Mathew Rongmei
Dimapur
I stumbled upon it over a cup of tea - a video on social media where President Droupadi Murmu recalls a lesson from her childhood.
She grew up in Uparbeda village in Mayurbhanj, Odisha, in a Santhal family with very limited means. Her parents collected dry wood for cooking. As a child, she watched her father cut it with unusual care and reverence, and asked him why.
He told her - this tree gave us everything when it was alive. Fruit, flowers, air, water, shade. Even now, dry and old, it is giving us fire to cook. So before cutting, he would ask for forgiveness and bow to it.
That memory stayed with her all the way from that small village to Rashtrapati Bhavan. Even a dry piece of wood, she learned, carries the memory of a living tree.
It made me think of Nagaland.
We have always lived close to our forests, hills and springs. They give us food, water, medicine, fuel, fertile soil and livelihood. A forest is not just a collection of trees; it is what holds our villages together.
Yet we are losing it. As per the India State of Forest Report 2023, Nagaland has 12,616 sq km of forest cover - 76% of our land, one of the highest in India. But between 2013 and 2023, we lost nearly 795 sq km. We lost 125 sq km in just 2021-2023 alone.
A forest does not have to disappear to become weak. Cutting mature trees, repeated burning, unplanned construction, road cutting and erosion hollow it from within. And when the cover goes, the hill goes.
We saw it in the recent landslides in Mon, Peren, Kohima, Noklak, Tuensang, Tseminyu and Zunheboto. Heavy rain was the trigger, but bare slopes, poor drainage and cut hillsides made the damage worse.
On a mountain slope, a tree is more than timber. Its roots hold the soil. Its leaves absorb rain and protect our springs.
Nagaland needs roads, schools, hospitals and jobs. Protecting nature is not against development. The real question is how we build - a road without drainage, a hill cut without stabilisation, a spring cleared of its forest, will eventually cost us our water, homes and safety.
This is where both government and community must come together. The Forest Department can bring science, funds and planning, but much of our land is under customary ownership. Village councils, landowners, churches, women and youth groups are the real custodians.
President Murmu’s father taught her to remember what nature had already given before taking more from it.
For Nagaland, that is the question to ask in every village and every project. Before we take, do we remember everything the forest has already given us?
A tree gives more than wood. In a mountain state like ours, it gives life.
