Nagaland is a place where it does not need pesticides or insecticides because its inhabitants consume everything that flies and crawls except airplanes and automobiles. With this available ability Nagas can be trained to contain the existing corruption virus.
Fraud and bribery are alien to Nagas because they understand them as necessary evils in order to gain status in society. Besides, public funds mean nobody’s: a single factor that keeps the populace under-developed and impoverished and developmental works executed cosmetically.
Evil doers and fraudsters easily go unpunished in Nagaland because all frauds committed are blamed on a devil or an alcohol inside them and that clearly demonstrates our extreme attitude of indifference to wrong things happening around us. Devil does not exist. The only devil can be a human being. High time culprits are booked and punished then we shall see peace and progress in the State.
Till today no Chief Minister had any roadmap for various departments so the only random road that is followed by him and his Ministerial colleagues is the path of ‘piece meal exercises’ and no piece meal exercises can lead the state to progress except injudicious use of public funds.
There is no statistics more generous and prosperous than ours because according to record everything is near surplus. For instance, Nagaland Government has irrigated more than the area of the State while the remaining areas not covered by it are filled with fisheries and numerous other ghost projects. Above all, the most accommodative statistics is the voters list because it includes zerox copies of the living and the dead.
Nagas talk so much about popularization of its culture but the products are so costly that it is like buying a rare antique so much so it will soon go extinct.
Fairs and festivals like Durga-pooja and Dewali bring joy to customers because of discounts on articles and goods but Naga festival means price escalation and exceptional business like the Hornbill festival. Don’t blame the Hornbill bird but blame the bills that get horns.
Our forests are so generous that it gives us everything for free but we make its gifts the costliest. This is nothing but rape of nature. Vegetable sellers might also be termed as a kind of ‘extortionists’ because they not only rob the forest but also fleece every customer mercilessly. It is high time Town councils wake up and regulates them.
Extortionists feel shy to beg so they rob, demand or extort in the name of Church fund or Christmas celebration etc.
During election, some voters demand money in lieu of their votes for expenses of maternity as if the candidate has impregnated their wives.
Everyone wants easy and comfortable life but no one dares to work and so the method employed is specialize in creating false bills and fraudulent withdrawals or resort to threat device.
If standard of education is measured only by divisions then we need to open a special school/college exclusively for third division holders because no schools/colleges want to give them admission. There should be only first and second divisions while third divisions must be declared failed. In point of fact, success of an individual does not depend on divisions but on his/her deep sense of responsibility in life.
Education and Roads are commodities of great social importance which should never be turned into business departments. Turning them so is nothing short of deliberate societal suicide. Right approach to them brings prosperity and joy to its citizens.
There are ‘extraordinary’ employees who never retire because they keep on tampering their date of births. But for getting old age pension a strong healthy man of forty is ready to shrunken himself by adding thirty years more to his age to avail an old age pension.
Efficiency and to be at the place of posting is demanded of the field officials posted in the interior areas but unfortunately these officials are made to waste their precious hours on the roads or in the garages repairing their near rotten official vehicles. It is high time the best of vehicles and incentives are given to such employees and demand the best out of them and we will see changes coming.
Nagas are so obsessed with ‘local’ and ‘non-local’ that even King Solomon will fail to distinguish non-local chickens and vegetables already branded as locals. One understands the absurdity only by its exorbitant prices.
Nagaland is a land of tribes but the existence of the other is yet to be noticed for meaningful co-existence. What exists is tribalism nurtured by unfounded suspicion and nepotism.
Nagaland is branded as Christian dominated state and we see that only by the mushrooming number of churches and huge attendance on Sundays. But regrettably office and public life from Monday to Saturday is free for all making us pure hypocrites.
Hornbill festival is the biggest Naga festival but when a mere hornbill feather is costing not less than a five hundred rupee and that too the revered bird almost extinct from our land hence the festival be better changed to duck or chicken festival.
A Naga politician may not be able to ‘turn water into wine’ but certainly some of them have turned an illiterate into an LDA; someone who has never seen a typewriter, a typist; and an Arts student into a junior engineer fortunately it was not a medicine or ENT doctor.
Nagaland is a place for ‘nonsense’ because if you are sensible, instead of acknowledging your wisdom, you are branded as nonsense. If you correct your Boss, you will be reprimanded for being a threat to public interest. This attitude is one of the primary causes for impotency of departments.
Israelites made a blunder when their impatience led them to smelt their ornaments into a golden calf for worship. The blunder Nagas make is choosing incorrigible children to become their reverends.
There is plenty of money in the state; the only problem is scarcity of change because it is heard only in crores on radio and on newspapers. It is high time, we start thinking and working coin for every coin worth for benefit of everyone.
A church is not only a moral house but deals in theology and scripture. These two subjects are most delicate, serious and vital that if misinterpreted can be chaotic. Naga’s approaches to these are so shallow that its effect can be seen in the scarcity of biblical values in our Christian dominated society despite almost a century and a half of propagating the faith. The fact is lack of standard theologates with degree in philosophy as a necessary qualification to study theology has led to shallow teaching and interpretation.
Am told that Sikkimese people are very simple, honest and law abiding citizens and they are not Christians so if they are to be Christianized by a Naga missionary what will he preach there when his own people back home are so filthy in propriety and Christian values are so down-graded including the churches. The task today is not to send ten thousand missionaries outside but clean our house first. The need is re-evangelization of the State with the correct Christianity.
Our illiterate forefathers practiced ‘animism’ but valued honesty, respect, hard work and discipline religiously. Today we have embraced Christianity and literate, as well, and religiously practice dishonesty, deceit, selfishness and fraud. That makes us first class civilized rogues from top to the last man in the village.
Smokers, Drinkers or a pan chewer are despised as sinners, according to Naga Christians; on the contrary the church does not preach against false bills, dishonesty in offices or public life that is plaguing our society which makes the churches accomplices of these crimes.
Nagaland is the easiest launch-pad on earth to heaven because here even if one lives an evil and corrupt life, if one accepts Jesus as ones personal savior, on the brink of death, one will be saved. A false interpretation of the two thieves crucified along with Jesus. Christianity is a calling to a righteous and just life minute by minute, hour by hour and, day-in and day-out.
If you are an honest citizen and truly concern in the progress of your society then be critical of your society especially the government of the day. This is the only definition of what patriotism is all about and the righteous life that Jesus is crying out to all of us.
Jonas Yanthan,
(yanthanjonas@gmail.com)