Dr Asangba Tzüdir
The Nagaland Youth Summit which concluded recently culminated in some recommendations based on three paramount themes which are critical to the growth and development of our state. The summit poignantly stressed on the need for Good Governance, Entrepreneurship and Skills Building, themes that are intricately connected. In tune, Mr. Union Finance Minister, Arun Jaitley’s 1700 crore allocation for setting up skill development institutions with the plan to train one crore youths on various skills across the country prognosticates well for our state that is slowly realizing the need for skills development along with proper education. The growth and wholesome development requires the presence of a viable system of governance that gives due emphasis on human resources development, entrepreneurship and skills building towards human and economic development.
With a ‘failing’ government in place, that seems to have lost all sense and sights of governance, it calls for a total refurbishing of the system of governance and one that stresses on participatory governance keeping in mind the basic political right of equal concern and respect by the state towards each individual citizen as an equal moral worth as expressed by Ronald Dworkin. And the state being the provider and guarantor of life should act upon the morally obligated duty of good governance.
First and foremost, for sound governance sound policies of governance mandated by the ‘wills’ of the general public needs to be in place and this calls for participatory and a democratically inclusive policy making processes and not just simply govern for the sake of governing. Our economy will never progress without participatory governance. Only through participatory governance, a sense of belongingness can be instilled in the minds of the general public which will then generate a sense of responsibility.
Again, another problem is that, with excess employment in the govt. sector and rising number of educated unemployed, so do uneducated unemployable, if our system of education is not does not provide life skills, then Nagas will be confronted by an unrealized reality of slowly becoming redundant beings in today’s challenging and fast evolving world. Thereby, skilled education will be preferred to meet the challenges ahead and to sustain life. Today, education sans skill and specialization is rather archaic. Hence, life skills development is the only way out. We are crippled by a culture of undeserved eating and irresponsibility besides the lack of skills. A simple case in point, if we look at any road construction or any building construction we hardly see any Naga engaged in the construction work and it is in this light that beyond the culture of eating without working, work ethics need to be developed. It is in this spirit, the recommendation of the Nagaland Youth Summit to declare the year 2016 as the year of construction workers holds much importance and relevance. As of now, the mosquito analogy aptly defines the Naga condition wherein and we freely let them suck our blood not knowing that our immune system is slowly getting drained.
Naga youths are slowly opening their vision towards entrepreneurship and it is here that the Government needs to create more avenues where the youths can acquire proper skill training especially entrepreneurial skills. This will lead to an increase in human capital along with human resource development. We can no longer afford to continue with this govt. job dependency syndrome. There is also an urgent need to shed the attitudinal trend of encoding oneself within a certain ‘standardized’ class mimicking the west way of ‘wearing ten gallon hats’ and rather develop a work culture.
In brief, the goal of envisaging what can possibly be considered as the ‘good life’ for the Nagas begins with owning responsibility with a sense of direction from every section starting from the government.
(Dr. Asangba Tzüdir is an Editor with Heritage Publishing House. He contributes a weekly guest editorial to the Morung Express. Comments can be mailed to asangtz@gmail.com)
