Manipur’s conflict has, at various points over the past three years, competed for national attention with other headlines, often losing. This is a pattern familiar to the Northeast broadly: a region strategically vital, bordering three countries, yet frequently treated as peripheral in national conversations until a crisis forces attention.

The costs of that neglect are visible in Manipur today, from delayed security responses in the conflict’s early days to chronically underfunded infrastructure that has made humanitarian response harder than it needed to be. A region that borders Myanmar, China, and Bangladesh, and that sits at the center of India’s Act East ambitions, deserves sustained strategic investment, not periodic attention driven only by crisis.

Rebuilding Manipur should be paired with a broader rethink of how the Northeast is prioritised in national planning, before the next crisis makes the cost of neglect visible all over again.