Farming under the shadow of guns in Manipur’s ‘buffer zone’

Khoirentak Khuman, about 48 km south of Manipur’s capital, Imphal, has been an island of uneasy peace in a sea of bloodshed. This village of about 100 Kom tribal families is situated in what has come to be known as the ‘buffer zone’ — a strip of farmland of varying width separating the Meitei-dominated Imphal Valley, measuring approximately 1,864 sq km, from the surrounding hills inhabited by the Kuki-Zo people — since the ethnic conflict between the two communities broke out on May 3, 2023, eventually leaving more than 250 people dead.

Khoirentak Khuman, located near the village of Kangathei, which is home to Olympic medallist and six-time world boxing champion M.C. Mary Kom, also reflects the administrative dichotomy in Manipur. It is geographically situated in Churachandpur district, a Kuki-Zo domain, but is a revenue village under the Moirang subdivision of Bishnupur district in the Imphal Valley.

The village of the Koms and a few hamlets of the Rongmei Nagas, such as Houtak, located to the north, are situated along an alignment near the middle of a three-tier security set-up in the buffer zone. The midline is manned by personnel of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) from makeshift ‘points’ or bunkers, mostly on alleys of abandoned or partially tilled paddy fields.

Flanking the CRPF line of defence, at least 500 metres away, are the watch points of the Border Security Force (BSF), strategically spaced out on a pathway along a ‘high canal’, an irrigation channel on the edge of the buffer zone in Bishnupur district. The BSF personnel are similarly stationed on the other edge of the buffer zone in Churachandpur district. Their duty, apart from ensuring calm, is to maintain a register, noting down the particulars of every person moving in and out of the tense zone.

Deeper into the Meitei-inhabited plains are checkpoints or bunkers manned by personnel of the Army and the paramilitary force, Assam Rifles, who monitor the overall security scenario 24×7. There is similar deployment of the armed forces in the lower hills from where the Kuki-Zo area starts.

Although the Bishnupur district administration, in a letter to the Army’s 59 Mountain Brigade on May 26 this year, sought “area domination at the foothills or peripheral areas” to let farmers of 24 villages under four police stations cultivate their lands up to a specified extent, few Meitei villagers dared to make it past the first security barrier until the latter half of June, when the BSF replaced the Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) to take charge of the bunkers along the high canal on June 22. This was three days after two masked gunmen shot at and injured a 60-year-old farmer of Phubala village in the left arm as he was tending to his paddy field in the afternoon of July 19. Phubala is about 5 km north of Khoirentak Khuman, which faces the Meitei village of Thamnapokpi beyond the BSF’s line of defence. The scenario has been similar for the Kuki-Zo people beyond the BSF barrier along the foothills.

“The situation since May 2023 did affect us, but as a community neutral to the conflict, we did not face much of a problem despite being in the buffer zone. We could engage in farming throughout the conflict, but our Meitei neighbours could not. The situation seems to have improved over the past few weeks under security cover, but we are tired of registering our details at the checkpoints every time we need to move in and out of the militarised zone. The security forces do not let us pass their posts unless we carry our Aadhaar card or any other acceptable identity card,” says Rex Kom, a resident of Khoirentak Khuman.

Thamnapokpi’s Moirangthem Muton, deputy chief of the Ngangkhalawai gram panchayat, says the villagers are “unfortunate” to own lands in the “firing zone” and have not been able to cultivate crops for more than two years. “We regained confidence after the State government sought protection from the Central forces for us to work in our fields as close to the foothills during the ongoing kharif season, but the June 19 incident brought back the fear of being attacked anytime. The recent official notification for cultivating as much of the farmland that we were forced to abandon in 2023 is not reflected on the ground. In the case of Thamnapokpi, the government sought cultivation up to the high canal (from the ‘low canal’, another irrigation channel, about 1 km deeper into the Meitei area) in one stretch, and 300 metres above the high canal in another. However, we have not been able to go beyond 100 metres from the high canal,” he says.

Thamnapokpi and Khoirentak Khuman are 40 km from Manipur’s capital, Imphal, and 20 km from Churachandpur town, the two epicentres of the ethnic conflict.

Fields left fallow

According to the State Agriculture Department, more than 2 lakh farmers cultivate paddy on 1.95 lakh hectares out of the net cultivable area of 2.34 lakh hectares. In October 2023, a farmers’ body, Loumee Shinmee Apunba Lup, estimated that crops on 9,719 hectares on the periphery of Imphal Valley could be lost as cultivators were afraid of tending to their fields because of sporadic firing by miscreants from the hills. It estimated the total loss of income for paddy farmers — rice accounts for 93.36% of the total agricultural and allied activities — at ₹211.41 crore. Towards the end of 2023, the Ministry of Home Affairs provided a relief package of ₹38.06 crore for crop losses on 5,127.08 hectares of agricultural land.

“The compensation was just a fraction of what the farmers on the fringes of Imphal Valley lost. After over two years, they are unable to access their farmlands in the so-called buffer zone, where conditions are worse than that in the no man’s land between two warring countries,” Laishram Kiranjit, co-convenor of COCOMI Farmers’ Wing (CFW), says. COCOMI expands to the Coordinating Committee on Manipur Integrity, an umbrella body of valley-based social groups.

The CFW, in coordination with government officials at the grassroots level, studied the impact of the conflict on paddy farmers of the valley, which comprises five districts. About 9,720 hectares could not be cultivated in 2023, leading to a rice production shortfall of 32,263.76 metric tonnes. The non-cultivated area decreased to 7,084.586 hectares in 2024, but increased to 7,290.406 hectares before the kharif season started in May this year. The survey also revealed that the volatile situation forced 62 villages on the fringes of the valley to leave 3,973 hectares fallow.

Bishnupur was found to be the worst-affected district with 5,288 hectares of farmland, constituting 54.4% of its total land area, left uncultivated in 2023. An attempt by the district administration to resume farming on the fringes saw 1,419.794 hectares being reclaimed in 2024, but a few farmers sustained injuries from bullets fired by suspected Kuki extremists, who had signed an agreement with the Centre in 2008 to suspend operations. “Kuki militants blocked major irrigation channels and disrupted the water supply in the conflict zone. Dams and canals were deliberately cut off or made inaccessible, particularly affecting fields in Bishnupur and Imphal West districts. This led to crop failure, soil erosion, and abandonment of seasonal cultivation, affecting up to 45,000 farming families across Manipur’s foothill regions,” the CFW report states.

The Manipur government, however, indicated that the situation has been changing for the better since President’s Rule was imposed on February 13 this year. Former Chief Secretary Prashant Kumar Singh said on July 4 that adequate arrangements have been made for uninterrupted farming activities. He said it was a “good sign that both sides (Meitei and Kuki-Zo) are farming together within an eyeball-to-eyeball distance and sharing water”. He also appealed to all civil society organisations to not let “one odd incident here and there” roughen the path to peace.

A senior officer of Assam Rifles, declining to be named, corroborated the former Chief Secretary’s claim. “Meitei and Kuki farmers are engaged in cultivation side by side, separated by alleys, focused on growing crops for their needs and commerce. This is happening in the Keithelmanbi area (Imphal West district, bordering the Kuki-dominated Kangpokpi district). Unlike a year or two ago, the hill dwellers are no longer blocking or diverting natural channels or streams flowing to the valley. The conflict and the resultant tension have made the people weary of confronting each other; they want to get on with their normal lives now,” the officer said.

A Kuki farmer in the Kangpokpi district, identifying himself as Samuel, said the increased security cover has made him more at ease this year, but the fear that something or the other might happen lurks in the mind. “Things can go wrong if the government decides to withdraw the security forces from the buffer zone,” he says.

Things did go wrong for Phubala’s Ningthoujam Brojen in broad daylight on June 19. Two gunmen, “dressed like farmers”, came down from the hills and shot him about 15 metres from a bunker of the SSB in the afternoon. “It was alarming how these assailants breached the security barriers and unfortunate that the SSB jawans did not try to shoot or capture them after the attack on my field, which is not even in the buffer zone. If this can happen to me, imagine what can happen to fellow farmers who have fields in the buffer zone,” he says. In the Phubala area, this zone is about 10 km long and 1.5 km wide.

Brojen’s neighbour, M. Ramesh Singh, is among those worst hit by the conflict. His paddy field stretches from the high canal to the base of the Churachandpur hills.

“The permission to cultivate up to 300 metres of my land from the high canal is a relief, but the CRPF lets us work on our fields only up to 1 p.m. This may not serve the purpose as the growth of the paddy needs monitoring for a longer period during the day,” he says.

Grappling with losses

At Naranseina, south of Phubala, the villagers are yet to be allowed to cultivate beyond the high canal. One of the reasons is the sensitivity of the place. Kuki extremists allegedly killed two CRPF personnel at Naranseina in April 2024, and the National Investigation Agency arrested a member of the Kuki National Front (Military Council) in connection with the incident six months later. Of the 47 hectares the villagers have not been able to cultivate, 30 are allegedly in possession of the Kuki-Zo people.

“It is heartbreaking to see the Kukis cultivate our ancestral farmlands we have been kept out of. All this security is meaningless if we cannot access our lands and do odd jobs to sustain our families,” Laishram Surjit says. He has almost given up on his two-hectare land, as have Laishram Gourabidhu, Narengbam Nobin, Hijam Memi Devi, Moirangthem Ibohal, and Meisnam Ipi, who own a total of six hectares in the buffer zone.

Another villager, Salam Jotin, who was shot in the shoulder during a bid to till his land in September 2023, earns a living by driving an e-rickshaw in Moirang town, about 5 km away.

“Apart from being unable to carry out farming, we have lost cattle let out to graze. More than 30 cows disappeared from the fields beyond the high canal. Who took them is anybody’s guess,” Naranseina’s Oinam Basanta says.

Thamnapokpi’s Pukhrambam Dhamu has a similar complaint. In June 2023, miscreants killed a couple of his cows and blew off the lower jaw of another with a powerful firearm.

Further south, Ngangkhalawai presents a grimmer picture. The villagers here are allowed to cultivate up to an Army post, which is almost 1 km off the buffer zone. “About 270 out of the 400 families in our village have 300 hectares of farmland in the buffer zone. These have been captured by the Kukis, most of them new to the area, and all we can do is watch them cultivate from afar,” Moirangthem Brojen, the village chief, says.

The Indigenous Tribal Leaders’ Forum, which has been the voice of the Kuki-Zo people during the conflict, chose not to react to the allegations that the Kukis have taken over the lands of the Meitei or targeted their cattle. “It is not in our jurisdiction to comment,” a leader of the organisation says.

Road to recovery

The long-drawn ethnic conflict displaced about 62,000 people, a majority of them Kuki-Zos from the Imphal Valley. Official records state that about 8,000 of the displaced people are Meiteis from the fringes of the valley, who abandoned their homes after raids from the hills. A cluster of such abandoned houses at Thamnapokpi, now used as a BSF camp, belongs to three siblings — Trongbam Ketuki, Trongbam Hemanta, and Mairengbam Vyjayanti and her husband Mairengbam Raja. They took refuge in a relief camp less than 5 km away after the violence broke out.

Ketuki was a resident of Christian Kanan Veng in Churachandpur district’s Saikot. He and his siblings relocated to Thamnapokpi in 2020, five years after the demand for the implementation of the Inner Line Permit — a temporary travel document for non-resident Indians entering frontier States in the north-east — caused friction, albeit low-key, between the Kuki and Meitei communities. “Our houses are at least in safe hands, unlike those of many farmers displaced from the fringe areas. The government can set things right if it wants to, so that we can return to our houses and not be relocated again to the prefabricated houses the government is building for us. It is painful to stay away from the houses we have built with our blood and sweat,” he says.

The Manipur Police Housing Corporation Limited is constructing 356 prefabricated units in Bishnupur district, each measuring 20×20 feet and worth ₹9.3 lakh. A total of 183 units are being constructed at Phubala, not far from where Ketuki has taken refuge with his family.

“The government can easily help us reclaim our lands by pushing security posts and bunkers to the foothills. Instead of several lines of defence, multiple security forces can take up positions along the foothills closer to each other so that assailants cannot slip through as they did on June 19 to shoot at one of us,” Ramesh Singh says.

The CFW has urged the governments in the State and at the Centre to quickly restore normalcy in Manipur as the future of agriculture in the Imphal Valley depends on swift and sincere efforts to protect, support, and compensate farmers. “If we cannot get back our lands, so be it. Let us farm and let them (Kukis) farm too. The fighting has cost us a fortune; we have to salvage what is left,” Muton says.

rahul.karmakar@thehindu.co.in

Edited by Vishal Mathew