Tovitho Nyusou
‘Nagaland’ - my beautiful State where majority of the people are Christians. Nagaland is rich in flora and fauna. Different varieties of species of plants and animals can be found in my beautiful state. Life styles of people in Nagaland are complicated to other state. My state is small comparing to other state but our ways of living is so advanced, we the Nagas follow western style of living.
Nagaland being under India control, we cannot do our wish or follow our own steps. Lately Nagaland have sign peace accord on August 3, 2015 and I’m hoping for a bright future for my state. Being a citizen of Nagaland, it’s my responsibility to make plans for my state. In a sense, how to make my state beautiful, develop and compete with other states. Being a citizen of Nagaland, we don’t want someone to rule or control over us in a sense we don’t want someone to rule or control of India. If my state gets independent, it will be good news for us because we will open our mind, thinking and the thought and plans how to make it work to be a responsible country.
My views about my future planning for Nagaland are full of wishes and beautiful thoughts. A part of Nagaland State Human Development should mainly focus on key areas of peace, population stabilization, national and international connectivity, sustainable agriculture, infrastructure and action oriented missions. I visualized a future Nagaland as ‘An evergreen State; the Switzerland of the east.’ Assessing our strength and weakness and the looming threats at the base of the plans, the pattern of development becomes central to this vision document and thereby the need to conceptualize the term development within our context. This brings us to the key areas of development and how we want to develop. As a footnote, a tragedy to development is that, the state general election is taken as the parameter of development and the grand promises fails to go beyond lip servicing and thereby the ideas of development fails to progress.
Now, within the context of our state, a facet of the idea of development should necessarily include restricting and ramping. Keeping in mind the looming climate of political uncertainty, the present Nagaland Government Political set up is in need of restricting. Further, certain sectors like the Nagaland State Transport (NST) and the kind of service it provides calls for serious deliberation or the lines of privatization.
Education as a marker of any civilized society is another sector that requires through systems revamp and work towards building a system that will bring out the best in every teacher making effective use of human resources towards producing quality and qualified students. We may talk about development and its associated patterns but without quality education in place economic dependency syndrome jutted by the increasing number of educated unemployed/unemployable will make matters worse leading to increased corruption and illegal activities in the state.
One of the strengths of Nagaland lies in her natural resources but currently natural resources which cannot be replaced especially the Non-renewable resources are plundered at will greatly. Sadly the policies regarding the extraction of natural resources are inadequate thereby the economic performance remain not only poor but has opened the window towards for reaching detrimental consequences. This calls for proper investment policies especially on revenue generation with focus on shifting the pattern of economic development towards manufacturing and service sectors.
Industrialization of both small and big industries is another major concern for economic development. The revival of Tuli Paper Mill is an urgent necessity if Nagaland is to revive economy. Another bid challenge to economic development comes from road and connectivity. Proper roads and connectivity ate vital to economic development. Proper roads and connectivity are viable transport system of a lifeline.
Well, for all the failed vision, plans and policies, Nagaland is in urgent need of a proper policy transforming visions and developing model into reality. Nagaland should chart out a pragmatic vision plan and not any grand dream.
The writer is a Class XII student of Immanuel College, Dimapur
