 Salam, you're watching NewsClick. We're continuing our coverage of the 2022 Manipur Assembly elections, the first phase of polling, as you know, concluded with a high voter turnout, but also several incidents of violence, both pre-poll, as well as on polling day. Joining us to talk a bit about the security situation and the law and order situation in the state today are activist Erendro Lechombam and journalist Grace Jajo, who have spent a lot of time working on the ground across, I think, various fields on many of these subjects and have experienced firsthand the sort of intimidation that the people of Manipur, common people, civilians in Manipur face from both the state as well as other armed groups that are active in the state. There are at least three dozen active armed groups and the state has done its bit by adding police and paramilitary and military forces. Of course, you're all aware that the Armed Forces Special Powers Act is also in force in the state. Now, the Congress, under the Congress regime, the use or misuse, however you put it, of AFSPA peaked with 1,528 cases of extrajudicial killings being reported and Grace here was instrumental in the reporting of many of those cases. In that framework is where we are today. The BJP government came in promising peace and today will have us believe that Manipur is a peaceful state. Yet, since we've been here covering the elections, we've seen a great deal of presence of security forces, what some might even call excessive. We're gonna be talking about all of these issues as well as how students and other activists create space for dissent and how the state quashes those spaces. Rindu, I'd like to start with you first. Tell us about your personal experiences in some of these contexts that I was just mentioning. My personal experience has been that I identify myself with the younger generation more and I'm outspoken and I read, I write and I speak against injustice that I see in society. I criticize or I express my dissent in many different forums, including on my own Facebook account. And so in the last five years, I was arrested at least four to five times. At least a dozen FIRs were filed against me for simply speaking my mind on Facebook. And in fact, I was put to prison twice and sedition charges, National Security Act, all of those things were slapped against me simply for speaking my mind on Facebook. So that has been my personal experience, but also I have seen my associates and my friends being put through very difficult situation by the present government simply because they spoke their minds. So that in a nutshell is my personal encounter with this particular BJP government here in Manipur in the last five years. Right. Grace, on the same subject, Grace, if you can just tell us what your personal experience is. I had shared news with this subtitle saying drama from the assembly and they find the word drama problematic. And that's how I was stripped of my rights to cover the assembly on the last day. The link, the story which I posted was about the chief minister's position on ASPA which was released by the DIPR. And from that release, the frontier had quoted and then made news. And for this news, the frontier were summoned by the assembly secretary since the chief minister moved a privileged motion against the frontier. Now when they were summoned, they realized that the real information came from his own DIPR and his own statement. Therefore, they were not able to pursue it further with the frontier. So it was such an embarrassing position for the CM. And it was that news link that I shared on my Facebook by adding the subtitle, drama from the assembly. So, and for that, I was stripped of my privilege to cover the assembly on the last day. But, you know, this is not an isolated case. What is important to know is that it's not Irindu, it's not Grace Jhajo or the other people, one Kim, Chauber, Diren, you know, like it's, they are people who had to, who were picked up and released on the same day also. Like there were several people, not necessarily from the media fatality, but also from the student unions. But if you look at the trend, trend is more important in our case. I think I would like to go a little bit to the history. So, I'm someone who was born in the mid-70s. So we grew up within this political dichotomy of on one side we have this political, ugly political history of annexation and the Naga saying that we have never consent to being Indians. So we have the political struggles within. And on the other side, we have this Indian with using all their military might to suppress the political struggles in these areas. So therefore we have this very powerful two forces operating in our spaces. And the Indian military might is again, like more empowered by the impunity under Armed Forces Special Power Act. So we grew up within those, within those like suppressions of rights on all fronts. Maybe for the Indian media, it picked when 100, one, five, two, eight cases were registered in Supreme Court by HRA through, by HRA and EFAM through their like very, very consistent and like excellent documentation of this one, five, two, eight cases. So that's when like the whole country walked up to the reality on this front. So it picked during the Congress and the BGP came to the picture saying like, you know, we will be everything which is not the Congress. So they are like, you know, the new fresh political party who will be ushering in the peace and development in the state. So there was a lot of hope like in the 2017 campaign like among the people, among the voters, among the electors. So, but when they came, the space for dissent was just what, not just minimize, but completely squash. So it is that thing which is problematic because without that, like, you know, how would we operate as media persons? How would, if our reporting, if our reporting is uncomfortable to them, then how would we report their performance if there is that kind of intimidation, you know, if there is that kind of a message threat or a confrontation, then how would we operate within these spaces? And then based on some of that background that Grace has just given us over the past five years, how do you see things having changed? And we are currently in the middle of an election cycle. So what kind of impact do you think this will have from an electoral point of view? Manipur's electoral dynamic is very different from, let's say, Mumbai or Delhi because economically Manipur still ranks among the poorest states in India. And so a lot of electoral decisions by the electorate is decided by economic incentives. And mainly, you know, financial incentives are provided for very, very poor electorate. And so the issue-based elections or principal ideology-based elections truly democratic elections are very rare in all the 60 constituencies here in Manipur. So a lot of it is decided by economic factors. And we are sort of like very unfortunate that especially here in urban areas like Infile, candidates are elected based on how much money they're able to shell out to each voters. And that proves the point that Infile is one of the poorest urban areas in India. As long as those poverty issues remain among the electorate, I don't think that we could truly have democratic elections here because votes are bought very easily, which is a very unfortunate state of affairs. And so issues and manifestos, everything from all political party, is just like a lip service. And if you look at the financial assets of all these candidates, you'll see that they're like one crore rich or two crore rich, three crore rich, but they're able to distribute five crores during the elections. So the obvious answer is that they have a lot of black money and where all this black money is coming from in Manipur. And I believe all this black money is coming from illegal activities. For example, drug trafficking. Manipur happens to be in a very strategic geographic location and so every now and then you hear that so many crores worth of drugs was caught by the police or was caught by the paramilitary or the army. And so I feel that we are very unfortunate that we are in a position where we facilitate the traffic of these drugs, but at the same time our generation, new generation included, destroyed by insurgency, poverty, unemployment and drugs. And so long as we are able to address these things, I don't think we can have issue based elections in Manipur. Education also is something that I think probably plays a critical role in that and Grace, I'll ask you a short question on that in a minute, but before that in Indra, we can just continue on that theme. Since you said you do identify with the younger generations of Manipur and you've been involved with student activism and protests and things like that, tell us about what happened recently at Manipur University with the vice-chancellors, misappropriation case and the protests that followed. Yeah, I think most people probably in Manipur already forgot about that incident because people in general have amnesia about these things. Basically the students accused the vice-chancellors for misappropriation of funds and other things. Other issues were there inside the university and so the students protested and demanded that the vice-chancellors be expelled or replaced by someone else. And unfortunately the Manipur government was very adamant about keeping this particular person. And the whole thing sort of like escalated to the point where professors, students were arrested. Overnight Manipur University was completely militarized. I myself was hunted down by the Manipur police. FIRs were filed, one of my associates was arrested and spent about a couple of months in jail. All of these things happened and an inquiry was initiated. Months later it was definitely found out that this particular person was in fact corrupt. And so what we have observed is that students' voices number one are not heard, were not heard by this government. And at the same time, instead of providing a very conducive environment for education, I think the government, this particular government was sort of like anti-education. I mean, yesterday I went to cast my vote and it was a government school. And it really broke my heart to look at the context and it really broke my heart to look at the condition of this government school. It's right next to my house, right in the heart of Infal City. I mean, all the walls, it looks like it was bombed during the Second World War. And so that is the state of all the government schools and colleges and universities here in Manipur. And so definitely, I mean, if the electorate is not provided good education, they will not be able to make the right decisions. Everybody will be very myopic about little things, immediate gratifications. We are unable to bring the long-term vision into our discourse here in Manipur. And so I also visited a couple of polling centers that happened to be schools and saw exactly the same thing. And I'll just put it out there for my producer to add those pictures to, yeah. So just to illustrate the point that Erendra was making there, Grace, education is a field in which you've done a significant amount of work in all parts of the state, I think, particularly in the hail areas, remote areas, where you said, when I showed you some of those pictures, you said, oh, this is nothing, it gets much worse. Just elaborate on that for a bit and also bring in the angle of tribal students and their agitations. Two decades has been a very frustrating effort on education because it's not the first constraint. It's the lack of political will from the government side, which is leading to this disastrous situation. In the hills, the performance accountability is nonexistent for the teachers. And performance accountability is not a big deal. It can be enforced at a drop of a hat if the government is willing. And that is what we have been saying, but they are not interested. If you look at the spending, the spending, I think the spending reflects the policies of the government, so I'm very interested in spending. So this time with this government, their spending on education in the hail areas is 5.7 of the total proportion. So one is, of course, we need more funds. We want the pace to improve, but we should also recognize that the pace in the hills and the valley are extremely different. And if you are spending in the hills, which is 91% of the geographical area, which is 42% of the population, it's just 5.7 of the total spending. It shows your interest to promote the hills. And when it comes to the students, now you should also know that in school education, up to primary is looked after by the ADCs, Autonomous District Councils, they come under them. Now the Autonomous District Councils, their term got over and there was no election, but while the pretext was given that it's because of the pandemic that they cannot pursue with the election, they were actually going for by election for some constituencies here in the valley after that. Now, even after that, they didn't conduct the election. So because of this indifference to the hill population, the students went for an agitation. The old tribal student union, Manipur, which is the only platform for the tribals, they went for an agitation. When they went for agitation, the government picked them up. So they were not allowed to say anything against the government, even when the government was not performing. That was not the first instance. Even in the second instance, even if you look at very recently, the ADC built, which was adopted across the political parties, across the tribal community. When it was not able, the tribal student union, this old tribal student union, Manipur, came into the picture and they pressurized the government. They was a series of democratic agitations I remember that on one Sunday, the whole villages, all the tribal villages across the districts, across the tribes, across the 34 tribes, one Sunday, everyone came out in the respective villages, saying we demand the government to table the ADC bill. So even when the demand was across the district, was across the political parties, across the ethnic groups, the government still didn't give a damn. Then they gave a deadline to the government requesting for a special session. Then they said, if this is not done, then we'll be compelled to go for an economic blocate. The government didn't give a shit. So when they started the economic blocate, the government used all their missionaries to pick up all the students overnight. 11th student union leaders from all tribal student union, Manipur, all Naga student association Manipur, and Kuki student organization Manipur, they were all picked up, and then even after they were arrested, they refused to give up on their demand. So then the government said, okay, we'll call for a winter session and table your bill. So they signed an MOU with the government. The government of course didn't respect even that. So now, of course now it's too late, but even with the new government, whoever is coming to place, if this is the kind of way you treat our rights, then the tribals might aim for something more radical because we are not comfortable in Manipur anymore with the kind of treatment that we are getting in terms of sharing resources where we get breadcrumbs of 10% on average and in terms of sharing like space of dissent. So all these things are becoming extremely problematic. This intimidation on all fronts, it's becoming extremely problematic. That kind of gives us a good picture of the actual condition in the state across these various fronts, particularly what's being faced by young people looking to build a better future. So my final question to each of you starting with you, Rindu, is what are your realistic hopes for the next five years, whoever comes into power? And then Grace after that, you also the same, yeah? Realistic hope for the next five years. I hope that the younger generation, especially the young people, educated young people from both rural and urban areas, I hope they are able to have a dialogue among themselves. I hope that everybody is able to share ideas, whether it is good ideas or not so good ideas because democracy cannot function without dialogue among the citizens. So I hope that there is a space for everybody to come together and discuss issues with each other. And social media, I think it's a pretty good platform where people can share ideas. And I hope that when they do share these ideas that they are not intimidated by the next government. It could very well be a BJP coalition government, but I hope that this squeezing of dissenting voices is not repeated in the next five years. I hope that people are freely able to express themselves. I hope that people are not arrested or intimidated. That's the least I could hope from this government. And I really hope that the government does something for education. Starting a huge industry, providing employment to everybody may be a very big thing, may be very challenging, but I hope at least on the education front, we spend crores and crores every budget cycle for education. I hope that government schools, just like how it is happening in Delhi where government schools are overtaking even private ones, I think that would leave a lasting foundation for the state of Manipur. And as far as employment goes, my hope is that we are able to develop a culture here whereby we are not so picky about different jobs, whether it is young people from tribal areas or from the valley areas. I hope the young people are not very picky about jobs. I think they should be able to have at least some means of livelihood. If we do these things, I think we'll have a really good foundation for a better Manipur in the next, maybe not in the next five years, but at least in the next 30 years. Unless you give attention to education, it will be extremely difficult because you'll create, when you increase this out-of-school category and in a conflict state like ours, especially in the peripheries, in the rural areas, in the peripheries, where we have the, what do we call, the non-state actors in our periphery. This out-of-school students, their only option is to join the groups. They don't have any other options in life. They don't have any other options. So we have seen very young people taking out the guns and it's compulsion. And the government is creating this liability by not providing education. So education is actually the mantra to assure peace in the state. Education is not just a survival or a better opportunity. It's also the mantra to assure peace in a state like ours.