Their Way or The Highway

By Samudra Gupta Kashyap

Once, two passengers on a train got talking. “I’m from Andhra Pradesh”, said one, to which the other said, “I’m from Bandha Pradesh.” He explained — “Assam. We call it Bandha Pradesh because most of the time there is a bandh!” Going by that norm, Manipur should by now be known or referred to Blockade-pur, especially after it went through a 66-day highway blockade, the effects of which are far from over.

For those still not familiar with the issue: two blockades affected Manipur in the past months. While the All Naga Students’ Association of Manipur (ANSAM), United Naga Council (UNC) and some other Naga organisations of the state on April 11 launched a blockade of the two crucial national highways within the state — NH-39 and NH-53, their demand was to put on hold an election to the autonomous district councils in the five hill districts. The other was a blockade by the Naga Students’ Federation (NSF) on NH-39 in Nagaland, which links Manipur to rest of India through Nagaland, and began on May 3. The NSF problem was that that a student delegation was refused permission to enter Manipur to attend a meeting of Naga student bodies at Ukhrul.

A landlocked state, Manipur is almost entirely dependent on the two national highways for its supplies as well as travel to the outside world. And, for any outfit, underground or overground, the best available mode of protest is to block the highways, more particularly NH-39. On any given day, at least 100 trucks and oil and LPG tankers drive up 115 kms of NH-39 through Nagaland into Manipur, which also happens to be a highway where militant groups almost freely collect “taxes” as the authorities pretend not to have seen them run their writ.

But, though on the surface the two blockades were for two specific reasons, there is no denying the fact that they were also connected to the much-hyped visit of NSCN(IM) general secretary Thuingaleng Muivah to his native village Somdal in Ukhrul district of Manipur. Though the Union home ministry had specifically instructed the Manipur government to ensure Muivah’s visit to his native village, Chief Minister Okram Ibobi Singh refused, contending that there were numerous cases against Muivah in the state, and the moment he enters, Manipur Police would arrest him. Muivah, also “ato kilonser” (prime minister) of the underground “Government of the People’s Republic of Nagalim”, also gets Z+ protection from the government!

Muivah, in ceasefire with the government since 1997, is free to move about inside Nagaland. But he wants to also tour the Naga-inhabited districts — Senapati, Ukhrul, Chandel and Tamenglong — because the NSCN(IM) wants a “Greater Nagalim” that includes “Naga-inhabited areas” of not just Manipur, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh but also Myanmar!

Thanks to the Centre’s intervention, Muivah temporarily put off his visit to Somdal. And thanks to civil society pressure, the student bodies also finally withdrew their blockades. But, by then, Manipur had already undergone a 66-day ordeal, with stocks drying up and prices — of whatever little was left — skyrocketing. The state government did move a few hundred trucks under heavy security through NH-53, a route that is not just longer than NH-39, but also nothing more than a dirt track in large portions. But, even as the blockades have been called off, truckers continue not to ply on NH-39 till the authorities ensured that extortions were stopped.

The NH-39 story, incidentally, also applies to several other national highways in the Northeast. Extortion, collection of illegal taxes, harassment over donations, blockades, damage to vehicles — these are common to highways especially in Assam, Nagaland, Meghalaya and Manipur. An inquiry instituted by the government of Assam a couple of years ago had revealed how a nexus of corrupt officers, politicians and militants squeezed huge sums of money from truckers entering Assam from West Bengal. Three years after that inquiry report, trucks continue to be fleeced on the inter-state check gates.

Extortions apart, the condition of most of the so-called national highways in the Northeastern region is also highly deplorable. Take for instance NH-53 and NH-150, of which the former connects Manipur through the Barak Valley in southern Assam, and the latter through Mizoram further south via Barak Valley. While most of the 220-km stretch of the 320-km NH-53 between Jiribam (on the border) and Imphal is nothing but a dirt track, then 220 kms into the state, the 523-km stretch of the 700-km NH-150 that passes through Manipur is even worse, making it impossible to predict how long it would to take to cover those distances. (Leave aside the landslides that play havoc with roads: the Dibang Valley district in Arunachal Pradesh has been cut off since March 31, and nobody seems to be bothered.)

People in the region are now talking about who gained what out of the 66-day blockade. But the basic question is yet to be addressed — how long will highway blockades continue to be used to hold people to ransom?