Yanpvuo Kikon
Entrepreneur and Consultant
For decades, the eastern districts of Nagaland have been relegated to the periphery, enduring systemic neglect and a chronic lack of development. While political rhetoric and tribal dynamics have dominated the discourse, a crucial truth remains: if implemented with sincerity and a firm stand against corruption and nepotism, Eastern Nagaland (or Frontier Nagaland) possesses the potential not just to catch up, but to far surpass its western counterparts like Kohima and Mokokchung.
Why is this possible? Because the rest of Nagaland, despite its head start, remains trapped in a cycle of failure. We still struggle to extract and purify water from our own rivers to distribute to our citizens. Our roads are deplorable. Our municipalities lack basic infrastructure—proper building codes, functional drainage, and consistent street lighting. The core mandate of governance—providing a functional foundation for its citizens—remains unfulfilled.
This foundational failure has cascading consequences. Despite being blessed with powerful rivers, we have failed to tap our immense hydroelectric potential, leaving us dependent on purchasing power from outside the state. The government then fails to recover dues from consumers, creating a perpetual fiscal leak. Good roads, reliable electricity, and skilled local labor are the prerequisites for industry. Their absence, compounded by land issues and a debilitating social obsession with government jobs, has strangled industrial growth. Consequently, Nagaland remains almost entirely dependent on the Indian taxpayer for survival. Our annual expenditure hovers around ₹27,000 crore—gobbled up primarily by salaries—while our internal GST revenue generation is a paltry ₹1,000 crore.
This is the legacy of a combination of societal priorities and poor governance. Even after 50 years of statehood, local entrepreneurs are harassed by multiple taxation systems, while public funds meant for collective development are systematically diverted to private properties where this boomer corruption trend is continuing even with younger millennial officers.
Eastern Nagaland’s Blueprint for a New Future:
This is the model Eastern Nagaland must reject. To build a truly progressive society, its leadership must look squarely at these failures and strategize priorities not around how to simply spend money, but on how to invest in transformative institutional reforms. The goal must be self-reliance.
The path forward lies in a fundamental shift in mindset:
1. From Consumption to Investment: Stop viewing funds as a means to create government dependents. Instead, channel them into building the hard infrastructure (roads, power) and soft infrastructure (institutions) that enable wealth creation.
2. From Job-Seeking to Job-Creating: Break the glorification of government employment. The focus must shift to creating an ecosystem where entrepreneurship and private enterprise can flourish, generating sustainable livelihoods and reducing dependency on central funds.
3. From Skepticism to Strategic Innovation: Invest heavily in technical and vocational education. This is not just about schooling; it's about driving innovation, building a skilled local workforce, and creating the human capital necessary to attract sustainable industries which can open more trade opportunities with Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia and beyond.
There will always be cynics who cling to the narratives of the past. But this is a historic moment. The opportunity is not just to replicate a broken model, but to build a new, better future from the ground up. For the people of Eastern Nagaland, the path to prosperity is clear: learn from the failures of the past, and build a system that guarantees success for the future.
