Chothazo Nienu
University of Hyderabad
If my assumption is right, and many share my assumption, the constant fight among the elected legislators is a fight for portfolios in the government. This has come about because, and I hope my assumption is right again, there are too many elected legislatures and too less portfolios. In Economics terms, the demand (for portfolios) is more than the supply (the portfolios being constant).Since the portfolios are constant, or near constant because many posts of advisors are created, what has happened is drastic competition among the legislators. If there are other means by which the legislators can be lawfully and satisfactorily employed, employed as in being engaged in other works related to the government where they can be satisfied, then the issue of fighting for portfolios won’t arise (extreme care is being repeated to give the assumption that the fight is symptomatic i.e. less portfolios and no viable means of employment outside of present governance).
Now, turn this scenario to the case of the Naga Educated Unemployed Youth. Just like legislators eligible for fixed portfolios have increased, so has the number of Naga educated youth well qualified for the ‘government’ jobs in Nagaland. The portfolios have been almost constant so has the number of posts year after year which has been almost constant. Different positions have been created to accommodatethe elected members as much as possible. The same has been the case with the educated youth in Nagaland where jobs have been created under different categories such as contract, substitute, proxy etc. to accommodate the unemployed.
Another resemblance is the high cost the elected members pay to get elected. The Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER) to Higher Education in the country is one of the lowest in Nagaland which probably is because of the high cost of higher education in the form of college fees. Elected members are expected to recover the costs of elections by getting good portfolios; so are the educated youth in Nagaland who are expected to get good jobs. Nagaland ministers are dependent on the generosity of the central government in the form of subsidies, I mean, let’s be frank, of all the states in the country, the state receives the highest proportion of revenue vis-à-vis to its budget from the central government. Unfortunately, due to fiscal prudence measures being carried out by the central government, the subsidies over the years are given with more care. In other words, the funding has relatively decreased. This puts the elected members in a tight spot. Keen readers will already perceive that scholarships given to students, which is a form of subsidy, face troubles every year. Come September and the issue of scholarship will be all over the place.
One pressure which the elected members face is that they are expected to give jobs to those who seek their help. “Where there is a will, there are 500 relatives” goes a quip. In Nagaland, that is translated as “where there is an elected member, there are 50’000 relatives.” Now, the elected members who do not have a portfolio will say, “This guy is understanding us now. We are expected to give jobs and without a portfolio, how much can an elected member do? This is why we fight for portfolios.” This view has a naïve assumption that the uneducated youth do not face any such pressure from the kith and kin to search jobs. While the elected members at least have a position of being an elected member, the educated unemployed youth do not hold such position and the pressure of not having a job and being asked to search a job for someone is like, well, it’s like being ask to lend when you need to borrow.
The elected members, while they have much work to do in their constituencies, prefer portfolios because the system in Nagaland is such that an elected member cannot do much without holding one. The educated youth can take other forms of employment however prefer government jobs because the system is such that one cannot do much without holding one. I mean, education seems to be the only functioning industry, apart from real estate, and one cannot be expected to be paid very less teaching in colleges and schools. A graduate teacher is paid as less as 3000 per month, may be even lower. It is not feasible to be employed in other employments except the government sector (remember the education cost where e.g. the father’s field has been sold to finance higher education).
Squabbles among the elected members have reached such a point that the present scenario is seen as a crisis. The case of the educated unemployed youth has been in a crisis for a long time.The already existing competition for portfolios may have been exacerbated by the entry of someone who went outside of the state and came again. There is a huge competition for jobs from youth who goes outside the state for education and come back home for employment adding to the already crowded unemployed.
There is one primary difference: While the elected members can goto Kaziranga, Niathu Resort, Chief Minister’s Residences (whichever) many times in five years, the educated unemployed cannot even go to Kohima for a protest gathering because that would be too costly. Another difference is that if sixty elected leaders are fighting for ten portfolios, that makes it a ratio of 6:1. In 2016, for the NPSC exam, 13’593 candidates applied for 73 posts making it a ratio of 186:1 which means an elected member is 31 times more likely to get a portfolio than an unemployed getting a job through NPSC which also means that we have to sympathize for the educated unemployed more than we sympathize for the elected members without a portfolio.
The issue of the educated unemployed needs more space than is currently given.
