The flags are halfway down the poles in Imphal. Three days of state-mandated silence. It’s the kind of bureaucratic theater we’re used to seeing when the machine loses a gear, even one it had already written off.

Vungzagin Valte is dead. The BJP MLA from Thanlon finally succumbed to the inevitable, nearly two years after the world—and his own government—largely decided to look the other way. If you’re looking for a story about political legacy, go read a press release. If you want to know what happens when the "Digital India" dream hits the jagged reality of tribal warfare and a total state collapse, stick around.

Valte wasn’t just another name on a ballot. He was a three-time legislator, a former tribal affairs minister, and a man who, until May 2023, believed the system worked. Then the system broke. Or rather, the system stood by and watched while he was pulled from his car in the middle of a capital city supposedly under "tight security." The mob didn't just beat him; they tried to erase him. He survived the initial assault, but the version of Valte that returned from the hospital wasn’t the one who went in. He was left bedridden, his brain severely damaged, a living ghost in a state that was too busy burning to offer much more than a "thoughts and prayers" tweet.

Now, the Manipur government has declared three days of mourning. It’s a cheap gesture. Flags are easy to lower. It’s the actual protection of human life that seems to be the budget-breaker.

Let’s talk about the friction. While the state government goes through the motions of grief, the actual "landscape"—sorry, the actual ground—is a mess of drone strikes and missing internet. Manipur has become the global capital of the kill-switch. Since the violence erupted, the state has endured one of the longest internet blackouts in a supposedly functional democracy. They’ll tell you it’s for security. They’ll tell you it’s to stop the spread of rumors. What it actually does is create a vacuum where accountability goes to die.

You can’t livestream a lynching if there’s no 4G. You can't coordinate a medical evacuation for a dying MLA if the towers are dark.

The trade-off is glaringly obvious. The state spends millions on surveillance tech, AI-powered facial recognition at borders, and high-spec gear for paramilitary forces, yet it couldn't protect a sitting member of its own ruling party from a mob on a public road. Valte’s family spent months navigating a healthcare system that was as fractured as the state’s geography. The cost of his specialized care wasn't just a line item in a budget; it was a physical reminder of what happens when the social contract is shredded.

We love to talk about connectivity as a human right in these tech circles. We argue over satellite speeds and fiber-to-the-home. But in Manipur, connectivity is a weapon used by the state to punish or reward. When the government wants to mourn, they find the bandwidth for a formal notification. When the people want to know why an MLA was left to rot for months without justice, the signal conveniently drops.

There is a grim irony in the timing. This mourning period comes as the state continues to grapple with the fallout of a conflict that has displaced thousands and killed hundreds. Valte is the most high-profile casualty of a system that failed to see the fire until the house was already ashes. He was a Kuki-Zomi leader in a BJP government that struggled—and is still struggling—to bridge a chasm that tech can’t fix and politics won’t touch.

Don't expect the next three days to bring any real reflection. There won't be a deep dive into why the security apparatus failed Valte on that May afternoon. There won't be a sudden rush to restore the internet or provide transparent data on the 6,000-plus FIRs filed since the carnage began. Instead, we get the ritual. We get the half-mast flags. We get the official notifications signed in triplicate.

It’s easier to mourn a dead man than it is to explain why you let him get killed in the first place.

The state will go quiet for 72 hours. The office buildings will be hushed. The official social media accounts will post somber graphics. And then, on the fourth day, the flags will go back up, the sirens will start again, and the people of Manipur will go back to wondering if the next blackout will be the one that lasts forever.

Does a flag at half-mast even matter if there’s nobody left with a signal to see it?