it is met with silence. There is no consensus here, only parallel worlds. The return of a BJP-led government, without a reckoning for the violence, will not heal these fractures.

For the displaced, the market traders, the students, and the mothers waiting in relief camps, governance is not a slogan. It is the ration card that has not been renewed, the school that remains closed, and the promise of security that feels hollow. As the political debates continue in the Assembly and the media, the ground realities remain stark: homes lost, futures stalled, and the deep, unspoken fear that nothing will change.

The Limits of Political Arithmetic

The debate over a “popular government” in Manipur is often reduced to numbers in an Assembly, but numbers alone do not settle the deeper questions this conflict has raised. No matter how it is formed, a government must find a way to speak to those who have been displaced, dispossessed, and left out of the state’s imagination. The crisis has exposed the limits of politics that prioritise order over justice and arithmetic over reconciliation.

President’s Rule has not resolved the conflict. It has contained its immediate violence but not its roots. Camps remain full. Markets are empty. Schools stay closed. Families wait for news that never comes. Institutions that were meant to protect have yet to earn back trust.

A return to Assembly rule, without confronting the failures that brought Manipur to this point, risks reinstating the same structures that allowed impunity to flourish. A government that claims the mantle of being “popular” but cannot reach the displaced, the traders, and the mothers in the camps will govern in name, not in practice.

In a camp in Churachandpur, a father sits outside his shelter, watching the sun set behind a line of plastic sheets and tin roofs. “We wait for peace, but peace does not wait for us,” he says quietly. His words capture what no Assembly vote can resolve: a crisis of trust and a longing for safety that has not been met. The crisis in Manipur is not about the restoration of government alone. It is about the restoration of trust between the Valley and the Hills, between state institutions and the people they claim to serve. Until that trust is rebuilt, the arithmetic of governance will remain hollow.

Sangmuan Hangsing is a researcher and alumnus of the Kautilya School of Public Policy.