At about 1 a.m. on 7 April 2026, a bomb struck a home in Moirang Tronglaobi, Bishnupur, killing two children — a five-year-old boy and a six-month-old girl — and hospitalising their mother. The state responded with an internet blackout across five valley districts. Protests followed, oil tankers were set ablaze near a petrol pump, security forces fired into crowds, and three more people were reported dead by noon with many injured. That night, the article notes, was not an exception in Manipur; for many, the firing, smoke and fear have become the daily weather.
Beyond headlines and outrage is a quieter question the piece presses: what has been happening inside the brains of Manipur’s children during three years of sustained violence? Neuroscience and clinical studies suggest the answer is grim and long-lasting. The developing brain constantly reads its environment and wires itself accordingly. In safe settings the prefrontal cortex — responsible for planning, impulse control and empathy — strengthens. Under chronic threat, however, survival wiring takes precedence.
The piece cites evidence that trauma physically alters the brain: “The largest study on childhood trauma found a 17% reduction in hippocampus volume in children exposed to three or more traumatic events.” Prolonged activation of the amygdala and sustained cortisol release can shrink the hippocampus and impair prefrontal functioning, making concentration, learning and imagining a future much harder. A clinical study at Jawaharlal Nehru Institute of Medical Sciences in Imphal found that 65.8% of internally displaced persons in relief camps screened positive for PTSD — documented cases among many likely uncounted.
Alongside trauma runs a subtler, socialised harm. Political psychologist Daniel Bar-Tal’s research on children in intractable conflicts shows that children do not merely become confused by violence; they make sense of it, absorbing coherent beliefs about who the enemy is and why the conflict is justified. In Manipur, the article argues, Meitei children in the Imphal valley and Kuki children in Churachandpur hills are growing up with two internally consistent realities. “This is the generation that will govern Manipur in twenty years. Or continue to fight over it,” the author warns.
Distance does not erase these effects. A 2025 study in the International Journal of Indian Psychology found that Manipuri students living elsewhere faced financial anxiety, disrupted academics and chronic distress. At home, schools lie empty or have become shelters: one Churachandpur school fell from 300 students before May 2023 to 50 within months, and nearly 100 schools statewide were repurposed as displacement centres. Drug treatment centres have seen a fall in the average age of new addicts from around 20 to the mid-teens. Young people with no schooling, work or hope become vulnerable to recruitment and radicalisation.
The piece holds political leaders to account: watching children grow up in a war zone while responding with internet shutdowns and symbolic measures is a failure of duty. Recovery, the author says, is possible because the brain remains plastic. What is needed now are consistent safe adults, restored routine, trauma-informed education, mental health services in schools, counsellors across the state, and economic investment that gives young people a believable future. A six‑month‑old has no politics; a five‑year‑old has no ethnic grievance — they were asleep. The moral test for authorities, the author argues, is whether they act before the wiring is complete and a generation’s prospects are lost.
Original Source: https://www.indiatodayne.in/opinion/story/wired-for-war-what-manipurs-unending-conflict-is-doing-to-an-entire-generations-mind-1378040-2026-04-19?utm_source=rssfeed
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Publish Date: 2026-04-19 14:11:00
