Towers To Trees: The Ingenious Ways Manipuris Survived The Internet Shutdown

DELHI, MANIPUR – Swami Laimayum, who was in Manipur when the internet was completely shut down in the aftermath of violence on May 3, 2023, was surprised to find that his sim card still has internet access.

Laimayum had a Vodafone sim card which he has been using for almost a decade. There were rumours around that Vodafone sim had glitches and sometimes internet was accessible from these sim cards, albeit at low speeds.

I was in Delhi at that time and Laimayum had video called me on WhatsApp. He said, “I'm the only one with internet, there is no use as my other friends in Manipur would not be able to see or communicate with me except for phone calls”.

As people started to notice glitches in the Vodafone sim cards, there was a temporary rise in demand of buying new vodafone sim cards in the market.

May 3rd, 2023 was yet another mundane day for Manipuris outside of the state until news from home started spreading. All things went wrong after clashes between the Meitei and the Kuki-Zo communities broke out at Torbung. Despite heavy military presence in Manipur, the state was not able thwart the brimming conflict at the nip.

Since then Manipur has spiralled into violent clashes among the two warring groups, with common people picking up arms and crucifying themselves as “village volunteers” to thwart possible attacks from the “other” community and defend their “ancestral land”.

Reportedly, 220 including children, farmers, women, armed persons including state and central forces have been killed, more than 1,100 injured and 60,000 people have been displaced in the ongoing conflict.

The year-long ongoing strife has “completely ruined” business and estimated fiscal loss of Rs 800 crore along with nearly 10,000 FIRs registered. The violence shows no sign of abating as sporadic incidence of attacks between the two communities happens every now and then.

Internet Ban

When the first news of the violence broke out in Torbung last year, the knee-jerk reaction from the state was the imposition of curfew and total blanket ban of internet services.

"To thwart the design and activities of anti-national and anti-social elements and to maintain peace and communal harmony and to prevent any loss of life or danger to public and private property, it had become necessary to take adequate measures to maintain law and order in public interest by stopping the spread of misinformation and false rumours through various social platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter on phone," an order issued by Commissioner (Home) H Gyan Prakash said.

By the end of it all, Manipur became the place to have undergone the longest internet shutdown in the world in 2023.

This move was counterproductive. Despite the ban, peace has not returned till date. On the contrary, it caused many hardships to people who use the internet as their means of earning their bread and butter.

Manipuri students outside of the state also faced problems as money could not be wired from home. Adding to woes of Manipuris’ outside the state was the calls from home asking to help recharge phone bills and electric bills.

Many reports have discussed the various challenges of internet shutdowns in combating misinformation, the legality of the shutdown, use of social media to advance narratives, etc. The blanket band of internet was not removed at one go but was in phases where at first top officials got access, specific institutions were opened up for the public to access internet, and later broadbands were allowed with undertakings, until finally it was lifted on “trial basis” starting 9th of November.

Running from towers to trees

Use of the internet for surfing, gaming, watching movies, etc was a part and parcel of everyday life. When the sudden ban happened amidst gunshots, arson and chaos, many who did not actively partake in started looking for means and ways to access the internet. This was a discernible trend that I first heard from home while I was in Delhi.

Young Manipuris went around searching for the internet to download movies, TV shows, songs etc to kill the boredom. Anyone who managed to download a movie became a treasured possession and it was shared liberally with android applications such as Zapya, ShareMe, etc.

Although the role rumours plays in times of any conflict is also beyond incomprehensible, there were rumours of certain areas where the internet was accessible. These rumours fuelled people to run around and verify if the rumours were true.

People used to line up with their mobile phones if a rumour of the availability of the internet came about. For example a large fleet of people would line up near the mobile tower at St. Joseph School to check; sometimes even waiting for long and often in vain.

There were no doubt glitches in the system.

Loitongbam Bobby, a resident of Nagamapal was also one of the first ones to have run around searching for access. Bobby recalled “we found that the sim cards of migrant workers whose sims were originally from Bihar, Silchar, Gauhati etc were working, and hence people started asking friends outside to buy a couple of them”.

People found out that the internet was still working for Local Area Payment Unit Sim Cards, commonly known as LAPU Sim; which are normally used by mobile recharge vendors or used in the soundbox of UPI payments services. However, this also got banned soon after authorities noticed.

Meanwhile, people with latest versions of Apple iPhone that had support of eSim reportedly got new connections to access the internet. This, however, was limited as packs were more costly; somewhere starting from 3,000 rupees.

Besides Telegram, another was the use of a particular VPN application called HA Tunnel Plus. It uses existing connection protocols and customises the start of internet connection (known as “injection”) with typed connection text (HTTP standard or any other), or setting an SNI to perform handshaking with the server. People would share the apk file of HA Tunnel Plus and install it, search for a stable internet connection; maybe from LAPU Sims, eSims, network glitches, broadbands in Government Institutions, etc, and use Telegram channels where videos showing steps of how to inject particular programmes were available along with the programmes.

“We’d go out searching for towers with glitches and once we identify towers where we can get a 2G network, we would start injecting and after a successful injection the network would turn to 4G,” Bobby further added.

However, even with the video guidance it was tricky to successfully inject the programme. Hence, “people used to ask us to help them establish the 4G network and sometimes out of happiness they would even pay us 100-200 rupees,” Bobby smirked, signalling it had become his side hustle. Once the connection was established booster packs or data add ons would be recharged for more data.

This did not work for Iphone users but sometimes worked for Android phones for 2-3 hours at slow speed. However, a phone call on the number would disrupt the connection and send the signal back, losing all the data add ons.

People at the state boundaries would often cross to the other side to access the internet. Sometimes network from towers across the state boundary would be available and people would use it.

But among the many tales of the ingenious ways of how people tried to access or use the internet, the most interesting one was sitting on a tree in Kachai, a village in the northwest of Ukhrul District where internet was accessible.

Normalising Broadbands

The Manipur Government had in September accused Airtel for alleged leakage of Internet Services, further which the Telecom giant tendered apology and swiftly suspended two field engineers. However all said and done, these various ways of how people would access during the ban were highly susceptible to work for a few short spans and slow speeds.

The State Government on 25th July, 2023 issued an order against the earlier suspension of Broadband Internet Services to be “lifted conditionally in a liberalised manner”. Hence, people throng to get undertakings approved from the State’s Home Department to get permission for static Ip address and a broadband connection whilst mobile data was still banned.

Leaving in a time of great uncertainty this move by the government has benefitted broadband service providers in the state such as Jio, Airtel, BSNL, Railtel, and a few more local service providers in increasing their customer base. Today urban households are increasingly subscribing to broadband connections.

But fear of internet shutdown still persists in peaceless Manipur.

“If they shut it down again, then we will again have to run around god knows where but we will not stay internetless,” Bobby exclaimed.