MPP : Looking to move from zero :: Missing regional flavour
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: June 06, 2012 -

Manipur Peoples Party (MPP) Flag

Manipur is a riddle and nowhere is this more pronounced in the sphere of electoral politics. The result of the election to the 10th Assembly, where the Congress scored a never before seen 42 out of 60 has only gone on to strengthen this stereotype.

The nil score registered by the Manipur People's Party (MPP) is another foundation on which this description lies. The interesting question is how the MPP hopes to move from nil to something substantive when the moment of reckoning comes, five years hence.

The seeds of the zero score which the MPP harvested in the recently held Assembly election were sown a good many years back, with its leadership stoically refusing to see the writings on the wall.

That Imphal has always leaned towards the party which is in power in Delhi is not a new development. This trend predates the first stint of O Ibobi Singh as the Chief Minister of Manipur and the reasons will not be hard to seek, if one looks at the political culture of the country.

With just two MPs in the Lok Sabha and one in the Rajya Sabha, Manipur has never figured in the list of shakers and movers of the political party in power at Delhi.

A little twist and turn of this observation would then mean that political leaders emerging from Manipur have always had to play second fiddle to the leader coming from a State like Uttar Pradesh or even Assam.

In such a scenario it is not surprising to see that a compulsion has been ingrained in the minds of the people and that is ‘it is best to opt for the party which is in power at Delhi.’

The fact that Manipur has had to live and survive on the financial sops doled out by Delhi from time to time does not make this compulsion a fairy tale.

Rewind more than a decade back, during the days of the MSCP led United Front Government, when overdraft, pending salaries and RBI ban entered the lexicon of the common men and it becomes clear why the party in power at Delhi has always had a honeymoon here in Manipur.

It is this overwhelming reality which has proved to be the biggest stumbling block for political leaders from Manipur to make a mark at the National level. After all in a democracy it is the number that counts and a State which has only two MPs in the Lok Sabha is sure to come down in the pecking order.

This however has never held true for all time and at all moments in the history of the land. After Manipur attained Statehood in 1972, it was not the Congress which came to power at Imphal but the MPP.

It has been a topsy turvy ride for the oldest regional political power since attaining Statehood and in between 1972 and 2012, the MPP went on to form the Government thrice.

In between, when it was not in the Government, it was the MPP which has always remained the biggest challenger to the Congress. Not surprisingly some of the biggest names in Manipur politics have come from the MPP.

Even as the MPP struggles to lift itself from the dismal score of nil in the recently held Assembly election, it would do wise for the leaders of the party to take cognisance of the fact that it is not the people who have rejected regionalism but the MPP which has failed to project itself as a regional party, miserably.

In the last ten or fifteen years, the MPP did nothing to demonstrate that it was different from the other political parties, such as the Congress or the BJP or the NCP.

Today the Trinamool Congress is the second largest party in the Assembly and this is more than an election statement.

Not even second best, not even third best but nil that is what the MPP has to show today. The wake up call was rung out more than ten years back. A pity that the MPP did not heed the call.

Only time will tell how it manages to extricate itself from the pitfall of zero, literally and figuratively speaking.