By Imlisanen Jamir
Construction materials in Nagaland already carry GST. Five per cent on sand and stone chips. Twelve per cent on bricks. The codes are clear, the rates fixed. Yet on the road from quarry to building site, new charges appear at barriers the government has officially banned.
In May 2022 the state issued an order prohibiting unauthorised collection at check gates. District administrations were told to dismantle the barriers and police to prosecute extortion under the Penal Code. Two years later the Chamber of Commerce is still asking that the order be enforced and is threatening to take district administrations to court.
This isn’t an abstract problem. It shows up in the price of a classroom wall, the length of a culvert, the quality of a hospital floor. Every truck of sand stopped and charged off-books makes a school, a clinic or a road more expensive to build. Budgets stretch thinner. Deadlines slip. Quality suffers. What starts as a small “fee” at a bamboo gate ends as a cracked wall or a leaking roof.
Talk to contractors or transporters and you hear the same thing: time lost at each barrier, envelopes handed over, no receipt. The money is rarely hidden. It’s counted in the open, in daylight, like a routine toll. These are not rogue operators. Some wear department badges. Some belong to unions or associations. Everyone knows. Nobody acts. In the absence of enforcement, informal tolls become a system in their own right, normalised by repetition and tolerated by those meant to stop them.
The CNCCI’s statement marks a shift. Trade bodies here have usually limited themselves to petitions. This time the Confederation is openly threatening legal action against district administrations and even government staff. It’s a blunt acknowledgement that the state has rules but no will to apply them, and that business groups are prepared to step into the vacuum.
If the government responds, it will not need new legislation. It already has the order, the IPC sections and the plan for a control room where the public can report extortion anonymously. What it lacks is visible enforcement and the courage to pick a fight with its own embedded interests.
Until that happens, the price of every bag of sand or load of stone will include a hidden charge — a tax levied not by statute but by neglect. It will be built into every wall and road, invisible but paid for by everyone who uses them.
Comments can be sent to imlisanenjamir@gmail.com
