A project Report on

“Political Analysis of Indian State- Manipur”

For

MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

[M.B.A]

Under the guidance of

Prof. S.V.KHER

Prof. S.A.KHANDRE

SIHNGAD TECHNICAL EDUCATION SOCIETY’S

SINHGAD INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT

Vagabond (BK) Pune- 411041

[2013-15]

Submitted By:-

Chirag Patil Roll no:(15), Div:(J) MBA 1st Year Janardhan Narwade Roll no:(21), Div:(J) MBA 1st Year

Sr/No Content

1 Politics In Manipur

2 Major Parties

3 Government Set-Up

4 Maximum Seat Holding Parties

5 Politics And Ideology

6 Political Issues

Politics in Manipur:-

The major national parties such as Indian National Congress, CPI, RJD and BJP have their presence in the state of Manipur as well and they actively participate in all the political activities and elections of the Legislative Assembly. The state level parties are also not far behind as they work very hard for the growth of the state.

At present, Indian National Congress is the ruling party in Manipur with Mr. Okram Ibobi Singh as Chief Minister.

The major state level parties in Manipur are:-

o Democratic Revolutionary Peoples Partyo Federal Party of Manipuro Manipur National Conferenceo Manipur Peoples Partyo Naga National Partyo National People's Party (India)o Nikhil Manipuri Mahasabhao People's Liberation Army of Manipuro Manipur Peoples Party (MPP)

Manipur Peoples Party (MPP)

It was another dissident group from the Indian National Congress, which split in 1968 and formed a new local party in Manipur. 

The Democratic Revolutionary Peoples Party (DRPP)

It is also a local political outfit in Manipur. In the 2002 assembly elections, the party had won two seats. It merged with the INC Secular Progressive Front led by the Indian National Congress (INC) in 2004.

Nikhil Manipuri Mahasabha 

Nikhil Manipuri Mahasabha, was formed way back in British era in 1934. It was a Hindu fundamentalist organization and obviously it was against baptization of non-Christians of the state. They also opposed the foreign Christians advances into the tribal regions of the valley. They claim to protect the Hindus of the state from conversion and social aggression. It is based on the pattern of Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha.

The Federal Party of Manipur and Naga National Party

The Federal Party of Manipur is a popular party, which is recognized as a local party in Manipur. It is headed by Mr. Gangmumei Kamei. Similarly, Naga National Party takes care of the interests of Naga community in Manipur. They want negotiated settlements to most of the conflicting situations in the North Eastern region, especially the ones related to Naga community and their rehabilitation in many tribal and urban areas. It is headed by Mr Ng Hungyo. This is also an active political party in Manipur, which had captured three assembly seats in 2007 state elections. 

People's Liberation Army (PLA)

The People's Liberation Army (PLA) is another political party in Manipur, which was founded by N. Bisheswar Singh in 1978. It is more of an armed rebel group and like Maoists, they are also seeking a separate independent socialist state. So, it is considered to be responsible for spreading insurgency in the state. It is rumored to be trained by the Chinese Army in Tibet and NSCN during the 80s. 

Manipur State Government and Its Set-Up:-

As far as India's governance structure is concerned, the Governor of the state is considered to be the representative of the President, and thus has the highest constitutional power in the state. 

But the executive powers and policy making are assigned to the chief minister, who is head of the state government and member of the legislative assembly. He runs the state government through the Council of Ministers, which in turn is responsible to the elected legislative assembly of the state.

Sharing of Legislative Powers

In the republic of India, legislative powers are shared between parliament and the state legislatures, but parliament is the ultimate authority and reserves the right to amend the constitution. So, similar to the other state governments in India, the Government of Manipur is also run by the chief minister through an elected body of MLAs. They administer the nine districts of Manipur. The government includes an executive under the Governor, a judiciary and a legislative branch.

State Assembly Similar to the other states in India, in Manipur, the supreme constitutional powers rest with the Governor of Manipur, who is appointed by the President. However President does not do it autocratically, he has to seek the advice of the central government in this regard. Imphal,

the capital of Manipur, is also home to the Manipur Vidhan Sabha (state assembly), Imphal bench of High Court and the secretariat. The Manipur assembly includes 60 elected members or MLAs. 

Manipur was a union territory until 1972, when it was granted the status of a state by New Delhi. The largest city, Imphal was made the capital of the state with none other districts. At present, Vinod Duggal is the Governor and INCs (Indian National Congress) Okram Ibobi Singh is the state chief minister. 

Municipal Corporations

For better governance, the state is divided into nine municipal corporations; viz. Imphal, Thoubal, Kakching, Mayang Imphal, Nambol, Moirang, Ningthoukhong, Bishnupur and Jiribam municipal councils, which are further divided into many wards. Manipur government has formed many boards such as Manipur Biodiversity Board, Board of Secondary Education Manipur, Council of Higher secondary Education, Manipur State Science & Technology Council, Manipur Urban Development Authority, Manipur Small Farmers Agri-Business Consortium, and Manipur State AIDS Control Society (MACS) to undertake different aspects of administration. 

Boards and Committees The Biodiversity Management Committees has the responsibility of ensuring conservation of biodiversity. It is also dedicated to sustainable utilization of the biodiversity of the state. It is an important administrative body of Manipur since the state is largely dependent upon natural resources and its rich biodiversity for survival and growth. They also restrict its manipulation by outside agencies and organizations. 

Manipur State AIDS Control Society (MACS) came into being in 1998. Ever since the first few cases of HIV infected patients came into light in India in 1986, the Manipur State Government became active and launched immediate measures to counter the threat. When, National AIDS Committee was formed in 1986, a state level AIDS committee was also formed in Manipur and it was administered by none other than the state chief minister. When the first HIV case was reported in Manipur in 1990, the state government became alert and set up a separate State AIDS Cell in the State Health Directorate. Soon, the AIDS emerged as an epidemic in the state and MACS was set up to control it. 

Maximum Seat Holding Parties :-

The ruling party(Congress Party) has won all the 42 constituencies, whereas the Manipur Peoples Party-led alliance has won only one seat.

Others have won 17 seats. The victors among them include the Naga Peoples Front (NPF), the Trinamool Congress (TMC), the Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) and the Manipur State Congress Party.

Insurgencies in Manipur: politics & ideology :-

Every time one travels to Manipur, one returns humbled. This has been the case since my first visit in the late 1960s, long before becoming a journalist. Active insurgency was not even on the horizon then though some resentment against ‘India’ was evident. Between 1983 when I joined this paper and mid-1994, I visited the State at least once every year — more than once during some years. In the last eight years I have returned four times. The feeling of inadequacy to confront and understand the complex situation in Manipur, the whys and wherefores of the insurgencies (the plural is advisedly used), the resilience of the ordinary people whose amazing creative energies thrive in the midst of all the pain and violence manifest in every walk of life, has only increased.

Thirty-eight years ago, on January 21, 1972, Manipur became a full-fledged State of the Indian Union. The status was conferred belatedly and grudgingly, a most underwhelming gift. In the popular perception, this was no big deal. Manipur in its historical imagination was an “independent kingdom” since 1st century AD. Its people had ‘histories’ and ‘memories,’ longer and deeper than those of most other Indian people when India attained independence. The use of the plurals is necessary, for this historical imagination is not commonly and equally cherished by all the peoples of Manipur. While the Meiteis, the majority inhabiting the Imphal Valley, shares these histories and memories, the peoples in the outlying Hills cherish other memories, other histories.

In reality, Manipur ceased to be an “independent kingdom” in 1891 when, following the killing of some officials — who were part of the British official presence — with the connivance of the Manipur court, Britain took over the Kingdom after a brief war. The Battle of Khongjam, a major battle in the conflict, is even now officially commemorated every year on April 23. Another day connected with the war, August 13, 1891, when two leading participants, Thangal General and Tikendrajit Juvaraj, were hanged in public in the heart of Imphal, is commemorated every year as Patriots’ Day.

This is only one instance of the appropriation of one kind of historical imagination by the modern State of Manipur whose very legitimacy is challenged by persons and organisations that claim to be the true inheritors of that history and cherish another kind of historical imagination — the insurgencies in the Imphal Valley that seek to restore the sovereign status of Manipur.

The defeat at the hands of Britain came to be accepted as part of British India’s expansion to secure its eastern frontier in which the independence of Manipur became an inescapable casualty. The fact that Britain did not annex the Kingdom, as was done in the case of Assam in 1826 after defeating Burma that had invaded and ravaged Assam, also helped in the acceptance of the fiction that Manipur remained an independent kingdom, albeit under British protection. The reality was that Manipur was, for all practical purposes, just another native State with its administrative and political control limited to the Valley, with Britain administering the outlying Hill areas inhabited by tribal people. The subordinate status of the “independent kingdom” was further underlined by the presence of a British Resident.

At the time of Independence, however, some of the resentment that had remained dormant came to the fore, now that a local elite with the potential to intervene more actively was to become the successor authority in Delhi.

Two developments added to this renewed resentment, while the cherry on the top has been the virtual militarisation of the administration whose defining element is the terrifying Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA). First, the circumstances under which the annexation/merger of Manipur into the Indian Union was achieved — or manipulated. These did little credit to any of the participants in that squalid drama. Following the anti-feudal struggle led by the Manipur Mahasabha, among whose leaders was the legendary communist Hijam Irabot Singh, Maharaja Bodhi Singh set up a committee to draft a Constitution in March 1947. The Constitution was adopted in July 1947. Thus when the transfer of power took place in Delhi, Manipur became an independent country under a constitutional monarchy, with a Constitution of its own that provided for universal adult franchise.

Indeed, the developments between the adoption of that Constitution and the annexation/integration of Manipur into the Indian Union on October 15, 1949 — as part of the process of ‘Integration of Indian States’ — even now rankle in the historical imagination of the people, in particular the Meiteis. The resentment has been a crucial element in the ideology and politics that have animated the insurgencies in the State, though quite different perspectives of sovereignty linked to the Naga national imagination, whose first eloquent articulator was A.Z. Phizo, lie at the root of the Naga insurgency in the Naga-inhabited areas in the Hills.

There is a sub-text to this anti-feudal struggle that has contributed to the resentment as articulated by the more ‘radical’ of the insurgents. In parts of India, especially in those States where feudalism was most oppressive, the CPI was engaged before and after the transfer of power in militant anti-feudal struggles which in some instances, as in Telangana in Hyderabad state, became armed struggles. The participation of Irabot Singh in the anti-feudal struggle in Manipur which never became an explicit armed struggle, though the authorities were apprehensive over such a possibility, has to be seen against the larger background in which the CPI was a leading player.

When the CPI-led armed struggle persisted in Telangana even after the transfer of power, it was ruthlessly crushed. Eventually, the CPI abandoned the line and approach adopted by it, followed by significant changes in its leadership to indicate that the party had forsworn its earlier view.

In Irabot’s case it was never clear if he saw the struggle against feudalism in Manipur as part of a larger ‘armed struggle’ to secure ‘independence’ for Manipur. According to Noorul Huda, veteran communist leader of Assam who was closely involved in the political developments of those days in Manipur, “there was no evidence of Irabot opposing the merger agreement of 15 October 1949.” However, in a strange reconstruction of historical imagination, Irabot is being appropriated as an icon of the separatist armed struggles for Manipur’s independence.

Two, the formalisation of the ceding of the Kabaw Valley, always viewed as an integral part of Manipur, to Burma, though Burma had been in de facto control of the territory as part of the truce negotiated after the Anglo-Burmese war of 1826. The final humiliation was the ‘gifting away’ of the territory to Burma by Jawaharlal Nehru in 1953, during Prime Minister U Nu’s visit to India.

The resentment over the formalisation of an arrangement that had been in existence since 1834 — when the territory of the Kabaw Valley was leased to Burma — 120 years later, may seem strange. However, it was natural when viewed in the context of anxieties over the ‘territorial integrity’ of the State, most dramatically demonstrated by the “ June 18, 2001 uprising” in the Valley to protest against the extension of the ceasefire agreement with the NSCN (I-M) to Manipur. This again is an issue that evokes quite different responses among the majority and the minority population of tribal people inhabiting the five ‘outlying’ districts – Chandel, Churachandpur, Senapati, Tamenglong and Ukhrul.

While the historical imagination as evoked by the Vallsey-based insurgencies sees Manipur as an independent state, with its present territory intact, and with the Kabaw Valley at some point in the future incorporated into the motherland, the historical imagination and the territorial imperative of the Naga insurgency necessarily involves the disintegration of the present territory of Manipur.

The totality of these perspectives, involving conflicting constructions of the historical imagination covering the last 60 years, animates the ideology and politics of the Valley-based insurgencies in Manipur, that its people have been “at war with India” since 1949.

POLITICAL ISSUES :-

One of the most neglected issues in the election 2012 in Manipur has been education and basic needs and new strategy for major transformation both in their quality and content. The construction driven development and emotive politics dominate in the politics of Manipur. There is need for serious debate over the need for sustainable development, new approach to reduces

imbalance creation of laws and their strict enforcement for justice and fair play, restoring and ensuring the dignity of the individual and labour, creation of opportunities for livelihood (number of poor are increasing without mush notice), securing of freedom and choices both within the family and society, special efforts and measures for children, women, weaker sections as well as remote regions both in the hills and valley. Improvement in education must be the primary focus as no country has achieved peace and progress without first improving educational quantity and quality. 

Elected representatives are the products or from the very society in which they live. Voters can not remain ignorant and allow representatives to do whatever their elected representatives do. There is a tendency to view election as a ritual and politics as for powerful or manipulative people or for few families only. This very thinking has been the root cause of emergence of such people and present political situation. Educated and enlightened individual view politics as something 'dirty' and meant for those who are corrupt or rich or even 'anti-social'. Such thinking and attitude with other factors have led to increasing encroachment of public space by those who should not have been in politics and present politics has failed to bring positive transformation in the society, economy and culture or even the way of life. 

Election is an opportunity to teach a lesson and inform to the representatives of their duties by the voters. Every eligible voter must exercise their voting right carefully and without fear but keeping in mind who best can serve and fulfill their needs and aspirations. Every voter must participate on 28 January 2012 to transform Manipur in which every individual or group are secured, safe and enjoy dignity and basic freedoms and needs and above all democracy is sustained. It is also time to recognize the values of the composite culture and co-existence of different groups and also with nature. The same can be safeguarded through the exercise of the power of voting right by every voter in Manipur.