Just imagine from this day forward, that, you, the ordinary citizens of Nagaland State decide to deliberately cease cooperating with structural corruption and consciously stop participating in corrupt practices. This may cause the pyramid-like structure to be shaken at the top, paving the way for a social transformation process. Considering that conditions of corruption always support a climate of impunity and complicity where the rule of law is compromised, society will go through many transitions as corruption is dismantled. Corruption, after all is deeply embedded into the social-economic-political fibre.
In Nagaland State context, corruption is systemic and deeply rooted. It has two broad political and social features. First, Nagaland State is a by-product of a counter-insurgency project. The history of counter-insurgency in the world has been one of structural corruption. And, as historical subjects of counter-insurgency, the people have conformed, subjecting themselves to history by living under these conditions. So, corruption when ‘well-managed’ can contribute towards creating a false sense of ‘political stability’ within an arrested environment of injustice and inequality. However, corruption when “mismanaged” may result in political instability, chaos and conflict as the fibre breaks from within society.
The other factor is the intimate interaction between the political structure and social relations. This is largely contributed by the first, and further entrenched by the way political power is organized. This form of political power is fuelled on the narcissistic world view of ‘Might is Right’ and ‘Survival of the Fittest.’ As a result, state political power ensures that the web of systemic corruption extends beyond the formal political space into areas of social, economic, religious, and cultural relations. Invariably, corruption extends from the formal structures to the informal close-knit fabric of familial, social and cultural networks. Here, in the Naga context, the political and socio-cultural dynamics are re-enforcing, and often become blurred forming one monolithic institution operating on and perpetuating acts of corruption.
Corruption is violence that absolutely strips human dignity, erodes trust and the ability to form lasting relationships. Corruption is anti-life, the anti-thesis of development, and obstructs human and environmental endeavours. Corruption has the capacity to become systemic. Consequently, as it becomes a way of life, the norm, is very difficult to reverse. Public education, strategic planning and reframing the issues by asking all public and social institutions to look inward are required in order to effectively dismantle systemic corruption. This type of personal and collective will to act in concert can weaken and uproot corruption.
Given the history of Nagaland State and the political culture that has evolved, using strategic nonviolent means of approaches from both the top and the bottom are required to dismantle the systemic corruption. This calls for the citizens of Nagaland to reflect deeply on their situation and have the courage to discontinue being subjects of history. This is like peeling an onion, one layer at a time. Each time a layer is removed and exposed, the more will be revealed below. Neither the individual nor the collective can do this at once, yet incrementally, over time the yoke of corruption we are all labouring beneath can be weakened, and eventually removed. Only then, may it lead to what William Butler Yeats in The Second Coming described as: “The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.”
