PHAILEN VILLAGE - DEPENDENT ON MYANMAR, BUT MANIPURI AT HEART

K Sharatkumar ***
IMPHAL, Dec 10: They depend entirely on the Myanmarese but still their hearts belong to Manipur. They don`t know what are elections, what is it about and where it is held. They live in the village because their forefathers left it for them.
Phailen village is a village located in the interior Chandel district bordering Myanmar. While reaching the village from Moreh, the border town of Manipur at the international border, one has to go from the Myanmar side or trek a stretch of two days from Sugnu, a village in Thoubal district, the last point where one can travel by vehicle.
The village (Phailen) is the second biggest village (next to Old Samtal) in Samtal area where the Indian army is conducting mass operations to flush out militants. The army has cleared the village from presence of militants.

The villagers depend on a small market at Bokan within Myanmar for their daily needs.For the villagers of Phailen (Manipur), Bokan is the only important centre where they can sell their produce and buy their daily requirements. The centre is nothing for the Myanmarese but only a small market located at a small village.
Talking about the road communication, the villagers said, the only road passing through the village from Myanmar and to Sugnu for onward journey to reach Imphal is from the British period.

The British made the road for their own purpose and the villagers still use the road as their main road communication, but the state government never repaired or improved the road. So even though it was jeepable in the early period, now it is not as before, a 75-year old man said.When asked why they were still staying in the village despite the difficulties, an old woman said, "We are here because we love this land which our forefathers made for us.
""We are completely dependent on the Burmese but still we are in Manipur as Manipuris,"
she went on to say.
The villagers have to cross the international border for their medical treatment whenever they suffer from serious illness. Even though the Myanmar army is very strict about illegal entry into their territory, villagers get relaxation if they go with the patients."They relax the rules for entry if patients are with us, but there is no permission to go for buying medicines required for the patients, " a villager said.If they happen to be caught by the Myanmar army, they are sure to be sent to jail for illegal intrusion into their territory.

Many of the villagers of Phailen have experienced three to five year jail terms in the Myanmar jails. Many more are still languishing in the jails as there is no one to defend them or seek their release.When asked about their local representative in the state Assembly who is supposed to look into their grievances, they seemed to have no knowledge of elections or voting rights.
"Some may have heard of voting but we have never cast a vote or witnessed an election at the village,` said a 60-year old man in Phailen village while interacting with a media team which visited the village with permission from the army authorities.
Interestingly, every election has witnessed election authorities counting votes cast by the electors of this village.According to the villagers they don`t know who is currently in the state Assembly as their representative.For the villagers, the one who could visit Imphal was one of the luckiest persons in the village. Very rarely one or two villagers visited Imphal, the state capital of Manipur, in five or six years.

A wonderful thing that was witnessed in the village was a power generating centre set up by their own effort. According to them, the villagers as per the concept discovered by a villager who visited Imphal some five years back, contributed among themselves to buy a dynamo from Myanmar and make a turbine which they rotated in the current of water at a stream in a hillock to generate power.
The power was brought to their village with a binding wire which was also bought from Myanmar and now they enjoy the power supply."We too wanted to see the light of development and enjoy uninterrupted power supply. So we are generating power with our own effort," a middle-aged villager said.
(This article was published on Kanglaonline,dated 11 Dec,2007)