Struggle and resistance for livelihood amid ethnic conflict: lived experiences of Indigenous women vendors in Manipur, India

The article examines the struggle of Indigenous women vendors amid ongoing ethnic conflict in Manipur, India. Based on qualitative interviews with 15 women vendors from the Kuki-Zomi-Hmar community, the study demonstrates how women’s economic and care labour is negotiated and transformed in conflict zones. Drawing on the critical feminist frameworks of Gregoratti et al, Gill and Orgad, and McRobbie, the analysis reveals that their resilience is not merely an individual adaptive mechanism but rather a collective gendered practice that is strongly engrained in their cultural tradition. The article also addresses the challenges encountered by Indigenous women vendors in rebuilding their lives after being displaced from their homes, and work places due to the ethnic conflict. The study argues that genuine resilience in conflict zones must be reframed as a relational process rather than an individual achievement. The findings imply that peacebuilding policies must move beyond security-centric models to recognize and formally support the informal care labour of women vendors. The significance of this research lies in its capacity to foreground a marginalized community often invisible to the global gaze, providing a scalable model for understanding how grassroots economic agency acts as a catalyst for social justice in deeply fractured societies.