In the wake of direct snub of Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s appeal to Kuki groups for opening the blockade on the National Highway 2 at Kangpokpi area, the time has come for the state to assert its authority and responsibility towards ensuring safe passage of trucks carrying essential commodities. Simply put, the time for appeal has gone past as saner elements are no longer in control of the highway blockade.
Amit Shah, the de-facto second man at the Centre, coming down to Manipur and extending the olive branch not by summoning them somewhere in a safe zone but going right to their homes is certainly not a joke. It shows, he is serious about settling the issue and bringing back normalcy in the state. He is pragmatic and he understands that before any solution to opposing demands things needs to be settled down first. That is why he camped in the state for three nights and talked to various groups by going to their home bases and assessed for himself the level of the sound and fury involved in the present conflict.
After going back to New Delhi, he made the appeal for opening up the highway to the Kuki groups. What he did not realise was that right from the beginning of the conflict on May first week, the Kuki groups had been voicing a basic slogan ‘Solution first, Peace next’ all through and insisting on it every day. We wonder whether Home Minister Amit Shah was properly briefed on this stance of the Kuki bodies by intelligence agencies or not.
Well, we do not have the luxury of reading the intelligence inputs that he got from agencies before his Imphal trip and after reaching Imphal. However, we must assume that he was briefed on the ground situation by all agencies and INT units in the various forces. And he must have actualised his strategy based on those inputs in his interactions with the various CSOs based at Kangpokpi.
Now, several questions have come up as to why he did extract a concession from the Kuki bodies as to opening the blockade during his personal visit at Kangpokpi. With the kind of welcome that he received from the Kangpokpi public waving the Indian tricolour, we thought he would have succeeded in convincing them to take a step back in the interests of peace and normalcy and further negotiations.
May be that he tried and he failed. But then, why did he issue an appeal for opening the highway after his return to New Delhi through his Twitter account on Sunday? Or that he did not at all negotiate the opening of the blockade during his Kangpokpi trip and the Sunday appeal was an afterthought. Strange indeed are the ways of the powerful minister.
Well, answers to these questions might or might not come. What is more important now is the state’s response to the violent snub of the Union Home Minister’s appeal to the Kuki groups. By state, we mean both the state and central government as represented by the Advisor (Security) who has been given charge of Home and all security related matters besides the leadership of the Unified Command.
Does the state intend to sidestep the issue of highway blockade and seek deliverance on the other national highway NH 37 Imphal-Jiribam road to ferry in essential commodities? All indications and actions point towards such a way out? It is not that surprising as we live in interesting times indeed.
However, we must raise certain questions. Is it not the duty and responsibility of the ‘state’ to ensure safe passage of goods including essential commodities and free movement of people on its highways? Is it right to look for alternative routes or way outs instead of enforcing the state's inherent responsibility and political will? How long the ‘state’ is going to wait for deliverance when the whole state is being held at ransom? In our humble opinion, the state should act like a STATE.
