Looking Back at 2025: A Year That Tested Manipur

The year 2025 will be remembered in Manipur not for its calm, but for its courage. It was a year that continued to test the soul of the land - its people, its relationships, and its future - yet it also revealed a quiet, enduring resilience that refuses to be erased.

For Manipur, 2025 unfolded in the long shadow of unrest that began in May 2023. The wounds—physical, emotional, and communal—did not heal easily. Displacement remained a painful reality for thousands. Trust between communities stayed fragile, often strained by fear, misinformation, and memories of loss. Normal life—schools, markets, movement—resumed only in fragments, reminding everyone that peace is more than the absence of violence; it is the presence of dignity and security.

Yet, amid uncertainty, ordinary citizens carried extraordinary burdens. Women held families together in relief camps and temporary shelters. Youth navigated interrupted education and shrinking opportunities, even as many volunteered to help their own communities survive. Faith institutions, civil society groups, and local volunteers became lifelines—providing food, shelter, counselling, and hope when official responses felt distant or inadequate.

Politically and administratively, 2025 was a year of questions. Calls for accountability, dialogue, and constitutional solutions grew louder. People demanded not just temporary arrangements, but long-term guarantees—of safety, rights, and equitable governance. For many in Manipur, the year underscored a painful truth: stability imposed without trust cannot last.

Economically, the impact of prolonged instability continued to be severe. Small traders, daily wage earners, farmers, and transport workers bore the brunt. Connectivity disruptions and insecurity choked livelihoods, deepening inequality between valley and hill, town and village. Still, local resilience surfaced in self-help groups, community farming, informal trade, and mutual support networks that kept households afloat.

2025 was also a year of mourning. Many families marked the year with anniversaries of loss—lives cut short, homes destroyed, futures altered forever. The grief was often private, unacknowledged beyond community lines. Yet remembrance itself became an act of resistance: a refusal to let suffering be normalised or forgotten.

And yet, to speak of 2025 in Manipur only in terms of pain would be incomplete. There were moments—small but significant—of dialogue, cooperation, and shared humanity. Voices emerged, especially among elders, women, and youth, insisting that Manipur’s diversity must be protected, not weaponized. These voices reminded the state that coexistence is not an abstract idea but a lived necessity.

Looking back, 2025 will stand as a year when Manipur was forced to confront uncomfortable realities—about governance, justice, identity, and reconciliation. It did not offer easy resolutions. But it made one thing clear: peace cannot be postponed indefinitely, and healing cannot be selective.

As Manipur moves forward, the memory of 2025 must not harden into bitterness. Instead, it must become a moral reference point—a reminder of what happens when dialogue fails, and of why inclusive, compassionate solutions are not optional, but urgent.

History will judge 2025 as a difficult year. But the people of Manipur may remember it as the year they endured—waiting, hoping, and quietly insisting that a better tomorrow is still possible.

Lessons for 2026: What Manipur Must Carry Forward

As Manipur steps into 2026, the year ahead cannot be built on forgetting. The experiences of 2025 offer hard but necessary lessons—lessons that must shape policy, leadership, and community action if the cycle of crisis is to be broken.

First, peace cannot be managed; it must be rebuilt.

Temporary arrangements, security deployments, and administrative controls may contain violence, but they cannot restore trust. 2026 must prioritise genuine dialogue—structured, inclusive, and sustained—between communities, not just political representatives. Peace will endure only when people feel heard, protected, and respected.

Second, justice and reconciliation must move together.

Healing without accountability breeds resentment; accountability without empathy deepens division. Manipur needs transparent mechanisms to address grievances, investigate violence, compensate victims, and facilitate reconciliation. A shared truth, however uncomfortable, is essential for a shared future.

Third, displacement cannot become permanent.

Relief camps were meant to be temporary. 2026 must focus on safe return, rehabilitation, and livelihood restoration with dignity. Housing, education, healthcare, and employment must reach all affected families without discrimination, or the scars of displacement will shape another generation.

Fourth, governance must be visible, fair, and responsive.

The events of recent years exposed gaps between institutions and citizens. In 2026, governance in Manipur must rebuild credibility through transparency, timely communication, and equal treatment of hill and valley. Trust in the state is not demanded; it is earned.

Fifth, youth must be seen as stakeholders, not spectators.

A generation has grown up amid shutdowns, uncertainty, and trauma. If their frustration is ignored, it will harden. If their energy is invested in education, skills, sports, arts, and civic engagement, it can become Manipur’s greatest strength. 2026 must be a year that reopens pathways, not closes doors.

Sixth, women’s leadership must move from the margins to the centre.

Throughout the crisis, women were caregivers, peacekeepers, and organisers. Yet their voices remain underrepresented in formal decision-making. Manipur’s recovery in 2026 will remain incomplete unless women are actively included in peace-building, governance, and community leadership.

Finally, diversity must be protected, not politicised.

Manipur’s plural identity—ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and religious—is not a weakness. The lesson of 2025 is clear: when identity is weaponised, everyone loses. 2026 must reaffirm coexistence as a shared responsibility, not a conditional promise.

If 2025 was a year of endurance, 2026 must be a year of intention. The future of Manipur depends not on waiting for calm, but on consciously building it—through courage, honesty, and a renewed commitment to living together with dignity.