What is the cost of a life? For the wife and 20-year-old son Chongtham Vikram Singh, it is the lifelong grief and trauma of losing a family member. For Manipur, it is the loss of a homegrown musical talent, who began practicing his craft when he was a child, and made his way from Imphal to the big stages of Delhi. And for the rest of India, it is a reckoning with the systemic racism that has historically exposed Northeasterners living in other parts of the country to racial discrimination, harassment, bullying and violence.
The concerns are not new, nor were solutions entirely out of reach. The Bezbaruah Committee, set up by the Manmohan Singh-led UPA government to address the discrimination faced by people from the Northeast, had made a series of recommendations to the Modi cabinet in 2014. A key component of the proposals was making changes to the Indian Penal Code (IPC). Twelve years on, this is yet to be implemented.
