Not enough classrooms for Kuki students displaced by Manipur violence

I am a member of a Kuki students’ organisation in Manipur’s Churachandpur district. The area has seen an influx of members from the Kuki community in the past year. Since May 2023, when the ethnic conflict began in the state, an estimated 40,000–60,000 people have been displaced. Most of them continue to live in relief camps.  

In the Tuibuong block where I work, there are approximately 15,000 school and college students whose education has been disrupted. Initially, when people started moving from the violence-affected blocks to this town area, schools were used as relief camps. Now, there are way more children than the schools in the town area can register. Gandhi Memorial and Tuibuong, two government schools in this area, have the capacity to accommodate 600 students but are currently admitting 2,000 each. They are stretched for resources and are running shifts for different batches. Private schools are too expensive for most of the students living in the camps.

In order to prevent junior school children from dropping out, the student organisation I work with has started community schools. To run these, we receive aid from the community, private donors, nonprofits, and the church. Teachers work voluntarily and we are now able to afford an honorarium of INR 5,000–6,000 for them.

Despite our best efforts, we are managing to serve only approximately 50 percent of the displaced students. Many parents are unwilling or unable to send their children to school because they don’t have the means. Some children help their families in earning a livelihood by selling bamboo shoots. Among the ones we interact with in the schools, we see the effects of trauma. Some of them have lost their parents. The children often speak of AK-47s and being chased by mobs; they talk of hostility and enemies. We offer them counselling so that they can heal in a healthy and non-violent environment.

Gracy Lamkholhing is a PhD student at the Centre for Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy, Manipur University.

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