• Hornbill Festival has the potential to grow into a international standard festival. But this requires basic infrastructure, professionalism, leadership and honest financial management of resources. All this four are lacking in Nagaland. Hornbill Festival is reduced to selected family and friend circles, corrupt use of finances and just one messy disorganized affair. At this rate, it is a long way off from being the Festival of Festivals.
• The Hornbill Festival has a long way to go. It is not managed or organised well. It looks like one big party where people just eat, drink and dance. The Hornbill Festival is one event responsible for stereotyping Nagas and commodifying our culture. This will have a negative impact in the future. Some rethinking and re-conceptualizing needs to be done by people that have cultural knowledge and expertise. It should be approached with professionalism who knows what they are doing.
• The Hornbill Festival is the premier festival of Nagaland. The Festival has become a mirror of Nagaland and tourists coming from outside Nagaland form their impression through this festival. The Hornbill Festival needs to be more hygienic. Things are very dirty and there is garbage and waste. Civic sense is very poor and proper waste management training needs to be imparted. These kind of things need to be handled well by the organizers. The traffic management is very poor. It shows that the traffic police is not trained and equipped and the traffic system needs to be better planned. Basic infrastructure like water, electricity and communication should be made available during the entire course of the Festival. Last but not the least, there must be financial accountability. So many resources are invested on the festival but it should be better managed.
• Good Roads, Effective Management, Well Regulated Traffic System, 24 hours water and electricity, Timely and Correct Information and Publicity are the need for Hornbill to get better.
• Reject any practices that pertain to pagan's rituals, especially showing and drinking of wine or other pagan rites, symbols, songs.
• Make it cheaper. Everything is double the price.
• Encourage local visitors to come in traditional attire like shawls, earrings etc. With the cold weather it is quite difficult just to wear only traditional attire and incentivizes it by giving discount on the entry tickets. Same can be done for the food stalls make it compulsory for every stall to carry at least one, if not more, traditional food Item and make sure those rates are much lower than other Indian/Western style food. The stalls/shop can have a certain criteria in terms of design elements. Encourage folk music/music in local dialects to be played instead of playing western music.
• Hornbill Festival has to have some character. Just organizing for the sake of doing one’s job is not good enough. The tourism department should hire some creative thinkers and planners so that there is a new theme every year. Otherwise, the Hornbill Festival loses its charm and become boring because it is so monotonous.
• Stop assimilating culture!! Each tribe should showcase their original features!! So also the foreigners won't come to experience western culture. Please stick to original stuffs be it food on the streets, home stays etc. Also inculcate more Naga cultural sports like Javelin, spear kicking, kitido and so on. We cannot expect the world to explore our culture when we ourselves cannot even explore our own culture!!
• Improve accessibility. Promote more homestays, digital presence of the fest is terrible, improve that. Create an App and showcase itinerary in it. Create a digital fest library, Respect everyone's contribution. Don’t just listen to youth #Do what they suggest ... #hornbill
• Let it be purely festival as it is meant to be and not only a mere event.
• Hornbill festival has much more to give and can be a lot better. It needs creative planning. There is too much focus on concerts and pop culture. If there was some re-conceptualizing that focused on traditional and cultural games, activities and events, it would be a bigger hit.
• Quality control and price regulation is much needed.
• If you can also organize one day for the visitors to wear their full tradition and not western clothes, may be end of the hornbill and come up with full album or magazine and also showcases our unique culture to the world and not just India. How beautiful it will be again our ministers, leaders and officers with their traditions. Let's make it possible. I wish!
• Don't let tourists take center stage. It is about showcasing our tradition. Try to showcase every Naga tradition (I mean even those from outside Nagaland). Minimize western activities like rock contest and all, instead try to maximize activities based on our own culture. Promote local talents by giving them maximum opportunities. A music festival solely based on our own dialects thereby promoting our mother tongue. Also there is the internet, promote it on YouTube, instagram, twitter, etc. Last year hornbill festival was a flop, no promotion, no live streaming on popular platforms etc. And last but not the least, lower the prices of food items at the main venue.
• A tourist bus or online based taxi services for the visitors would be nice since the price of fares are very high.
• COVID-19 testing Kit is much greater than Hornbill festival.
• Let it be purely festival as it is meant to be and not only a mere event.
• Counter Naga price in the event
• In regards to this, maybe it is late to implement this but a short video competition on one's tribal community or practices. This would have wider outreach and representation of the different lifestyle and traditional practices that isn't always/ haven't been able to showcase during the festival. I believe media communication will also have a wider outreach (on all age groups). Also this would mean there is documentation, so it's not lost or forgotten after 10 days (Hornbill).
• For the hornbill festival to be inclusive and representative of Naga culture is to remove all non Naga items and events.
• Hi. I'm not quite certain if this fits the criteria. But since the Morung of the Ao and another tribe's (I've gotten which it was), unfortunately, got burnt down, a thought occurred to me. What if the process of building the morung was showcased during the festive period, as a way of expressing the traditional method of building it. It doesn't necessarily have to take up the whole 10 days to build it, as I believe it won't take much days for completion. Also, a prior photograph of the morung could be presented on a sign board with all the necessary practices mentioned along with the cause of the damage. The traditional display by the particular community could still be present alongside construction. Just a humble suggestion.
• Conduct it online.
