Spatial Marginality of the Meitei-Pangals in Manipur’s Imphal Valley

This paper examines Meitei-Pangal marginality in Manipur. Focusing on the Imphal Valley, it asks whether Meitei-Pangal settlement is concentrated in specific valley localities, how those localities relate to low-lying and wetland-edge environments, whether they face weaker access to selected services, how they are positioned within assembly constituency geography, and whether conflict-interface location sharpens exposure under recent crisis conditions. The paper builds a validated database and combines administrative boundaries, census-linked data, terrain derivatives, hydrological layers, road and service layers, constituency maps, and carefully bounded conflict-context information within GIS framework. Its contribution is to show how concentration, environmental siting, access, representation, and exposure can be examined as distinct but related dimensions of spatial marginality without collapsing measurement into rhetoric. Substantively, the paper complicates the dominant hill–valley binary in Manipur by showing why minority disadvantage must also be studied inside the valley’s demographic and institutional core. Methodologically, it offers a reviewer-defensible approach that distinguishes direct variables, proxy variables, and interpretive claims.