The Taxed State: How Criminal-Backed, Narco-Sustained Terrorism Is Taxing the Daily Lives of Manipur’s People

Manipur’s conflict has created a hidden economic burden for ordinary families through extortion, illegal checkpoints and repeated highway blockades. Drug trafficking and armed networks are accused of raising prices, draining public funds and holding back development across the state.

New Delhi: Most conversations about the Manipur conflict circle around ethnicity and political deadlock. What gets left out is the economics of it — the actual bill, and who’s stuck paying it. That would be the ordinary person. Someone living in Imphal or Kangpokpi today is paying a hidden tax on almost everything: the fuel in their tank, the LPG cylinder in their kitchen, their kid’s school fees, their salary at the end of the month, even the road that never quite gets built. Nobody in government is collecting this tax. It’s being collected by a criminal enterprise — rebel outfits, drug networks, and extortion rackets that have essentially merged into one self-sustaining economy, and it’s left Manipur trailing behind on nearly every measure of basic prosperity.

Manipur sits on the western edge of the Golden Triangle, and over the past decade it’s gone from being a transit route for Myanmar heroin to becoming a producer in its own right. The state launched its War on Drugs campaign back in 2017, and since then more than 19,000 acres of poppy have been destroyed — yet the crop keeps coming back. Between November 2025 and February 2026 alone, police records show another 2,618 acres of illegal poppy cultivation torn up. That kind........

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