Here is the puzzle of Manipur in plain terms: the state government seems to rules the valley, but it does not rule the hills. The state can arrest someone in Imphal valley within minutes, but it cannot do the same in a hill village. Two famous thinkers—Max Weber and Michel Foucault—help us understand why this happens and what it means.
By KH. Ibomcha
Part One: Weber and the Monopoly on Violence
Max Weber, the German sociologist who lived from 1864 to 1920, gave us one of the most important definitions of what a state actually is.
Weber said: a state is that human community which successfully claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory. In simpler words, only the state has the legal right to use force—to send police, to arrest people, to put them in jail. No one else should be allowed to do this. This is what makes a state a state.
The key word here is “legitimate.” It does not mean the state is the only one actually using violence. Criminal gangs use violence too. But only the state can say: “We have the right to use force, and you do not.” The state can even allow private actors to use force, as long as they get the legal sanction or not from the state. Think of self-defense: you can use force to protect yourself, but only because the state recognizes that right.
Weber also said that territory matters. The state’s authority only makes sense within a defined area. The state can use force, but only in its own jurisdiction.
Now here is the problem in Manipur. In the valley, the state has this monopoly. If there is a protest in Imphal valley, police arrive in minutes. They impose legal provisions, arrest people, and control the situation. The state shows it can use legitimate force.
But in the hills and elsewhere in Manipur’s periphery, this monopoly does not exist. There, armed groups collect tax on highways. They decide who can pass. They punish people. They run their own courts. The state’s police station may exist, but it is locked inside the compound. It does not patrol. It does not act. So legitimate violence has not climbed the peripheries or the hills. Instead, illegitimate violence has taken its place.
Weber would say: when the state loses its monopoly on legitimate violence in part of its territory, it is no longer fully a state in that area. It becomes something less.
Part Two: Foucault and Governmentality
Michel Foucault, the French philosopher who died in 1984, gave us a different way to think about power. Foucault said: power is not just guns and laws. Power is daily work.
He used the word “governmentality” to describe the art of governing people through daily techniques. Governmentality is not about big speeches or grand ceremonies. It is about boring, repetitive work: the constable doing his beat, the clerk updating land records, the population enumerator knocking on doors, the court issuing summons.
Foucault also used the word “dispositif.” This means the whole apparatus of government: offices, files, policing methods, census, surveillance, records, and the way people talk about these things. The dispositif is the machine that makes government work every day.
In the valley, there is a spectacle that makes some people believe that this machine works. Foucault would call it “panoptic”—like a CCTV that is always on. The state watches. It seems to know. It seems to record. It punishes quickly. People become visible to the state- either as the people to be ruled or mere subjects. They become seemingly governable.
In the hills, this machine seems to have failed. The gaze does not reach. The hills are zones of opacity—dark spots where the state cannot see. The state does not know who lives where, who came when, what is grown in which field. Foucault had a term for this: “power/knowledge.” Knowing is power. If the state does not know the hills, it cannot govern them.
What the state does instead in the hills are “simulacra”—fake shows of governance. A minister comes by helicopter. He gives a speech. He inaugurates a building. He eats lunch. He leaves. This looks like government on TV. But it is not governmentality. Real governmentality is daily, not ceremonial.
Part Three: What Happens When Governmentality Is Absent
When state governmentality is absent, other authorities grow. They produce their own power/knowledge. They produce their own discipline. The state is no longer the only boss. These are what we call de facto sovereignties—authorities that act like governments even though they are not the official government.
Now the state government wants to conduct NRC exercise and census. In Foucault’s language, these are “biopolitical tools”—tools to manage population, to classify who belongs and who does not. Biopolitics is about managing life itself: births, deaths, health, residency, identity.
But biopolitical tools only work if disciplinary techniques already exist on the ground. If your police cannot go to a hill village to verify a document, if your office has no old records, then who will make the NRC list? Local actors will make it. They will include who they want. They will exclude who they do not want.
Foucault would call this “epistemic capture”—when the process of producing knowledge is captured by local power-holders via the Union government. The state thinks it is making a list. But actually, local actors are behind in making the list. The state is just signing off on it.
So a list made by a state in absentia does not necessarily be accepted as truth. It will create more fight, not less.
Part Four: What Would It Mean to Actually Govern the Hills?
“Chingda Chatsi” (translated as “Let’s Go to the Hills”) hills does not mean sending more army or more AFSPA. Going to the hills means extending legitimate force in its disciplinary, lawful form. It means extending what Foucault called “disciplinary puissance”—the capacity to enforce laws every day, not just in raids.
Here is what that would look like: First, daily beat policing. Not raid-based policing. An FIR can be filed in Churachandpur as easily as in Imphal. Investigation happens by law, not by permission from armed groups.
Second, rebuilding epistemic infrastructure. This means restoring the daily files, land records, and residency records so that the state can actually know the hills. Without knowing, it cannot govern.
Third, moving from spectacle to praxis. This means shifting from one-day visits to everyday presence. A Deputy Commissioner or a Superintendent of Police who actually live in the hill district, who hold daily hearings, could begin to make governmentality take root.
If the Manipur state cannot do this because it is too weak, too communalised/ethnicised, or too compromised, then it must ask for a reconfiguration of the dispositif. In simple legal terms: ask the Centre to reconfigure jurisdiction under one command structure that is seen as neutral and accountable.
Otherwise, Manipur will remain what it is—a state with a bifurcated or trifurcated authorities, one panopticon that works in the valley and is switched off in the hills.
Weber would say: first become a state everywhere. Foucault would say: first establish your governmentality everywhere. Only when legitimate violence and the knowledge that makes it legitimate have both climbed the hills can peace have a chance.
(Kh Ibomcha is a social and political commentator. He has contributed many critical articles in the regional media)
The post Why the Manipur Government Has No Power in the Hills: A Simple Explanation Using Weber and Foucault first appeared on The Frontier Manipur.
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