ABSTRACT
Julia pointed out the car window at the stacks of timber by the roadside. ‘It is admissions time’. We were driving back to Imphal from Ukhrul in June 2013. A little farther down the winding road through the denuded hills there was an even larger stack of timber being loaded onto a truck. Julia added, ‘And probably there have been some new government posts advertised’. Since I had last seen her three years earlier Julia had moved from human rights activism to working as a consultant for the Manipur Department of Education. She had grown tired of the deplorable state of public education in the hills and had recruited a team of returnee migrants from the Tangkhul Naga community of Ukhrul as fieldworkers. Her team of ten men and women, mostly in their 20s, travel to all parts of the district, often on foot, to inspect and document schools and talk to community members.
