CURRENT AFFAIRS Pros & Cons NEW AFSPA But will that serve to assuage Manipuri anger and outrage? Sankarshan Thakur
Illustrations: Anand Naorem By sheer quirk of the manner in which the Rajya Sabha is composed, the Northeast has a prime minister. Strange to sound, but true. Manmohan Singh comes elected from Assam. Does that mean the region can expect special treatment? A little favour once in a while? Little evidence of that. The region has remained what it has under successive governments and prime ministers - ignored, exploited, beaten, off the map. Any hope that its fig-leaf of a claim to providing the country its prime minister will earn the region greater attention and understanding remains only a hope. Manmohan Singh's visit to those parts last week is perhaps the most recent proof of that. The prime minister went to Kangla in Manipur - perhaps the ugliest and most insistent symbol of state authoritarianism to the people of Manipur - and made uncertain noises about trying to give a more "human face" to the hated Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA). No question of abrogating it, no possibility that the government might even suspend its application for a while to see what happens, no quarter to those that have resorted to the extreme and the unprecedented in opposing it. A dozen Manipuri widows went protesting to the gates of the Kangla Fort naked a couple of years ago in a demonstration that shook the nation but not its government. Irom Sharmila has been on a six-year fast that will not end until the AFSPA is gone. The people of Manipur must think there is something severely wrong with the laws that govern them. But apparently not those that govern them. This, in a democracy. Only the other day, the prime minister rebuffed a suggestion from the Intelligence Bureau chief that lethal teeth need to be added to anti-terror laws - there are enough laws with enough teeth, make them work. Apparently, he isn't empowered with similar convictions about how his political home - the Northeast - is governed. Manipuris would tell you the AFSPA has not worked, it has only made the situation worse. There isn't one less underground group in the state since the AFSPA was imposed, there probably are more. But the prime minister's advisers tell him the opposite - perhaps it has not made things better, sir, though of that we can't be sure, but things would surely be much worse without the AFSPA, end it and lose the Northeast. That's what they tell him in New Delhi, or things to that effect. Here is a clash between the people and the security establishment of the state. And the people are being told, by their prime minister, no less, that efforts shall be made to make the law less harsh on them. In a democracy, that's hard to stomach. Dec 16 , 2006 _______________________________________________ assam mailing list [email protected] http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
