After decades of monopoly of power and the abuse associated with it, the Congress in Nagaland finally lost at the people’s court. Awarded with a mandate, which was extended for another five years, the Naga Peoples Front (NPF) under Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio took office in 2003. And if and when the next Assembly Election takes place in early 2013, Rio’s government would have completed a decade in power. An honest appraisal should perhaps be attempted on whether there has been a transformation in the lives of people. How much has Nagaland improved? Are we better or worse than before? It will be interesting to gauge whether the present dispensation is confident of facing another election. Perhaps if election was to be held right now, this government could face a lot of public scrutiny for reasons that we are going to mention here in this column. With the kind of pothole roads and the heavy load shedding taking place right now, no government irrespective of whether it is the NPF or the Congress, will want to face the hustings. And so it can be rightly assumed that summer is not the best time to seek votes from the people. No government will want to risk losing popular support with the kind of poor infrastructure services.
In fact the government of the day should not take for granted the growing frustration and anger among the public. The latest to draw the attention of the concern authorities are young Nagas under the banner of the popular social media platform the Naga Blog. In a symbolic yet creative manner of protest, young people took to the streets of commercial hub Dimapur to plant rice saplings and fish in the mud sludge and puddles, which have become substitute of the roads that is meant to be. A few weeks back a similar protest was held against the crisis brought about by power failures. Nagas are known to be quite tolerable when it comes to dealing with the government. However there is a definite pattern of protest emerging against the incompetence, inaction and corruption in the government. And perhaps what is changing is that unlike the elders who in the past chose to remain silent, the younger generation, they are more conscious of their rights and are willing to speak out and take affirmative action. This is a silver lining in an otherwise dark horizon.
Now coming back to the response of the State government or rather its inaction, well firstly the public should have known better that this is not a good time to ‘waste’ money in repairing roads after all our politicians are preparing for election. So at best what the public can expect is a little bit of cheap makeover like the one already being done where the concern department is filing in the potholes with mud, stones and rolling them over a few times. Actually it’s better to just forget about elections anyway because as our politicians will certainly agree, we have to now forget about all the corruption, abuse of power and instead work together for an honorable settlement to the long pending Naga issue. This is the easy way out for our political classes i.e. forgive and forget. If however, things don’t go as per plan and we end up having elections, then the Naga public ought to bring our politicians to account. It’s kind of naïve but why can’t we just use the public funds judiciously? Good roads and regular supply of electricity can actually help you return to power i.e. if there is free and fair election.
