Dr. Asangba Tzüdir
‘The future is bleak’ has now become an apt reflection of the future status of the State. To draw hope has become a tiring and painful exercise that peacefully resigning provides solace. Think about ‘change’ in Nagaland…How and where would one even begin. It has become a very difficult proposition to seek the reference point even as the Naga Caravan continues to move towards a ‘bleak future.’ Even if the Churches pray to God to solve the problems of the Nagas, most probably, God might simply answer saying ‘it is your creation, don’t burden me with your problems.’ To a future that looks bleak, it nicely sums up for the concluding remarks.
The problems of total absence or the issues of presence of the status of roads and bridges would probably go on till the end of times; backdoor appointments continues through the front door; school education especially in the government sector seems to be slowly getting reduced to a ritual practice; electricity woes continues to deprive the masses of even a minimum quality life; traditional culture is getting reduced to meaningless fashion being dissociated from its value system; the economic dependency syndrome and the consumerist economy, and any hope of economic revival has been dealt by the last nail being hammered in to the coffin – the beginning of the end for Tuli paper mill is one; the citizen’s status being reduced to third ‘class’; values of love and peace and unity are replaced by selfish pursuit of ‘juice that is worth the squeeze’; discontents over lack of equitable developments have made the demand for a frontier Nagaland more vocal negating the very scope of Naga reconciliation and unity; on the political issue, the search for a permanent and lasting Naga political ‘solution’ rather seems to be dissolving; as for the Church and the convenient Naga Christians, it continues to overburden God with prayers and have ‘rightly’ gone unanswered.
Looking at all these scary trends and trajectories, one can only conclude a bleak future. Not only is it difficult to locate a point of reference to begin the process of change but equally difficult is it to seek a way out of all the problems. When a possible solution cannot be envisaged, the future can only look bleak. The state of affairs is such that the level of despondency is going to get worse on all fronts while the loss of human values and being replaced by technological and numerical values is taking the beauty out of humanity.
Tragically, on the loss of human values, over the course of human history, many great and noble ideas have come up in the civilizing process of humanity but sadly the desired power to create unconditional peace, love, harmony and togetherness through such ideas have failed because humans failed to think positively, engage productively and understand the underlying truth and the hidden realities. The resultant effect has seen a movement towards fragmentation and dispersal in all spheres of life rather than a confluence into a unified merger. Same thing seems to have happened with the Naga Caravan but with a greater degree of fragmentation. The hope that there is a way out of this conundrum and that a better tomorrow awaits is but a wishful thinking.
In a nutshell, Nagas today seem to be lost in a materially calculated idea of ‘good life’ and traversing a trajectory of life wherein all sense of existence, life and meanings finds lost. If only it was just a case of the one rotten potato, nay, the unborn child cries out from the mother’s womb – where is my future???
(Dr. Asangba Tzudir is a Freelance Research and Editing Consultant. He contributes a weekly guest editorial to The Morung Express. Comments can be mailed to asangtz@gmail.com)
