A census is meant to settle questions. In Manipur, it has begun to reopen them. The process is already in motion. A notification issued through the Manipur Gazette froze the administrative boundaries of districts, subdivisions and villages from January 1, 2026, to March 31, 2027.
Another followed, republishing the Union government’s schedule: house-listing operations through the year, a window for self-enumeration in August, and full enumeration after that. The state has prepared to count. What it cannot settle is where that count begins.
Since May 3, 2023, Manipur has been experiencing a rupture that has not been resolved. Tens of thousands have been forced to leave their homes. Many remain in camps, and others live in districts where they do not belong administratively.
Roads still exist, but movement along them carries calculation. What once passed as routine now requires negotiation.
The census enters this landscape without waiting for it to stabilise. In the valley, the response has been direct.
Organisations such as the Coordinating Committee on Manipur Integrity (COCOMI), Apunba Nupi Lup (ANUL), and a range of civil society platforms have framed the issue in stark terms: identify illegal immigrants before any enumeration begins.
The slogan has travelled across protests and public meetings — “No NRC, No Census.”
Public discussions, including those organised in places like Wangjing, repeat the same demand: verification must precede enumeration. Without it, the count risks absorbing those who do not belong within it.
The anxiety does not rest on procedure alone. It draws from a longer memory. Census figures from the past are read with suspicion, especially where population growth appears difficult to explain through natural increase.
The concern is not simply an error. It is permanence. Once numbers enter the record, they begin to organise the future.
Movement within the state sharpens that concern. Many Meiteis still cannot move freely into the hills. Thousands remain displaced. A family living in a relief camp raises a question without a neutral answer: where will it be counted?
In the place it now occupies, or in the place it left behind? The answer will be reflected in representation, allocation, and the arithmetic of political power.
The unease does not stop in the valley. Naga organisations, led by the United Naga Council (UNC) and supported by bodies such as the Tangkhul Naga Long Working Committee, have also called for postponement.
Their memoranda place the census alongside a broader breakdown of confidence in state processes. The insistence on a National Register of Citizens-type mechanism reflects a deeper doubt, whether the state, in its present condition, can determine who belongs within its own count.
What is being questioned here is not timing but authority. That doubt sits against a backdrop of renewed tension in the hills.
The Thawai killings, the transfer of the case to the National Investigation Agency, and unresolved questions surrounding identity and jurisdiction have folded into the same moment. Administrative decisions do not arrive on their own terms.
They are read through the experience of conflict. The census, in this setting, does not stand outside politics. It becomes one more site where politics is conducted.
The Zomi position moves along a different line but arrives at a similar hesitation. In its press note, the Zomi Students’ Federation (ZSF) draws attention to what it calls “data migration.”
It is a technical term, but its effects are felt on the ground. Populations counted where they currently reside, often in camps or temporary settlements, may disappear from the administrative memory of the places they came from.
A village does not empty only when people leave. It also empties when they are counted elsewhere.
Over time, this alters how regions appear in records, how resources are directed, and how representation is argued.
What looks like a technical adjustment begins to shape political reality. Across these positions, there is no shared political programme. The valley, the hills, and the displaced speak from different locations, shaped by different anxieties. Yet they arrive at the same hesitation; the conditions required for a credible count are absent.
There is no uniform position across communities. Kuki civil society groups, including the Kuki Inpi Manipur (KIM), have focused their attention on security, on justice, and on the terms under which the state responds to violence.
The census sits on the margins of that landscape, where more immediate questions of safety take precedence. It prevents the debate from settling into a single line. It also shows the extent to which the state now operates across overlapping crises, each demanding a different response, each resisting a single administrative solution.
For the government, the dilemma is procedural. The Gazette notifications have fixed timelines. Preparatory work has begun. Enumeration follows a sequence that is difficult to interrupt without consequence.
Proceeding risks confrontation. Postponing risks delays planning, allocation, and policy. A census rests on a simple assumption: that people can be counted where they live. In Manipur, that assumption has come loose. Residence is uncertain. Movement is uneven. Access is negotiated. Entire localities have changed in composition.
Counting, in such conditions, becomes an act of judgment. Each entry carries a decision, about location, about identity, about affiliation. These decisions accumulate into a dataset that will shape how the state understands itself. Whether that understanding will be shared is another question.
Modern governance rests on the authority of numbers. It assumes that once counted, populations become legible, and once legible, governable. But numbers depend on the conditions under which they are produced, and on whether people recognise themselves within them.
In moments of strain, administrative clarity can begin to conceal as much as it reveals. Categories remain intact even when the realities they describe have shifted. Language continues to function even when it no longer discloses what is taking place.
The census in Manipur has entered that space. What is visible now is not a rejection of counting. It is a refusal to accept that the present moment can produce a count that commands confidence. In quieter times, a census recedes into the background. In Manipur, it has moved to the centre of political life.
The count will be completed. What it represents will remain unsettled.
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