Discuss the rising ethnic conflicts in India and propose their possible remedial measures. (Answer in 250 words)

- Discuss the rising ethnic conflicts in India and propose their possible remedial measures. (Answer in 250 words)
Introduction
Ethnic conflict in India is rarely about culture as such. It is about who controls land, who counts as a son of the soil, and who is entitled to the protections the state distributes by group.

Body
1. The pattern: the Meitei-Kuki-Zo violence in Manipur from May 2023 is the gravest recent instance. Before it, Bodo-Muslim violence in Assam in 2012, the Naga-Kuki killings of the 1990s, the Bru-Reang displacement settled only in 2020, sons-of-the-soil attacks on migrants in Assam and Maharashtra, and recurring tribal-nontribal land conflict in Jharkhand.
2. The causes: competition for land and forest between hill and valley or tribal and settler; disputes over scheduling, since Scheduled Tribe status carries land protection and reservation, and a court direction on Meitei status precipitated Manipur; demographic anxiety about migration and citizenship; uneven regional development; contested autonomy and boundaries; and electoral mobilisation that makes ethnicity the cheapest currency, reinforced by armed groups and illicit economies.
3. Remedies matched to them: impartial and swift policing with accountability for partisan conduct; scheduling decided on evidence through the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes rather than in courts or campaigns; genuine devolution and fiscal capacity under the Sixth Schedule and PESA; settlement and recording of hill land rights; balanced regional investment; standing inter-community forums and rehabilitation of the displaced before, not after, elections.
4. Why they fail: they are applied after the violence and abandoned when it subsides.

Conclusion
Conflict recurs where the state is seen to be a partisan distributor rather than an arbiter. Neutral administration of land and of group entitlements would do more than any peace committee.