Prime Minister Narendra Modi has never come across as a person who can silently reflect on issues that affect every part of the country. His visits to different states are carefully choreographed events and are usually to inaugurate projects or for election campaigns. He travelled to Assam on several occasions prior to the state assembly election held on April 9, this year. He has also travelled extensively to West Bengal where the first phase of the elections were held on April 23 and the second and final on April 29. Modi’s leadership style is performative. His speeches are laced with rhetoric and divisive; he uses political messaging to divide rather than unite the state. One cannot therefore expect Modi to have the time or inclination to invite warring parties and sit with them to quietly work out conflict resolution strategies. For Modi political messaging scores over conflict management.The people of Manipur have been in the eye of the storm since May 3, 2023. The third year anniversary of the conflict is here already but there’s no end to the trauma of over 65,000 people still living in relief camps, both in the Imphal valley and the Kuki-Zo inhabited hill districts of Churachandpur and Kangpokpi. The prime minister prefers to leave the nitty gritty of conflict management to his deputy Amit Shah – the Union home minister – a man whose track record is not that of a strategist for consensus building. Do we recall the 2002 Gujarat riots and his role there?The BJP comes across as a party of bullies, and bullies cannot be expected to understand the language of negotiations. Manipur is a state inhabited by three major communities – the Meitei, Naga and Kuki-Zo tribes. At present the Nagas are accusing the Kuki-Zo of encroaching into their territories. Of course, the two communities have a sad history of conflict dating back to 1992-97, which resulted in the death of 470 people from the Kuki-Zo community and 207 from the Naga community. Even then, thousands of houses were burnt on both sides. The conflict did not end with any agreement. It ended because of battle fatigue and because a fresh conflict between the Kuki and Paite ensued. Conflicts in Manipur often centre around land and the claims and counter-claims about boundaries.It’s not as if the Congress government in the past handled these conflicts any better. The strategy seems to be – if the tribes are engaged in internecine clashes, the state will maintain a sort of detached, wait and watch policy. Security personnel fire tear gas shells to disperse people advancing towards the BDO office, in Thoubal district of Manipur, April 21, 2026. Photo: PTITrue, the Indian army was deployed to end the Naga-Kuki conflict but there were also civil society peace missions and church initiatives that put a temporary halt to the killings then. Kukis still observe September 13 as a Black Day (Sahnit Ni), as it saw the massacre of Kuki villagers by the National Socialist Council of Nagaland – Isak-Muivah. Sadly, the Naga-Kuki conflict has resumed and claimed three lives while some are injured in the clashes. From a distance, all these conflicts are mere news reports that we read with a certain amount of indifference as it does not affect us directly. Elections in Manipur are scheduled for 2027 and former chief minister N. Biren Singh has claimed on social media that this time the BJP would win 40 out of the 60 assembly seats. Singh had to step aside after the President’s Rule was imposed in Manipur in February 2025, nearly two years after the violence of May 2023.The fact that it took so long to impose the President’s Rule, despite the continued violence, huge loss of life and property also points to the level of indifference of the BJP at what happens in a distant northeastern state – the periphery that continues to pulverise itself without ruffling any feathers beyond the state’s boundaries. Also read: Manipur Needs No More Repression or Coercion. It Needs a Deeper UnderstandingWhen Modi visited the state in September 2025, it was only to lay the foundation stones for development projects to the tune of Rs 8,500 crores in Churachandpur and Imphal. The Prime Minister did meet with a few violence affected victims but it was too little, too late and more of a scripted performance. He was ill-matched for the display of empathy which people genuinely looked forward to. They expected a healing touch but were greeted with bombast. And bombast is no substitute for peace-building.The thought of hundreds of young men in fatigues guarding the borders of their villagers from possible attacks might sound surreal to those who don’t live in Manipur, but that’s the reality even today. The Kuki-Zo have well-guarded bunkers to prevent any attack from the Imphal valley. These bunkers are guarded round the clock. Children and youth who should be in schools and colleges have now lost three years of their precious lives. Kids born in the relief camps in December 2023 are now two years old and still living in the refugee camps because they have no home to return to. Can we imagine ourselves in the shoes of these inmates of shelter camps? And now there’s news that the Union government has sanctioned Rs 947 crores for the relief of Manipur’s victims of violence – something that might delight those in the business of governance because not all the funds will go towards the proposed project. As is the practice in India, northeast development funds are not accounted for. These funds tend to leak into private pockets of ministers, bureaucrats and even militant outfits. Of the 947 crores, Rs 424 crore is supposed to go towards operating the relief camps set up after the outbreak of violence in May 2023. Another Rs 523 crore is for the rehabilitation of the displaced persons. Responses to Right to Information queries reveal that at least 58,881 people are displaced in the state. This is a huge number and the fact that it has been let to happen shows the utter incompetence of the N. Biren Singh government to handle the situation with alacrity from the beginning in May 2023.Before so many deaths were inflicted, women raped and homes burnt, the Union government should have acted with speed and imposed the President’s Rule so that they could take control of the situation. What was needed at the time to douse the fires was an independent law that would treat all troublemakers with the same yardstick and not bend it to please any single group. Unfortunately, the Union government took the opportunity to play politics and allowed Biren Singh to continue, despite knowing that he favoured a particular valley-based militant outfit who appeared to have been trained for vengeance against the Kuki-Zo people.The riots were linked to the Manipur high court’s order to speed up granting of Scheduled Tribe status to the Meiteis, who are largely Hindu by religion. Only later was the court told that it had overstepped its brief and had no locus standi to pass such an order. By then, however, the violence had escalated and people had to run for their lives – the large number of Kuki-Zos working or staying in Imphal, as well as the Meiteis living in Churachandpur and Moreh areas.In no other state in India is there an example where people of the same state have drawn such strict boundaries beyond which the warring parties must not go. The Kuki-Zo people were relegated to the hills and the Meiteis to the valley. Life was completely disrupted. A total of 7,894 homes were completely gutted, 2,646 homes were partially destroyed, but only about 3,000 pre-fabricated houses have been constructed – most of them in the Meitei-dominated Imphal valley. It must be noted that the homes that went up in flames in Imphal valley belonged mostly to Kuki families, who had lived and grown up there for decades. Most of them could not salvage anything – not even important documents. They had to flee.The human rights violation in Manipur in the last three years is beyond imagination. Even if Manipur was to limp back to ‘normalcy’ today, the losses suffered by the people during this conflict can never be recovered. For there is the economic loss, but more importantly, it is the gruesome deaths inflicted by one group on the other that will remain a constant reminder of people of different ethnicities, who were forced to live under an iniquitous rule where the government is run by the majority community with no empathy for minority groups. That’s the stark reality of Manipur.Patricia Mukhim is the editor of Shillong Times.