By Moa Jamir
If official enrolment data from the Government of Nagaland is to be believed, the state has become a prolific manufacturing hub, not for semiconductors or automobiles, but for Civil Engineers. In what can only be described as a collective, state-wide preoccupation with the PWD-standard blueprint, the figures from 2021–22 to 2024–25 reveal a very lopsided technical landscape.
At the undergraduate level, of the 321 students enrolled in undergraduate engineering courses within and outside the State, 156 opted for Civil Engineering, dominant 48.6% share. At the diploma level, the preference is even sharper: 655 out of 1,144 students (57.3%) in three-year multi-disciplinary diploma programmes chose Civil during the same period.
This is no statistical blip. Date from previous years also highlighted that annually a substantial number of students graduate with the technical training required to design bridges, construct highways, and plan public infrastructure in Nagaland. The outcome, one might reasonably expect, is durable infrastructure: roads that survive the monsoon, bridges that do not require routine reinforcement, and public buildings that do not demand annual “urgent repairs.”
Yet, commuters navigating cratered highways and patchwork urban roads encounter a different story. Infrastructure complaints are not seasonal; they are perennial. Roads deteriorate before liability periods end; projects miss deadlines with predictable regularity while accountability often feels diffused.
If Civil Engineering success were measured by the absence of potholes and quality concerns debated, the enthusiasm might be more restrained. To be fair, enrolment data do not diagnose execution failures. They do not identify whether weaknesses lie in project planning, tendering processes, contractor performance, site supervision, or maintenance systems. But they do confirm one fact: Nagaland is producing civil engineers at scale.
Which raises a practical question. If technical workforce power is steadily expanding, why do visible outcomes lag? The issue, perhaps, is not a shortage of trained minds but a gap in the chain that connects design to delivery- planning, procurement standards, supervision mechanisms, enforcement of quality norms, and post-construction maintenance. Producing engineers is one achievement.
Building institutions where engineering standards are upheld is another.
Meanwhile, the imbalance in course preference is striking. Automobile Engineering recorded zero enrolment at the degree level over four years. Travel & Tourism Management, despite tourism being routinely projected as a priority sector, attracted just one diploma student in the same period. Several electronics and industrial streams similarly registered negligible or no intake.
Electrical, Mechanical, Computer Science and even Fashion Design show modest but steady demand. But diversification remains limited, suggesting a technical education ecosystem heavily concentrated around one discipline.
There is nothing inherently wrong with the popularity of Civil Engineering as infrastructure is the backbone of economic growth. The concern arises only when academic trends and ground realities are fundamentally misaligned. While there is evidently heavy investment in a discipline that shapes the physical world, it remains unclear whether governance systems, oversight structures, and accountability mechanisms are evolving at a comparable pace. Ultimately, the core challenge also lies in governance and accountability.
If most roads in Nagaland lead to Civil Engineering classrooms, the public expectation is simple: those classrooms must eventually lead back to better roads. Until then, the statistics will remain impressive, but the concrete remains debatable.
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