GUWAHATI: India saw nearly six lakh people displaced internally in 2023, of whom 67,000 (over 11%) were in Manipur because of the ethnic conflict there, a global report released by Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) said Tuesday. Manipur's figure was also the highest for displacement triggered by conflict and violence in India since 2018, according to the report.
The remaining 5.28 lakh-odd displacements in other parts of the country were attributed to floods, storms, earthquakes and other disasters.
The report pointed out that protests over a Manipur HC order in March 2023 for sending recommendations to the Centre to recognise the Meitei community as Scheduled Tribe (ST) turned violent in Churachandpur on May 3, 2023. The violence spread to other districts. "The HC call was met with resistance from other local STs, including Kukis. Land disputes were also an underlying driver of the tensions," the report said.
More than three-quarters of the movements (of internally displaced people) took place within Manipur but almost a fifth were to neighbouring Mizoram and smaller numbers to Nagaland and Assam, the report added.
On displacements due to disasters in other regions of India, the report said the figure for floods was the lowest since 2008 at 3.52 lakh. "The largest event, which triggered about 91,000 displacements, occurred in Assam in June when heavy rain hit 20 districts, causing some rivers to burst their banks," the report said.
IDMC flagged Delhi as another "flood displacement hotspot" last year. "Heavy downpours on July 9 brought 153 mm of rain, the highest figure recorded for a single day in 40 years. Rising water levels in the Yamuna prompted 27,000 displacements," the report said.
Earthquakes and subsidence at Joshimath in Uttarakhand in early 2023 caused around 4,000 displacements and Cyclone Biparjoy on the west coast triggered 1.05 lakh displacements, the report said.
According to IDMC, 46.9 million people were displaced internally across 151 countries last year.
Prabin Kalita is a journalist at The Times of India and is curren...
Read MorePrabin Kalita is a journalist at The Times of India and is currently the Chief of Bureau (northeast). He has been reporting in mainstream Indian national media since 2001. He has been a field journalist reporting gamut of issues from India’s northeastern region and major developments in neighbouring countries like Myanmar, China, Bhutan and Bangladesh concerning India and northeastern region. He has been covering insurgency—internal and cross-border, politics, natural calamities, environment etc. He is a post-graduate in Geological Sciences from Gauhati University.
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