It is astonishing yet telltale of the times that an air ticket from Imphal to Delhi-over 2,400 kilometres away-now costs less than a flight from Imphal to Guwahati, a city barely 500 kilometres distant. Documents uploaded on social media by H. Radhakrishna, proprietor of Seven Sisters Travel, reveal this startling fare disparity, pointing to more than mere market fluctuation. It is, in fact, a reflection of the deeper pattern of economic manipulation and neglect. While Imphal to Delhi flight fare cost Rs. 11,537, it was Rs. 14,646 from Imphal to Guwahati in Indigo. The Imphal to Delhi flights on November 3rd take around 2 hours and 45 minutes to 3 hours, yet the flights from Imphal to Guwahati take just 35-45 minutes.
With the national highways blocked for months, unsafe for civilian passage, air travel has become Manipur’s only lifeline. Yet, the government has failed to act-either reopening the highways for safe surface transport or regulating the airfare that now dictates who can afford to leave or enter the state. The silence by both state and central authorities is deafening, and the consequences are brutal.
For a landlocked region torn apart by conflict, airfare is no longer a luxury; it’s a lifeline. But leaving this to the whims of an unregulated market makes access a prerogative of the rich. Where the state does nothing as its citizens are being priced out of the possibility of mobility, it ceases to be a neutral actor: it becomes complicit in economic oppression.
Every inflated ticket represents something more than a financial burden; it is part of a larger design in which isolation is maintained, not by bullets but by bills. The people of Manipur are being punished twice: first by blocked roads, then by unaffordable skies.
The inefficiency of the government to guarantee that highways are safe and airfares reasonable cannot be explained by administrative inertia. This is something more serious: a conscious dereliction of duty at work, using economics as a weapon against the people. What Manipur expects is not sympathy but justice-a corridor of fairness and accessibility, over land and through the skies.