Why Do the People Still Not Own the Hills They Were Promised in 1967?

When the hill brothers and sisters cry out, bleed their hearts, and march “in defence of ancestral lands,” pause and ask: whose land are they really defending? It is not theirs. The soil they call ancestral still legally belongs to the chiefs whose titles and powers were abolished in 1967. 

Every tear shed, every drop of sweat, ultimately protects the private estates of former chiefs, not the people. So let the tears stop flowing for a dead feudal order. Let the new battle-cry rise instead: implement the 1967 promise, register the land in the names of the people, and turn ancestral claim into actual ownership at last.

Despite heavy funding — ₹2,395 crore for roads and bridges (2020–25) and ₹1,374 crore more for highways in 2024–25 alone — development in Manipur’s hill districts (90 percent of the state’s land, 40 percent of its population) remains painfully slow. The root cause is not lack of money but rigid customary land rights that keep most villagers title-less, block private investment, and allow a few chiefs and clans to control resources.

The state land revenue system starkly exposes the hill-valley divide: the valley, covering only about 10 percent of the state’s geographical area (approximately 2,238 sq km out of 22,327 sq km) but governed under the Manipur Land Revenue and Land Reforms Act, 1960, generates roughly ₹11–12 crore annually in land revenue through systematic cadastral surveys and recorded rights. 

In contrast, the hill districts — comprising roughly 90 percent of the state’s landmass (approximately 20,089 sq km) and protected by Article 371C and customary laws — have no cadastral survey or record-of-rights, and the state’s formal revenue from the entire hill region is limited to a meagre ₹20–30 lakh per year, almost entirely from nominal house tax collected through village authorities. 

This extreme disparity — the valley’s small area yielding over 400 times more land-related revenue than the vast hills — directly reflects the complete absence of modern land records and revenue administration in the hill areas.

History has already decided this question. The rest of the North-East simply obeyed.In February 1948, hereditary chieftainship was abolished in the Chin Hills of Burma. In 1954, the Assam Government passed the Assam Lushai Hills District (Acquisition of Chiefs’ Rights) Act and ended the system in what is now Mizoram. The chiefs were fairly compensated — three tins of paddy per household per year for the first 100 houses, two tins for the next 100 — for ten years, and then the land belonged to the people who actually worked it.

Manipur once tried to do exactly the same. On 10 January 1967 the Manipur Legislative Assembly unanimously passed the Manipur (Hill Areas) Acquisition of Chiefs’ Rights Act. It received Presidential assent on 14 June 1967. The law was clear: hereditary chieftainship would be abolished, chiefs would receive reasonable compensation, and the land would finally belong to the families who tilled it.

Unfortunately, the Act was never implemented. A powerful lobby of Kuki chiefs, backed by politicians who needed their votes, ensured it remained a dead letter. Fifty-eight years later, Manipur remains the only state in the entire North-East where hereditary chiefs still function as mini-kings — collecting taxes, allotting land as personal favour, controlling development funds, and in some cases even maintaining armed groups. 

The 26th Amendment to the Indian Constitution abolished privy purses and princely privileges everywhere else in 1971. Only in Manipur’s hills do we still have rulers who combine military, executive, legislative and judicial power in one hereditary office.This unfulfilled 1967 Act is not just a forgotten file in the Secretariat; it is one of the deepest root causes of the present ethnic crisis. 

When land belongs to a chief instead of to the people, every road, every school, every relief camp becomes a bargaining chip. Ordinary villagers remain tenants on their own ancestral soil, unable to plan for tomorrow because someone else holds the title today.

I still remember an incident from about twenty years ago in a Kuki village in what was then Chandel district, Manipur.A Central government agricultural team had went to conduct a “livelihood improvement” program. Experts stood before the gathered villagers and asked, “What do you need to better your lives? Seedlings? Fruit orchards? Training?”The village chief sat prominently in the front row, watching everyone.After an awkward silence, one elderly farmer found the courage to speak the truth.“Sir,” he said, “don’t give us fruit trees. Give us piglets or chicks instead.”The officials looked puzzled. “Why? Fruit trees will feed your families for generations.”

The old man glanced nervously at the chief, then answered plainly:“Because we have no land of our own. Everything belongs to the chief. When he is happy with us, we stay and work the fields. When he is not, he tells us to leave—sometimes overnight. A mango tree cannot walk with us when we are thrown out. But a pig or a chicken we can carry on our backs and still have something to live on wherever we go.”A heavy silence fell over the meeting. That was the reality—no amount of saplings or training could change it.

For the hill people of Manipur, land is everything: identity, livelihood, inheritance, pride. Yet the laws that claim to “protect” this land have become the biggest obstacle to progress, locking ordinary families in poverty while a tiny elite of village chiefs and their clans grow richer on government schemes meant for everyone.

It is painful to say, but true: the customary land system in most hill districts of Manipur today functions like a 21st-century version of the Zamindari system the rest of India abolished seventy years ago. The common villager remains a tenant on ancestral soil, unable to get a bank loan, unable to sell, unable to pass secure title to his children — especially daughters.The numbers are brutal:Hill districts have double the multidimensional poverty of the valley.
Per capita income in the hills is barely half the valley figure.

The hill districts of Manipur, which comprises 90 percent of the state's area but home to about 40 percent of the population—outdated land laws fuel underdevelopment. Traditional systems vary: in Naga areas like Ukhrul or Senapati, land may be community-owned but managed by village councils dominated by influential families. In Kuki areas like Churachandpur and Kangpokpi, chiefs own villages outright. These customs, while culturally rooted, lack modern safeguards like inheritance equity or dispute resolution mechanisms.

Every serious attempt at reform has hit the same iron wall of opposition. In 1988, Chief Minister R.K. Jaichandra tabled a straightforward amendment to extend the Manipur Land Revenue and Land Reforms Act, 1960, to the hills so that surveys could finally begin and ordinary villagers could get legal titles; hill MLAs branded it “anti-tribal” and forced its withdrawal. 

In 2015, Okram Ibobi Singh’s government tried again with three protective bills, including the Seventh Amendment to the same Act, only to face arson, blockades, and nine deaths in Churachandpur, after which the reforms were quietly buried. 

Most recently, on 18 September 2025, a modest government notification merely seeking uniform procedures for buying and selling land across the state was met with instant fury—the Hill Areas Committee, United Naga Council, and Kuki organisations cried foul over Article 371C and customary rights, and by November 2025 the notification lay frozen, another casualty of the same old battle cry.

Yet the proof stares us in the face: wherever the 1960 Act was quietly extended decades ago—Churachandpur town and Moreh—the result has been bustling markets, new schools, hospitals, and cross-border trade that lifted thousands out of poverty. Where the Act is still treated as poison, hundreds of crores keep pouring in, roads get half-built, projects stall, and ordinary hill families remain tenants on the very soil their ancestors cleared, with no paper to call their own.

Manipur is perfectly placed to ride India’s Act East wave: the Jiribam–Imphal railway is running, Japanese and German firms are scouting for new bases after quitting China, and border trade is set to explode. But without clear land rules in the hills, most of these opportunities simply bypass the 90 percent of the state that needs them most. 

Customary claims still stall big project. Ordinary villagers watch tribal chiefs collect fat compensation cheques for the same rail and highway land they themselves have no title to. In 2023, former Chief Minister N. Biren Singh proposed for a separate, hill-friendly new land law under Vision 2047 that would finally give common families secure pattas while protecting tribal identity. Every time it moves forward, the same voices shout “land grab". 

Some of the village chiefs betray their own people protections by openly leasing ancestral lands to outsiders for poppy cultivation and illegal logging, reaping crores while depriving communities of forests, grazing, and water. Recent data reveals 11,288 acres under poppy in 2023–24 across nine districts, with 675 acres destroyed and over 700 newly detected in 2025 alone, plus 255,000 hectares of deforestation since 2001—including 17,800 in 2024—particularly in areas like Tamenglong. 

Former CM N. Biren Singh has recently exposed nearly 700 acres blanketing sacred Makhan hills in Kangpokpi via aerial footage on November 24, 2025, warning on X that the Golden Triangle's drug corridor is ravaging ecology and indigenous heritage; while praising ongoing crackdowns, he urged massive deployments to eradicate plantations, blaming reform-blocking chiefs for enabling this existential threat.

Meanwhile, the neighbouring states like Mizoram abolished hereditary chieftainship in 1954 and has never looked back. By 2023, over 80 percent of rural households had inheritable land settlement certificates. Banks started giving loans, poverty crashed to single digits, and Aizawl became one of India’s fastest-growing state capitals.

Nagaland, despite the strong shield of Article 371A, introduced limited mortgage rights on “Red Patta” land in 2022 and brought in a modern Land Records Act in 2023–25. Land disputes have fallen, highways are coming up on schedule, and young Naga entrepreneurs can finally have collateral.

Meghalaya clarified private (Ri Kynti) land in Khasi hills, opened New Shillong township on clear titles, and attracted investment without losing its soul.

Even Assam’s tribal belts and blocks are being rationalised with pattas to landless families under Mission Basundhara, proving that safeguards and development can walk together.None of these states ceased to be tribal. They simply stopped letting a handful of families monopolise progress.

The Presidential Rule governance should set up a broad-based Hill Land Reform Commission – bring in the HAC, the major tribal apex bodies, women’s unions, youth councils, church leaders, other stakeholders whoever truly cares about the future of the hills. 

One clean, fair step would solve half the battle: extend the Manipur Land Revenue and Land Reforms Act, 1960 to all scheduled hill areas on an opt-in basis for an initial period of ten years.Any village, clan, or individual who wants secure, heritable, mortgageable titles can simply apply and get them. Those who prefer the present customary arrangement may stay with it—no pressure, no deadline.

Experience from every other part of India and the North-East shows that once a few villages take the step and the benefits become visible (bank loans flowing, yields rising, children staying home instead of migrating—the rest will follow of their own accord, quietly and irreversibly.Ten years of voluntary choice is all the hills will need to bury the old tenancy system without a single forced eviction or a single angry protest.

That’s it. No conspiracy, no land grab, no erasure of identity – just ordinary hill mothers and fathers finally holding the same little piece of paper that lifted Nagaland, lifted Mizoram, lifted the Imphal valley itself out of poverty: a land title that says, loud and clear, “This is mine, and my children’s, and my children’s children’s.”

This is not anti-tribal. It is pro-people — and pro-peace.When an ordinary Kuki farmer finally holds a patta in his hand, when a tribal widow can mortgage her plot without begging the chief, when a youth can start a business on land that legally belongs to him, the incentives for conflict will fall dramatically.

The soil has waited since 1967. The people should not have to wait any longer.Let us finish what Mizoram did in 1954, what Manipur’s own elected Assembly decided in 1967, and what simple justice demands in 2025: abolish the last hereditary chieftainships in India, give the land to the tillers, and let the hills finally rise.

Outdated land laws in hills of Manipur empower a few chiefs, who—despite abolition—enjoy schemes for the meant for the people. Post-2022 reforms in Mizoram (revenue amendments), Nagaland (modernization bills), Meghalaya (acquisition approvals), and Assam (ceiling acts) show paths forward. Manipur must follow and extend MLR&LR or enact new policies granting individual rights, fostering development without cultural erosion.

Empowering common people with ownership isn't anti-tribal—it's pro-progress. Let the hills thrive as equals, turning land from a tool of control into one of collective prosperity. The time for change is now, lest another generation suffers under feudal shadows.