N Thomas Lotha
Ex MLA
Another election has just been concluded and new government installed with few more new faces in Nagaland Legislative Assembly.
I admire their unbeatable fighting spirit with confidence and ambition to get to where they all are. Congratulations to them and wishing them all great success with their new responsibilities.
It is sincerely opine that for maintaining a healthy democratic form of governance in the state, it is paramount to have strong opposition in the House of the people.
This present House is going to tackle various important issues like, the long pending Naga solution, tricky ULB election, complex Delimitation process and many more socio-political related issues.
Therefore, it is suggested to do away the concept of the opposition less government in Nagaland.
A democratic government such as our State Nagaland is accountable to the people who elect the Ministers and MLAs.
Classical and contemporary understandings of government emphasize the existence of the socio-political structures and processes that authoritatively determined the allocation of societal value.
It is understood that, every society is made up of economic, political, culture, religious and professional groups. So just to remind ourselves those elected leaders have fundamental duties.
The activities of these groups are managed in an institutionalised system, in which Legislatures are in charge of formulating policies, implementing such policies and rendering advice to government of the day as well as relevant suggestions for determining the destiny of the electorates and every citizen of the state.
If ever the Members of Nagaland Legislative Assembly needed the most, with the blessed wisdom from above, "Tis Now, the 14th house for the Nagas of Nagaland.
Over the decades, there has been a recurrent and sustained argument that the Nagaland state is underperforming state due to lack of state capacity to deal with the contemporary complexities of governance, interference of various anti social elements, and due to various obvious reasons, vis-a-vis security of life and property, a weak system of rule of law, lack of accountability and transparency, due to unabated corruption, nepotism and unbalanced governance system in the state.
Further, in view of the less effective determined visionary role of the elected leaderships, it is also analysed as part of the key factors in revenue starved state like Nagaland.
My experience after several years of association with the political system in Nagaland, what i have observed is that, short-sighted hunger for short term monetary benefits of the Naga electorates during election is a matter of concerned, The political blindness of the society can be classified into two types. The first group can be defined as total blindness for the obvious reasons, and second, so called elite Naga group can be classified as partial blindness, which gives the people limited visibility due to the lack of far sightedness, they may see and understand the situation, but with ill intended hypocrite vagueness.
It is a matter of fact that surviving in such society becomes challenging and it's not easy.
The phenomenon of such social blindness can describe those who live not on their own calculation and understandings, but instead follow the command and control of those they consider as their big Hunchos in political power circulation system.
The danger here is, any players placed in more privileged position with their deep pockets, can easily exploit the weakness of the society, hijack the governance system in the state with their monetary influence and well organized private Armies in the game.
Nevertheless, the lesson we learn from King Solomon who said at the end, all those hopes and goals are nothing more than smoke. They don't last. Consequently however mighty or rich one may be, if despise the law of governance and willfully conforms with devilish elements that works against the helpless citizens will surely invite the same seven bowls consisting of judgements full of wraths of the living God sooner or later.
