Corruption, a loss of value system—I

A hundred years ago, narrates grassroots entrepreneur Abokali Jimomi, if you found a honeycomb in a forest, you marked it as yours and went back home to sleep in peace. No one would steal it. A hundred years here, if you tried the same humility, your honeycomb would be long stolen for the lone benefit of the thief. And family, perhaps. 
This, she feels, is corruption.

“There is a total loss of a value system in Nagaland,” says Jimomi. “Rights and wrongs have no meaning anymore; it is all distorted. Things that we held true—love and respect for people and life—have been given up in this mad race for power and status, spurred by greed.”

This power and status is easily available in Naga society today through the path of hoarding money (more money equals more glory), whether by downing a hook or deploying a crook. People prefer the latter for a simple reason—it’s easy. There is no struggle involved in production, according to lawyer Joshua Sheqi, nor accountability, and crooks to support you are easy to come by in Nagaland today. “The unemployed do not want to work; they want a government job because there is no one to hold officers accountable. This is not an ambition to have, and the lack of ambition is a dangerous thing as people like this who land up getting jobs, easily lose morality to favours,” Sheqi explains.

But as Jimomi points out, and as peace activist Gwangphun Gangmei reiterates, “rights and wrongs are mixed up.” “Naga society has developed a selfish attitude. Our sense of morality is lost in our attitude towards society—now we only think on selfish terms and it is not outsiders, but our own culture at the root of it,” he feels. This loss of the morality radar itself is lost to most. In a fast forward mode to modernity, assert almost all commentators, there is only a need to be at par with the world at this point of time.

“A sense of corruption does not exist,” notes the man behind the Entrepreneurs Associates, Neichute Doulo, which is why the type of change being witnessed in Delhi cannot happen here. Hiking rates of products unreasonably and blaming any inflation on extortion, charging an exorbitant amount as taxi or auto fare during festivals, taking a cut off every government project even if meant for the disabled, all amount to corruption, but, as Doulo puts it, since everyone is doing it, it becomes okay. And, “The more money you have, the more glory you get.” It requires no “skill set,” chips in Sheqi, not to mention the complete lack of law and order here that facilitates all sorts of crimes.

Of the many ways out, Doulo has a suggestion to start with, though one that “requires a lot of courage.” “It is easy to always find an excuse or justification to steal. When I was 15, I stole a chicken from my village and we enjoyed a great picnic. It was only after I joined Moral Re-Armament (now Initiatives of Change) that I realized Frank Buchman’s words, ‘as I am, so is my nation.’ I never thought I was corrupt in everyday life, but when I realized and then apologized to my village for stealing that chicken, it strengthened my principles in a way a hinge does a door.”