I think I will not be entirely mistaken when I say that most of us have not been sleeping too well lately. Ever since the economic blockade began, we have envisioned the disturbing fall of that real estate known as Manipur. The general contention is that, more than the shortages, more than the stone and mud flinging, more than peace of mind and soul; tolerance is on the wane and near collapse.

I take it also as self-evident that tolerance is a desirable thing, and ought to be pursued regardless of cost. What therefore, has caused its demise? The answer is certainly complex, and I shall restrict myself to discussing briefly just a few of the contributory factors.

The root cause is a rather crude subscription to utilitarian and egalitarian principles. Put simply, slavish allegiance to principles of utility in the exclusive context of GOI-NSCN (IM) policy, and to elitist principles that we are all unequal, not just in the sight of God, but also in the sight of man, and in terms of our ethnic faculties.

In a word - simple allegiance to the notion that Manipur operates from an uneven playing field. And thus, we have the birth of intolerance en masse.

The bitterness comes directly under the shallow direction of the dogmatically driven "we are not asking for anyone's land" statement, which has a confused understanding of what it means by 'anyone' and 'land', and this confusion allows the deterioration to set in.

But astonishingly, the whole perishing of Manipur is aided and abetted by its elected legislators themselves, who allow Manipur to be reduced to a matter of mere empirical research, and to a procedure of demarcation. In doing so, they drive a blade into the heart and soul of Manipur and twist it.

There are two points to be made here.

Firstly, the land of Manipur alone is quantifiable and a legitimate interest of its multiple communities.

Secondly, the nurturing of personal homelands is not quantifiable to any single community, is not in the general interest, and therefore, cannot be judged on the grounds of Naga cost-effectiveness.

Land does not exist in a vacuum. It exists to perform a collective function. Henceforth, that which cannot be quantified must be diminished.

Most of us find ourselves increasingly not asking the question: how can we best hope for a secure, integrated, mature life, rich in the understanding of the Manipur condition? But rather, how can we best survive all this?

We are forced into the world of the commonplace bazaar, tailoring our product like any other to satisfy the appetite of the impertinent.

With the emphasis shifting away from territorial limits and towards punitive action, the ANSAM blockade comes to be seen as an end in itself, and more importantly, as an incomplete part of an unfinished product.

The problem with the ANSAM blockade is that it condones the dehumanization of other groups of people. As a result, someone with a warped sense of values and justice might precipitate a horror like the one that ethnically cleansed entire villages in the not too recent past.

In this serious sense, the land is increasingly being transformed into factories of dissent. In the Naga aspiration, there is a clearly marked end point, and at any stage in the process leading up to this end point, all opposing views are negated.

If the founding of a Naga Nation requires the disadvantage of its neighbors, it will be a nation founded on distrust, and little more than a product of myopic social engineering.

There is a difference between defining a reality that already exists, and analyzing concepts that are yet to be, or not to be. If the object of the GOI-NSCN (IM) ceasefire includes the search for a peaceful settlement, then it is an honorable one; but if the object includes land and territory, then we cannot offer simple definitions and then immediately move to quantify it.

The concept of dividing land into comfort zones and enclaves is complex. It needs careful explication, and as we have seen, is essentially non-quantifiable.

How does one objectively measure the understanding of the whole ethnic enclave, when there is no single answer to the same question? Answering questions with preset answers is altogether too facile and shallow.

It is simply not good enough to say that a homeland is "the land where X has settled since time immemorial", and then proceed to define and demarcate it immediately. This kind of conceptual thinking will inevitably led to a dividing partition within communities.

Surely the state of the undivided is a worthy state, a noble and desirable state. Surely it can be seen that its opposite is shallow and limited. Surely a government that takes seriously the welfare of its citizens must invest eagerly in a process designed to promote such welfare. Surely a tolerant community is one that includes a wide range of opinions.

There should ideally have been room for both Manipur and Nagalim. The world is not really such a small one. But because Manipur lacks the utility of marketable politics, it is whimpering into oblivion.

Its expectations tend to be rather limited, and its behavior dull and uninspired. Ideas, whilst clever and sometimes brilliant, lean towards the narrow and confined by virtue of their inconsistency. This is precisely the black and white result we would expect in a narrowly defined two-dimensional society.

The division within Manipur lies between those who have no other aim than to control the means to what are essentially arbitrary ends, and those of us who wish to develop in people the ability to intellectually, morally and imaginatively engage in life as a whole, and think significantly about life's greater ends.

For the latter, the battle is being sadly lost. For the former, it's all in a day's work. No work, all pay. Same price.