More Road shows & Festivities!
After quite a heavy dose of government sponsored road shows and festivities in previous years, which had attracted more of flak then real appreciation from the public, the ruling NPF government has surprisingly declared 2012-2013 as the “Year of the Youth cum Tribal Festivals.” This was announced by the Governor during his Republic Day speech on January 26. According to media reports, the yearlong string of festivals will culminate in the State youth cum tribal festival at Dimapur sometime in middle December right after the annual Hornbill Festival. Announcing this in his Republic Day address, Governor of Nagaland Nikhil Kumar said the idea behind the ‘Year of the Youth’ ‘Year of Tribal Festivals’ is to promote the Nagas’ tribal festivals and also to nurture and harness the immense talents of the Naga youth. Not only that but the Governor said the ‘youth-cum-tribal festivals’ will be organized along with ‘road shows’ to be jointly hosted by the tribal ‘hohos’ and District Planning and Development Board, with the active assistance and participation of the relevant government departments. There are several reasons why the proposed move of the government does not make much sense. Over the years the present government has had several themes to showcase its policies and programmes. We have had the year of farmers, year of youth empowerment, year of capacity building, year of entrepreneurship etc. In fact till now there was nothing wrong with such innovative programmes. We are sure that many people would have benefited to some extent. But clearly this year’s theme of ‘youth-cum-tribal festival’ looks more like the government is going overboard.
Nagaland is already declared as the land of festivals and even without government initiative the various tribal bodies have been celebrating their respective festivals every year. And to culminate the year long festivities, we have the annual Hornbill Festival in December. The point is that we are already immersed in festivities and whether it is wise on the part of the government to spend more time and scarce resource in sponsoring another round of road show themed tribal festivals. There is too much of monotony and duplication. As far as the theme ‘Year of the Youth’ is concerned, there is nothing wrong in promoting the talent of our young people. However there seems to be no clear objective on how to go about it. Anyway the present government is already doing many things for the youths whether in the area of music, sports, livelihood options etc. We have several awards and incentives for musicians and sportspersons. There is the CM Corpus Fund for identifying our youths for undertaking small businesses. We also have several capacity building programmes for the youths. So it appears that the government is simply going to put old wine into new bottle and market it unless this column is proved wrong. The question also arises as to whether the government could have come up with something more relevant or important for the State to focus on for the coming year. May be a Year of Peace, Reconciliation and Unity could have been a more worthy theme. But obviously what makes good sense may not be politically correct. Again unless this column is proved wrong, the announcement of the Year of Youth-cum-Tribal Festivals is actually an astute move to prepare for Assembly Elections slated for early 2013. The road show themed festivities and promotion is just what is needed to give the platform for a sustained campaign ahead of elections. Smart move indeed!
