Imlisanen Jamir
Sometime in the second week of May, Dimapur's municipal politics divided itself neatly into two camps and retreated from the city it was supposed to govern. The dissenting NPF councillors checked into a resort in Guwahati. The Chairperson's loyalists settled into a hotel in Chümoukedima. Between them, they had filed a no-confidence motion, received show-cause notices, and generated enough political paperwork to suggest that something of great consequence was being contested. In a sense it was, though not the consequence either camp had in mind.
On Monday, while the councillors remained encamped outside the state, Nagaland's Chief Secretary Sentiyanger Imchen arrived in Dimapur and did what the city's elected municipal representatives had not done for some time: he walked around it. He inspected Nagarjan Police Point, Vilhume, S.M. Colony, the Burma Camp area near Narkul Turning, and the DMC dumping site at Sunrise Colony. What he found was not a city being governed. He found drains blocked with plastic waste, encroachments along drainage channels, garbage trucks too poorly maintained to collect garbage, and a dumping site approaching saturation because nobody had thought to separate biodegradable from non-biodegradable waste. He directed that strainers be installed in upstream nalas. He said segregation at household level must begin without delay. He expressed dissatisfaction with the state of municipal services. He said the government would issue orders shortly.
On Wednesday, the councillors came home. They issued a joint statement announcing unconditional reconciliation, credited the Chief Minister's visionary leadership, and reiterated their commitment to good governance, accountability, and transparency in the functioning of the DMC. The floor test scheduled for May 22 was cancelled. The crisis, as they defined it, was over.
The difficulty is that the crisis Imchen documented on Monday did not begin last week and will not end with a joint statement. The drains did not block themselves during the trust vote drama. The garbage trucks did not fall into disrepair while the councillors were in Guwahati. The dumping site did not approach saturation in the fortnight that municipal politics consumed itself in a hotel and a resort. These were conditions that had been accumulating for years, in plain sight, in a city whose elected municipal council exists precisely to prevent them. The no-confidence motion asked whether the Chairperson retained the confidence of his councillors. The Chief Secretary's tour asked, without quite using the words, whether the DMC retained the confidence of Dimapur.
The councillors have reconciled and returned to work. The drains are still there, waiting.
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