The Hindu : Front Page : Life comes to a standstill in Manipur

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Aug 10, 2004

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Front Page

Life comes to a standstill in Manipur

By Siddharth Varadarajan

IMPHAL, AUG. 9. The Manipur capital had an empty, dishevelled feel on Monday, the first day of the indefinite bandh called by 32 organisations agitating for the revocation of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act in the State. Government offices by and large remained closed or understaffed, with many employees preferring to brave the stern official diktat warning them not to stay away from work. Though private cars were being driven, commercial traffic came to a virtual standstill. Most shops remained closed, with shopkeepers saying they would rather not take any chances given the volatile situation. Campaigners said more than 80 per cent of Government employees did not show up for work. Officials put the figure at less than half that number.

Somewhere between these two estimates lies the truth but there is one fact that is fast becoming indisputable: the Ibobi Singh Government's hold on the State is slipping. Mr. Singh may opt not to confront the Centre on the question of revoking Manipur's disturbed area status.

But his failure so far to deliver on his August 15 deadline for relief is fast eroding his moral right to govern in the eyes of lakhs and lakhs of Manipuris, who say all they want is for the judiciary to have oversight over the Army. Between the Scylla of public condemnation and the Charybdis of Central disapproval, the hapless Mr. Singh has nowhere to steer his listing ship.

And looming large over the horizon is President's Rule, an affliction so familiar to ordinary Manipuris that they refer to it by the oxymoronic abbreviation, `PR'.

Officials say the unprecedented shutdown is largely on account of fear that those who do not observe the bandh might later be targeted by any one of the 19 underground groups involved in the ongoing armed insurgency. The civil society organisations involved in the campaign against the AFSPA reject this argument. "There have been powerful insurgencies in Kashmir and Nagaland too," one of the activists told The Hindu on Monday, "but have you ever seen ordinary people mobilised like they have been here in Manipur? There is fear, but it is fear of the Army, not of the UGs (underground outfits)." Though there is no disputing the depth of public sentiment, the fact remains that at least as far as Government employees and shopkeepers are concerned, peer pressure from within the neighbourhood — if not fear of the UGs — is an important factor. "You talk to me in private,

I will say one thing, and in public, another," a Class-III employee of the Manipur Government said. Either way, however, the message to the Centre is not a positive one.

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