The recent PDA Cabinet decision to spread the premier State’s gala - ‘The Hornbill Festival’ to all districts of Nagaland can be considered a major step towards harnessing rich socio-cultural heritage of the Nagas in a productive way. The decision, more or less, was received positively by all stakeholders who over the years have called for such move.
The move can also be viewed a significant measure to correct apparent schism and assorted disparities that exist in the State when assessed through the prism of core-periphery development model – the so-called 'advanced core' and a 'less developed periphery,’ either by design or default.
It also aligns with the Union Government’s recent initiatives for more focused development in the North East Region (NER) and can be construed as advancing opportunities instead of simply identifying the potentials. Two such initiatives are worth mentioning.
The outlining five sectors to be developed in mission mode basis in NER – horticulture, tourism, food processing, bamboo-based handicrafts and medium scale industries with focus on 'Make in North-East'. The core sectors were identified by The NITI Forum for Northeast, formed last December and tasked “to identify various constraints on the way of accelerated, inclusive and sustainable economic growth in the North East Region of the country and to recommend suitable interventions for addressing identified constraints.”
Concurrently, it should be taken alongside another initiative approved by Centre in December 2017 – The North East Special Infrastructure Development Scheme (NESIDS). The scheme, among other things, aims to cover the social sectors namely health and education and the fund under the scheme will be distributed among eight North Eastern States on the basis of well-defined criteria on certain parameters e.g. Area, Population, Human Development Index, Road density etc. The State of Nagaland has 10.8% share of the fund.
The NER is often bracketed as a region whose immense potentialities are not efficiently harnessed leading to possible decadence. Nagaland is no exception to this phenomenon. The decision to diversify the Hornbill Festival, thus, has immense potential to boost the economy, as both funds and possibly tourists trickle down from the ‘core’ to the ‘periphery.’
In order to unlock these potentialities, the government must create avenues for seamless transition from one sphere to another. As the festival spreads to the peripheries, the initiative must not be limited to cultural fanfare and festivity but augmented with capacity building in other areas as well ensuring inclusivity of each stakeholder.
As with any other issue, marginalisation of any nature holds cultural, political as well as socio-economic significance for the state. As a state which itself is designated as a periphery in the larger developmental narrative of India, the policy makers should do well to avoid repeating the same and begin prioritising neglected areas before polarisation becomes unmanageable.
At the basic level, it should start with inclusivity and ensuring mobility of the locals as well as the visitors. Time is ripe for the government to adopt the concept of 'responsibility to distant geographies' and ‘marginalised’ to bring about a cohesive developmental trajectory in the State. Else, it would be a wasted opportunity leading to possible decadence of inherent potentialities and the road to an ‘inclusive, progressive and self-sustaining economy,’ will encounter a dead-end before the journey has even begun.
