Meghalaya-Nagaland elections: Nine charts that reveal the good, the bad, and the despair in these two Northeast states

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Meghalaya and Nagaland, going to the polls today, have much in common like their geographic location in India’s Northeast, a high Christian and tribal population, and of not figuring in India’s developmental discourse in the first two decades of India’s post-1991 reforms. Both states are helmed by regional parties National People's Party (NPP) and Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party (NDPP) with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as a key ally. In Meghalaya, a divided opposition (TMC and Congress) and a divided ruling front (NPP and BJP contesting against each other) make the race unpredictable, while in Nagaland the opposition NPF and Congress are a shadow of their former selves, allowing the NDPP-BJP front an easy romp home.

Both Meghalaya and Nagaland trail India in annual per capita incomes. Meghalaya has been severely hit by the COVID pandemic effect on domestic tourist footfalls. Nagaland, marginally ahead of India’s per capita income in 1997-98, has fallen behind, though not to the extent of Meghalaya. Will the crash in Meghalaya’s economy affect the NPP in these polls? We will know the answer on March 2.

The dire per capita income statistics are quite a contrast with the assets of Meghalaya’s and Nagaland’s re-contesting MLAs. Assets of Meghalaya’s recontesting MLAs have risen 77 percent from Rs 6.97 crore in 2018 to Rs 12.31 crore in 2023. In contrast, the average Meghalayan is earning just Rs 19,000 more in a year in 2020-21 than what she/he earned in 2013-14. The cruel irony of this disconnect between the elected representatives and voters is that many of Meghalaya’s MLAs have been on a party hopping spree since 2021. Even in Nagaland, virtually the entire opposition NPF legislative contingent has defected to the governing NDPP. Perhaps, it pays to be on the right side of the government.

Niti Aayog’s Multidimensional Poverty Index had stark revelations on both states, which call for greater attention from policymakers. Given that these are small states with a population of 33 lakh and 22 lakh respectively, the challenge in terms of absolute numbers is not so towering, as say Bihar or UP where the government is dealing with crores below the poverty line. That 34 percent and 30 percent of Meghalaya and Nagaland ‘s population have no basic assets and an even larger proportion is living in inadequate housing doesn’t speak well for the merits of small government. Smaller states have been pitched as a solution for biggies like UP and Bihar, after the comparative improvements in Chhattisgarh, Uttarakhand and Jharkhand. So what failed in the Northeast? Is corruption in politics and identity wars to blame or was the culprit inadequate central funds?

The blow dealt by the COVID pandemic is evident in how tourists largely skirted the Northeast during 2020 and 2021. Even in 2019, Meghalaya and Nagaland were just able to attract a trickle from the foreign tourists arriving in India. 12 lakh domestic tourists had arrived in Meghalaya in 2019 and this crashed to just 1.5 lakh in 2020. Perhaps, this would explain how Meghalaya’s GSDP took such a beating in 2020. But the fact remains that tourism presents a big opportunity for both states to maximise revenues.

Land ownership is a key factor in improving the status that women command in society. Meghalaya does very well compared to Nagaland and the rest of India in this yardstick. Even in terms of women who worked in the last 12 months and were paid in cash, Meghalaya is comparatively better. The high conviction rate in crimes against women is also a huge improvement over the rest of India. Perhaps having a low crime rate (Meghalaya: 104 crimes per lakh population, Nagaland: 67, India: 445) allows cops in these two states to do a better job of investigation.

Like the rest of India, women figure poorly in the politics of Meghalaya and Nagaland despite being around 50 percent of the voters. Just 9 percent of Meghalaya’s candidates were women, which compares with Kerala’s 11 percent. But note here Nagaland’s abysmal showing: just 5 out of nearly 200 candidates and not a single woman could win.

If higher education is any indicator, the winds of change are starting to blow. Women dominated men in gross enrollment (percentage of the age-group that is enrolled in higher education) and in the number of pass-outs in both Meghalaya and Nagaland. But the souring reminder of inequality is that the percentage of urban graduate women who are unemployed is much greater than men in both states.

Nagaland’s four-term chief minister Nephiu Rio, who is the longest serving CM of the state, has much to answer for the dismal unemployment statistics that Nagaland throws up. In no state in India are so many young people actively looking for jobs and not being able to find them. It shows that there is a craving for development among the people. Meghalaya’s figures could be deceptive too, because many youth could have stopped actively looking for jobs too. Perhaps, neither Nagaland or Meghalaya can be truly called “double-engine” governments, since BJP is only the junior party.

Children don’t vote in elections and as a result the dismal state of school education never figures in the electoral politics of any state. Except perhaps for the number of Class 8 students who can read easy sentences in English, the dismal state of school education in both states come to the fore through these ASER surveys of rural Meghalaya and Nagaland in 2022.

Here’s hoping that the new governments that take office in Shillong and Kohima after these elections have better report cards to present to voters in 2028.