Nagaland Newspaper outreach: a challenge

An eighty-year-old man in Tuensang district proudly displays an old newspaper kept in an old wooden trunk and points to a photo of a cultural troupe gracing the front page of a local daily. “See see, this young man with the spear and matching headgear. He is my grandson. He was part of the cultural dance troupe from our village which participated in the big Hornbill Festival last year. They brought me this paper for free all the way from Kohima!” said the illiterate old man who had never glanced at a paper before.

Photos of singers, Hollywood and Bollywood actresses from pages of newspapers can be seen adorning the walls of thatch or wooden houses in the interior parts of Eastern Nagaland.

Newspapers have come a long way here, as people of the four Eastern districts are actually getting to read news dailies the same day over late tea or early dinner. This maybe a bit late, but couple of years back, the breakfast news enjoyed daily by readers in the State capital Kohima or Dimapur reached the Eastern districts only the next day, providing readers with stale news.

Time zones are not different, but the Nagaland-based dailies were then transported via NST night super buses. With the introduction of daily Tata Sumo taxi services from Dimapur to all Eastern districts, the dailies now reach the Eastern district headquarters the same afternoon or evening.   

The papers are sold at Rs. 5 per copy in the district headquarters of Mon, Tuensang, Longleng and Kiphire. “Yes, now we get to read the papers the same day, but we wish we could read the papers early in the morning with the smell of fresh print on them,” said a school teacher posted in a remote school in Tuensang district.

“If the road condition between Chantongya in Mokokchung district and Longleng is good, then the papers can reach by 2:00 pm. But right now, though the Chantongya-Longleng stretch is only 34 km, it takes 3 hours to cover this stretch due to the deplorable road condition,” said Akai Angh, a craftsman based in Longleng town.

However, most of the interior villages in these four districts still do not have access to newspapers. The only way to get a glimpse of a newspaper for these villagers is whenever some government officials, journalists or relatives bring newspapers along with them during visits to their villages.

With the distance between Kohima or Dimapur and the Eastern districts not narrowing down due to “deplorable” road conditions, some people from the Eastern districts have suggested that the only way they can read the papers in the morning is for newspaper houses to arrange simultaneous publication in one of the Eastern district headquarters. Till such time, the ambitious ‘Foothill Road project’ seems the only solution for the Eastern Nagas to read news while still hot.