Nagaland Elections - Citizens dilemma: How to vote for good governance when no candidate speaks about it

Nagaland goes to polls today, February 27, 2023. (File image)

For a state formed in 1963, it will sound preposterous that the state’s first medical college is still under construction (like most government projects in the state). It is shocking that 60 years later, Nagaland still remains in 1963 in terms of quality, specialised, higher education.

But it is not as if higher education is in great shape in the other parts of the Northeast either. Now, I know what detractors will say. The Northeast has several universities, including central universities, and things have gotten better in the past decade. I agree. But can anyone in this nation say education in the northeast, or just Nagaland, is as good as, say, southern India?

Elusive Development

By the time you read this column, people would have started queuing in long, wavy lines across thousands of polling stations in all parts of Nagaland: from the bustling and fascinating town of Dimapur to the remotest villages in eastern Nagaland near the Myanmar border.

But divided as they might be in their choice of candidates, they are united in feeling that "development", at least the way it is supposed to be, remains elusive. Yet, I wonder how many are going to vote for a candidate because he/she promised quality higher education, a robust public health system and employment for those seeking it.

Yes, I agree that few parts of India can claim all three. But in Nagaland, we are so far from achieving this that one can only wonder what more a voter needs to do when no candidate talks about these issues. Take education. In 2021, 23 government schools in Nagaland recorded nil pass results in the HSLC examination. In 2020, this number stood at 34 of which 30 were government schools.

Sleepless Doctors

The medical condition in rural Nagaland, especially eastern Nagaland, is so bad that a doctor who finishes the night shift goes home, takes a break for a few hours, and then returns for morning shifts. You do not need me to tell you that the last thing we need is doctors under extreme duress; yet, this has become a scarily-regular routine in Nagaland.

According to a response to an unstarred question asked in the Lok Sabha in 2018, the state has only 800-odd doctors registered with the state medical council. But how will public health improve in a state that does not produce its own doctors? The state’s medical council is less than a decade old so it will be a while before the state even begins producing MBBS students given that the medical college remains under construction, which brings me to perhaps the biggest roadblock (pun intended, as you shall see) in Nagaland.

When seen in this context, you begin to understand why six districts in Nagaland are demanding a separate state: Frontier Nagaland.

Roads To Nowhere

There are states where road projects take years, and then there is Nagaland, where the Chief Minister admitted in the state assembly that the state’s most important road project–the expansion of the Dimapur-Kohima road–may never see the light of the day. And oh, this project started when Atal Behari Vajpayee was the PM. And despite a double-engine government, it remains in a limbo.

And this, coming from a Chief Minister who is now seeking a fifth term. Not to forget, existing roads, come monsoons, are subjected to numerous landslides because let us not forget, Nagaland is hilly. All this combines to make Nagaland perhaps the worst state when it comes to all-weather roads.

When one cannot even configure basic infrastructure, maybe it is wrong to complain about higher education and public health, I guess.

Amoral Elites

Several scholars, authors, journalists and residents have written extensively on the vexed Naga political issue and the talks: I will not. Why? Because last I checked, nothing much has happened to post the August 2015 framework agreement for me to say anything new. Will solving that issue help? Of course. But is that stopping Nagaland from ensuring good education and decent hospitals? Unlikely.

I admit a tinge of sadness for those voting today in Nagaland. I know they want their state to develop, their children to flourish and prosper and live in cities and villages where something as basic as roads is not some mythical structure but an everyday reality.

The thing is, though, the ‘democracy’ we have witnessed in Nagaland is definitely not that. It is, at best, an oligarchy where the rich live dual lives, spending only some time in Nagaland as and when it suits them, and the poor spend all their energy trying to survive. Nagaland is a lot of things: but an equal society it is not. And more than asking what needs to be done to change this, we need to ask: who will take the mantle to do so? I doubt if those queuing today also know the answer.

Karma Paljor is founder and editor-in-chief of Eastmojo.com, a Northeast-based news portal. Views are personal and do not represent the stand of this publication.