The recent ban on the functioning of the political parties by various student bodies with regard to Loitam Richard case has brought to the fore the lack of a political culture and a disconnect between the political parties and the general people. It has been there for quite some time, yet unnoticed. Except during elections, political activity in the state has been reduced to occasional press-releases and high-pitched opinions on press conferences on varied issues confronting the state. This indeed is very sad. The decimation of major political parties both regional and national in the recent Manipur Assembly elections is it itself an indicator of the lack of political culture in the state. Gone are the days of stalwarts in both the Congress and the opposition parties. One is still awed by their grasp of the political heritage and the historical legacy of a regional power and their sense of self-respect and patriotism. The tragedy is that it is lacking in the new generation of politicians. The enforced dependency has taken its toll on the politics of the state leading to the emergence of a generation of politicians nurtured in a corrupt political culture backed by a powerful businessmen-contractor-bureaucrat lobby. It marked the beginning of power politics, so craftily perfected by the three-time Chief Minister Okram Ibobi Singh in recent times. The lure of easy money and power politics has brought several contractors in the political scene of the state in the last few elections, while also forcing career politicians to pursue the honey trail of money and power politics. The recent elections brought more contractors in the Manipur legislative assembly. The non-Congress parties could not even assert its existence in the elections for lack of money power and for its abject failure to play the role of a responsible opposition inside and outside the assembly. Opposition politics has been on the wane since Okram Ibobi Singh came to power in 2002. This is primarily the fault of the opposition parties themselves. They failed to understand the changing dynamics of power politics in the state. Over and above its failure to play the role of a responsible opposition, it could not set an agenda or pose a viable alternative to the Congress in the just concluded assembly elections.
A matter of serious concern now is the apparent disconnect between street politics and electoral politics. In the last few elections, politics in the street has failed to translate into electoral votes. For example, the intensive movement against police brutality and fake encounters in the aftermath of the July 23 BT Road incident did not have any impact on the recent assembly elections. The general public had called for the resignation of Okram Ibobi Singh for shielding the guilty police officials. The guilty personnel had to be suspended after the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) submitted its charge-sheet. Yet, the Congress came back victorious with a huge majority. One of the main factors for the defeat was that in the aftermath of July 23 instead the opposition instead of leading the people against fake encounters chose to congratulate the SPF government for its prowess in fighting insurgents and successfully killing the alleged militant (Sanjit) who shot Rabina as the police made out to be. Having said this, we want to point out that the ‘disconnect’ is only a recent phenomenon. The June 18 uprising gifted two MLAs in the Manipur assembly, although they ultimately shifted camp to the Congress. Just after Manipur was granted statehood in 1972, the assembly elections saw for the first time a regional party Manipur Peoples Party (MPP) coming to power. So, a hope though flickering is there. In the present campaign for seeking justice in the cases of Loitam Richard and Okram Laba, the political parties should really be leading the people. A more vociferous movement could be brought about with the political parties joining in. This is simply what the frontline student bodies are offering on a platter. Whether they grab the opportunity or not is an option for them to choose. In the name of Manipur, choose the former.