The unusual zeal with which the Centre revoked FMR and sanctioned over thirty-thousand crore rupees to construct border fencing across the 1643 kilometre-stretch Indo-Myanmar border, including 398 kilometre-stretch Manipur-Myanmar border suggests that the ‘supply side’ of the political system complements with and reinforces the ‘demand side’ of the politics of majoritarian minded FCOS, CoCOMI and other groups.
This, however, implies that substantive national security concerns like upskilling, modernisation and professionalisation of the Indian Army and police, improving intelligence gathering capacity and security infrastructure of the Indian State are kept at bay, and will be sacrificed at the altar of an obsolete national security framework.
In the meantime, arcane policy framework such as revoking FMR and border-fencing may eminently serve the purpose of promissory collateral benefits to intermediate brokers and contractors, yet it is bound to push back India’s longstanding neighbourhood first policy via Look East (now Act East). It will also unnecessarily antagonise transborder people who are the primary stakeholders in India’s Act East policy. The staunch opposition registered by the Naga and Mizo, among others, is a clear pointer that India’s national security policy is increasingly distant from ‘winning hearts and minds’—a time-tested strategy of securing national security.
This does not seem to have worked in a deeply divided place like Manipur and beyond. ‘Bridging divide’ in deeply divided places is best done not by a homogenous and uniform applicability of the laws and institutions, but by upholding pluralism—by the recognition and accommodation of deep differences.
If historical institutionalism is any guide, historical institutions which accommodate differences are sticky to change as they underpin complex power distributions—social, cultural, economic, political, and symbolic.
This explains why despite all their internal differences, disparate tribes in Manipur—Kuki, Zomi, Hmar, and Naga—strongly rally behind themselves to zealously guard against any attempt by the State government to dilute/dissolve existing institutions which have important bearings on their autonomy, land, and identities.
The jury is out to track how these rival groups harness the two-commemorative events to position their ‘demand side’ of politics to harness the ‘supply side’ of the political system in ways that push their divergent agenda for favourable political outcomes.
(Kham Khan Suan Hausing is a Professor and former Head of the Department of Political Science, University of Hyderabad. He is also an Honorary Senior Fellow, Centre for Multilevel Federalism, Institute of Social Sciences, New Delhi. Views are personal. This is an opinion piece. All views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)
