As I write this, hundreds of thousands of people, from every party and ideology, are demanding the resignation of the Chief Election Commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar on the streets of Delhi. The slogan: Save Indian Democracy, among others of course.
Metro stations shut. Hundreds detained. Police behaving badly. In Delhi, that is being called the end of democracy.
In the Northeast, we call that a regular day.
I support the protesters. I stand in solidarity with them. But let me be honest about what I feel watching this. Nothing. And I want to explain why.
I have heard this before. In the early 2010s it was India Against Corruption. Anna Hazare, Arvind Kejriwal, and a promise of a new dawn for Indian democracy. I remember being a reporter those days.
We were convinced that Congress was the issue. Who remembers Suresh Kalmadi? Sheila Dikshit? Remember the corruption around the Commonwealth Games, 2G allocation, and the likes? I am sure some of you do. It launched many political careers across the nation.
Fifteen years later, we are being told the same thing. Only now it is the Congress, under Rahul Gandhi, presenting itself as the saviour. So the BJP saved us from Congress’ corruption, and now Congress will save us from BJP’s corruption. Even though no party has provided more politicians to the BJP than the Congress since 2014.
The faces change. The slogan doesn’t. And for those of us in the Northeast, neither does our reality because, and I say this humbleness, the democracy that the Northeast sees is not the same as the rest of this nation.
Collectively forgotten
Look at Manipur.
Three and a half years of conflict. I will say something that is hard to say: Manipur in 2026 is more broken than Manipur in 2023. EastMojo was on the ground on Day 1. We watched it begin. And every day since, we have watched democracy die in that state.
Until February this year, this was a war between Meiteis and Kukis. Now the Nagas are directly in it too. The conflict could not be stopped with two communities. Now the whole state is burning.
And do not tell me Manipur has not spoken. Organisations have protested in Delhi, in Imphal, in Ukhrul. The country simply stopped listening.
Elections are three months away. For four of the five years of this government, Manipur has burned. This is the so-called double engine. From where I stand, it looks more like a double-engine JCB, built to demolish.
I do not expect communities to reconcile on their own. That is exactly why we have governments. Yet Manipur has two deputy chief ministers who cannot stand each other. In a working democracy, the Centre would call them in, lock the door, and not let them out until they figured it out.
Which version of democracy does that? I would really like to know.
Now my own state.
October 2023. The glacial flood. Close to 200 people dead. Our reporting showed years of corruption, dams built with compromised quality. We said it. We showed it.
Three years later, no one has been charged. No one.
Which version of democracy is that?
Nagaland, Mon district, 2021. Workers shot dead by security forces. Mistaken identity. Under AFSPA, a law this democracy has defended for nearly seven decades. No one punished. Ever seen a person from the mainland killed under AFSPA? No, because even laws change for us in the same democracy.
Which version of democracy brings those workers back?
Our concerns are not represented
And here is where I part ways with Delhi’s protesters entirely.
It isn’t only that we are ignored. Sometimes we want different things.
The Northeast is not standing with the protest against SIR. In our region, anxieties about illegal immigration and demographic change are real, and SIR has been welcomed.
Take Sikkim. In September, we reported that our voter roll shrank by 11.2% after SIR. Our total voter base is smaller than the winning margin of some candidates elsewhere. Not one person took to the streets. The indigenous population welcomed it.
Does SIR have problems? Of course. The concerns are real, the opposition is not; not in our region at least.
But remember the CAA protests? The opposition lumped the Northeast in with the fight against NRC. The truth was clear: the Northeast opposed CAA, not NRC.
I will say this with confidence. Only recently, the Census was halted in Manipur due to demands that the NRC take place before that. Every state in this region wants some version of NRC.
How possible that is another conversation, but the demands are very much here. States like Sikkim and Meghalaya have been demanding ILP for years now. Meghalaya Assembly even approved the ILP in December 2019 but the Centre could not care less. Why? What version of democracy is that?
The idea that anyone who opposes the BJP must also oppose the NRC is a Delhi story. It was never ours.
And let me be clear. I am no BJP cheerleader. I have just spent five minutes blaming them for Manipur. And yes, before the BJP, it was Congress in charge. When Irom Sharmila fasted for close to two decades against AFSPA, guess which party was in charge.
I refuse to pretend that a change of government in Delhi changes much for us. Conflict, AFSPA, floods, a regional party’s MLAs sold wholesale to the BJP in Meghalaya: none of it depends on who sits in Delhi.
So when Delhi asks us to rally behind saving Indian democracy, my question is simple. Which one?
The one with Metro stations shut for a day? Or the one where a state burns for three and a half years and the country goes to sleep?
The democracy we live in the Northeast will never be the same as the rest of the nation’s. And the rest of the nation should be thankful for that. Because we are not.
Also Read: Can India’s digital journalism periphery rescue a failing mainstream media?
You just read a story that took days to report. Help us keep our reporters on the ground in the Northeast.
Ad-free reading, support and keep important stories alive
Support once (any amount)
Scan to pay via UPI