THE information released by the Home Department of Manipur that more than 700 persons, including 300 children, from Myanmar entered the State and the country illegally in just last one week, shows that the ugly trend of unauthorised foreign nationals entering India has been continuing unabated. Even as Manipur continues to burn and as the Governments at the State and the Central levels try to grapple with the issue, the illegal intrusion of foreign nationals into North-East is truly disturbing. It also indicates that the Government has not been able to tackle this problem over decades, let alone a few weeks and months. The problem of illegal entry of unauthorised people in larger numbers has been persisting for several, several decades. In spite of the fact that the Governments of the North-Eastern States have offered much lip service to tackling the issue, nothing concrete has emerged. The Governors of most States in North-East also have been submitting detailed reports of this illegal crossing over of countless thousands of people into India every year. Despite this so-called awareness at the political level, North-East is adding at least a mid-size town to its overall population annually.

 

If this is not a national failure, what other name should be given to this ominous trend? Factually speaking, it is common knowledge that such illegal migration into North-East India by foreign nationals has a clandestine political patronage. It has been found time and again that many political leaders and their parties operating in North-East have been the masterminds of this intrusion as part of their vote-bank politics. On many occasions, political parties are known to have vowed to stop this undesirable trend immediately -- only to forget their own assertion and assurance in no time. The fact that over 700 Myanmarese persons have crossed into Manipur in just one week, thus, reminds the nation that it has failed miserably in tackling the issue whose resolution is so critical to India overall security, strategic or otherwise. North-East is strategically a very important region of the Indian landscape, having been surrounded by several nations from all sides -- and connected with the country only through a narrow strip of land that is known as Chicken’s Neck (with a very high risk of strategic and geographical disconnect with the rest of the country in event of military conflict). When this consideration props itself up in the mind, any sane Indian shudders in horror of the unimaginably high-level threat and risk.

 

Despite this full awareness, the country has not been able to find an effective answer to the problem. The answer, actually, is simple -- there is a dangerous lack of political will to bring the issue to a logical and emergent culmination. In fact, the problem has persisted because of political patronage. This issue has been discussed in detail in scholarly accounts of experts of in official confabulations on strategic matters -- though, of course, to no avail so far. Official records in secret files would certainly reveal that because most illegal immigrants into North-East are Muslims, the Government in early years after Independence had decided to turn a blind eye to the illegal migration as part of their so-called secular agenda. Against such a background, then, can the nation really expect a credible solution to the issue in the next some time? In fact, this issue should have been tackled effectively at the Central level in the past 8-9 years. But that does not seem to have happened -- despite the presence of a very strong Central Government with a far better strategic awareness and plan for national security. On this count, the Government needs to do a lot of answering.