An Assam town’s love for English has opened up jobs for women displaced by hate in Manipur.
Kalgachia is a town of about 30,000 people, mostly Bengal-origin Muslims. But it boasts of more than 20 private English medium schools and junior colleges, making it an education hub for a large chunk of Barpeta district. The town, whose name means ‘a place where banana plants are abundant’, is about 120 km west-northwest of Guwahati, Assam’s principal city.
“Assamese continues to be the primary medium of instruction in our schools, the first of which was established in the 1910s. The aspiration of parents for their children to be more globally relevant is making English medium schools more popular nowadays,” Abu Bakkar Siddique, a retired professor, told The Hindu.
Attracting English teachers
The thrust on English is not just attracting children from habitations within a certain radius of Kalgachia, which is also a regional business hub. The town’s private schools and colleges have become a magnet for English teachers, mostly women from Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland, and the hilly Karbi Anglong district of Assam.
Some of these teachers, like Boicy Khongsai from Manipur’s Kangpokpi district, have helped others from their hometowns or native villages get non-teaching jobs in Kalgachia too.
Kalgachia’s eateries were modest until Rajibul Islam opened B-Mezban, the town’s first upmarket air-conditioned restaurant, a year ago. But smart English-speaking staff were hard to come by. Manipur’s misery offered him what he was looking for.
A long journey
Hatneimoi Baite, Nengpithem Baite, and Domneithem Touthang had left their homes in Mongneljang village soon after violence broke out in Manipur on May 3. Like the members of 48 other families in the Kuki village, only their fathers, uncles, and adult brothers stayed behind, to defend their homes from possible attackers.
Mongneljang, about 25 km from Manipur’s capital Imphal on the road to Ukhrul, is a ‘frontline’ village located just a kilometre away from a Meitei-dominated village in the Imphal Valley. “Our mother, my three sisters and I shifted to an interior village. But it was tough to spend the days doing practically nothing,” says Ms. Touthang, who graduated in Education from an Imphal college in 2019.
Almost two months into the violence, she contacted Ms. Khongsai to help her find a job. Ms. Hatneimoi Baite and Ms. Nengpithem Baite, both awaiting their degree results, volunteered to accompany her.
The trio took five days to cover the 600 km from Mongneljang to Kalgachia, first travelling for about three hours in a friend’s car, to cover more than 30 km on an internal hill road to Kangpokpi town (thus avoiding the highway via the Imphal Valley), and then by a maxi-van to Nagaland’s Dimapur town. Buses from Dimapur to Guwahati, and from Guwahati to Barpeta town, and then a shared cab from Barpeta to Kalgachia, brought them to their destination.
They were hired as waitstaff at Mr. Islam’s restaurant soon after reaching Kalgachia.
Waiting for peace
“We were scared at every leg of our journey as it was the first time that we moved out to a world beyond the areas around our village and parts of the Imphal Valley. We feel quite safe here but we are always worried about the safety of our families and friends back home,” Ms. Hatneimoi Baite said.
To Mr. Islam’s surprise, the three women could also converse in Hindi, which they said they had picked up from films, TV serials and streaming series.
“Educational institutions and business establishments in Kalgachia have had enquiries for jobs from mostly women in Manipur since the violence broke out. We thought people of Manipur were known only as Manipuri but the ongoing violence taught us that they are divided into Kuki, Meitei, and other communities,” he said.
The division, though, is not apparent among the displaced, with both Kukis and Meiteis working in Kalgachia.
Their jobs pay a minimum of ₹6,500 per month, apart from perks, for Ms. Nengpithem Baite and others from violence-hit Manipur. “Waiting at tables here is better than waiting for an elusive peace in Manipur,” she said.
She wished the wait for the restoration of mobile phone internet services in Manipur would be over soon. “We can then transfer online the money we are saving for folks at home, hit by violence-induced inflation,” she said.
