Matthew Wilkinson
Discussions of Nagaland rarely reach the international arena. With the exception of a few rare and regrettable instances, March 5 2015 most obviously, Nagaland has remained a blank space internationally, and a distant enigma to the Indian public. However, Al Jazeera’s article “India’s Nagaland drowning in taxes and corruption”, written by Sarita Santoshini, has again brought the state of Nagaland and the complexities within it to international consciousness. Discussing illegal taxes and extortion, Santoshimi makes some poignant, but obvious, observations about the nature of corruption in Nagaland. First of all, that local insurgent groups extort businesses and departments through violent and threatening practices, and overlap each others tax claims in doing so. This creates a huge burden on local business. Secondly, that insurgent groups claim these extortive taxes to be legitimate and necessary for the peace process. Finally, that corruption exists in the state government of Nagaland and the bureaucracy, where it is denied by some bureaucrats and ministers, and contritingly confirmed by others.
While these issues are of serious concerns to Naga communities, and on a wider scale, to the Indian public whose tax-dollars all too often find themselves in the pockets of violent extortionists in the border state, there is a bigger discussion of corruption, impunity, and the state of Nagaland that is being missed. Corruption in Nagaland is many things. The insurgents extorting transport trucks and business owners; the minister siphoning development or other funds into his or her own personal accounts, or hiding personal expenses and embezzlement in dubious budget reports; even bus drivers forced to overload busses and pick up extra passengers off-the-books to substitute for his own unpaid or inexplicably shrunken pay package. But this alone can tell us very little about the nature of corruption in Nagaland, and nothing of what Nagaland can tell us about the nature of corruption. The fact that corruption exists is a well known fact, to all except those willfully blind to the fact, and often coincidentally woefully wealthy. But the issue reaches far deeper than marketplace extortion and bribing civil servants, it involves serious reflections about the nature of governance itself in Nagaland.
Corruption is endemic, extensive, and egregious. Corruption has become embedded into the culture and politics of the state, where politics of nationalism, clan-ism, gender and cultures of impunity create a perfect storm for impunity and informality. Nationalist entities extort in the name of sovereignty, whether sincerely dedicated to the nationalist cause or not. Clan politics protect those in the ‘inner circle’ against accusations of corruption, as well as dissuading fellow clan members from speaking out against nefarious members, for fear of ostracism, or even violence. The gendered nature of power and politics in Nagaland state, entrenched in the formalization of customary institutions, and the informalization of patriarchal attitudes, continues to deny agency to half of those who live with and suffer due to endemic corruption and politics of violence. Finally, cultures of impunity - impunity in the law, from the law, in the government, impunity of the armed forces, impunity within clans, tribes, within households and families, casts violence and corruption to the shadows, obscuring the networks and personal relationships that feed on the resources and inefficiencies of the state, market, and the public. In essence, corruption is not just a problem of governance in Nagaland, it is a part of governance in Nagaland.
The outcomes of deeply embedded corruption in Nagaland are valuable for understanding how governance works in Nagaland. Corruption is lived with, in business, in local, district and state governance, in families and clans. As interactions are characterized by increasingly informal, off-the-books practices – ‘greasing hands’, paying commissions, backdoor appointments, dubious public-private contracts, questionable land and property sales, so too does the nature of governance. The divisions between the ‘state’ and the clan, tribe, family, and even the insurgents, becomes fuzzy and blurred. What is a government office if staffed and managed by one close-knit family and their supporters? What is justice when access to it is reserved for the highest bidder, or most influential? What is governance that turns a blind eye to illegal and extortive taxes by violent gangs? Corruption and the informal practices that surround it have shaped the nature of governance in Nagaland. ‘The state’ has become, and some would argue always has been, an amorphous network of personal alliances, family ties, and clan affiliations. The public are not subjects, but witnesses, and victims, to a governance model that feeds off them, rather than feeds them. Observing corruption in Nagaland through this lens, it becomes more than an issue of extortion and embezzlement. New questions are raised - questions of what is governance, who is government, and what, exactly, is corruption in an environment of informality and impunity.
This is the real value of discussing corruption in Nagaland. That it exists is not the issue, that is obvious, a truism even. Corruption is here, and likely, here to stay, at least for a long time. Corruption reconfigures roles in society – governments and people. Corruption redistributes resources – your resources. Corruption reproduces inequalities and injustices. It’s not a matter of it existing or not. It is a matter of how its existence changes, and challenges livelihoods, communities, and societies.
The article “India’s Nagaland drowning in taxes and corruption” was originally posed by aljazeera.com and can be found by clicking on: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2016/04/india-nagaland-drowning-taxes-corruption-160411062725238.html
