Manipur in Crisis: When Land Becomes a Casualty of Both Conflict and Climate
Manipur | June 24, 2025 - In Manipur, nature does not discriminate — but policy does. As Cyclone Remal swept through the northeastern state in May and June, it triggered a cascade of floods, landslides, and widespread displacement. What it also exposed was the state’s deeper structural vulnerabilities: a land torn not just by climate extremes, but by entrenched ethnic divides and chronic ecological neglect.
The irony is bitter. The land that communities fight over is the same land they collectively fail to protect.
A State Drenched in Disaster
Over 19,800 people were affected by the recent deluge across Manipur. Hillsides collapsed in Ukhrul, Noney, and Churachandpur; newborns were evacuated from flooded hospitals in the Imphal Valley. Relief efforts included opening 31 camps, relocating around 1,600 people, and assessing damage to over 3,300 houses and 14 major infrastructure sites.
Despite the scale, the disaster was as much human-made as meteorological. Years of unchecked mining, wetland encroachment, deforestation, and poor urban planning have weakened the state’s resilience.
“When nature strikes, divisions dissolve. Yet even in shared disaster, the state remains fractured,” observed Sangmuan Hangsing, researcher and public policy expert.
Ethnic Conflict Deepens Ecological Risk
For the past two years, Manipur has been caught in an escalating conflict between the Meitei and Kuki-Zomi communities, leading to political paralysis and worsening mistrust. Administrative borders have hardened, turning once-fluid zones into militarised barriers of identity.
But as the political map fractures, so too does the ecological foundation. Development, when it happens, follows ethnic lines, not environmental logic. The hills — largely inhabited by tribal communities — face rampant deforestation and erosion, while the valley suffers from rapid, unregulated urbanisation.
“No one governs the land as a whole — only their own portion,” Hangsing writes.
Floods Don’t Recognise Borders
The latest floods reinforced a troubling truth: Manipur’s administrative borders are blind to natural systems. Water flows from deforested hills to clogged urban rivers. Damage upstream — such as from unregulated quarrying or poppy cultivation — becomes disaster downstream.
Despite this interconnectedness, the state’s relief and governance mechanisms remain divided. Aid was distributed along community loyalties, and few efforts crossed ethnic lines. Shared suffering did spark rare glimpses of solidarity — joint hospital wards, communal clean-ups — but they were exceptions, not the norm.
The Cost of Neglect: A State Unprepared
Manipur’s ecological crisis is not new — it’s chronic and worsening. According to the State of India’s Environment 2025 report by Down To Earth and the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE):
- No Indian state scored above 70 in overall environmental performance.
- Manipur was among 27 states/UTs scoring below 50 in the water category.
- The state lags in sewage treatment, waste management, and river health.
Even top-ranked Andhra Pradesh treats only 11% of its sewage — highlighting a nationwide gap between environmental ambition and reality.
“Without a recent census, this number is at best a projection or worse, a guesstimate,” said CSE Director General Sunita Narain, questioning the effectiveness of national river-cleaning plans.
Environmental Policy on Paper, Not on Ground
While environmental courts and experts have issued repeated warnings and recommendations for Manipur, implementation remains patchy at best:
- The National Green Tribunal fined the state Rs 200 crore in 2022 for poor waste management.
- The tribunal also raised alarms about deforestation linked to illegal poppy cultivation.
- Experts proposed river interlinking, hill zoning, afforestation, and watershed-based planning.
But few of these ideas have materialised, largely due to the lack of a unified political vision.
A Broken System: No Ecology Without Governance
Manipur’s disaster response is symptomatic of a larger governance failure. On June 17, 2025, the state — currently under President’s Rule — requested Rs 1,000 crore from the Centre. But the priority wasn’t flood relief or ecological restoration. The funds were earmarked for pension backlogs, conflict-related losses, and security operations. Wetland protection and land rehabilitation were conspicuously absent.
The paradox is sharp: Manipur is ecologically rich, yet among the most poorly managed.
Rethinking Development: From Expansion to Repair
The events of 2024 and 2025 should prompt a radical rethinking of what development means in a state like Manipur. Roads and bridges, often hailed as progress, are being built with little regard for terrain or ecological consequences. In the hills, development often means militarisation. In the valley, it brings congestion, pollution, and the loss of traditional knowledge systems.
What Manipur needs now is ecological federalism — one that respects its terrain, not just its communities.
A Vision for Ecological Recovery:
- Treat wetlands as infrastructure, not wasteland.
- Regulate mining and quarrying through community forestry boards.
- Establish shared watershed councils between hills and valley communities.
- Localise disaster plans to fit terrain-specific vulnerabilities.
- Empower tribal councils with financial and administrative autonomy for eco-sensitive planning.
The Choice: Collapse or Cooperation
Manipur’s future lies not in further division, but in interdependence. Rivers don’t stop at checkpoints. Floods don’t check community IDs. If Manipur is to survive its dual crisis — ecological and political — its people must see the land not as territory to control, but as a shared resource to heal.
“The real choice before Manipur is not between status quo and separation. It is between collapse and cooperation,” warns Hangsing.
The Road Ahead: Will the Land Be Heard?
With climate models predicting more frequent extreme weather events in the Northeast — including heavier rainfall and stronger cyclones — Manipur’s window for course correction is closing.
If the communities of Manipur fail to build institutions of shared ecological stewardship, future disasters will be more severe and more divisive. Land must no longer be just a stage for political grievance. It must be the central subject of policy.
The power of land must shift from ownership to stewardship, from exclusion to cooperation.
Manipur’s floods may recede, but its structural crises will not. Healing the land requires healing the state. In a region long defined by who belongs where, the floods offer a different lesson — that survival belongs to everyone, or no one at all
