With the ever increasing number of educated unemployed, the government of Nagaland is giving top priority in the private sector, creating job opportunities for self employment, extending financial and logistic support to the unemployed, and even declaring the year as “The Year of the Farmers.” I find all this initiatives being taken by the government of Nagaland as a positive and encouraging step. But in the ground reality the problems being faced by the local entrepreneurs are far from encouraging.
Having started a poultry farm at Dimapur, I have been supplying birds to other districts of Nagaland for the past three years, and my experience of passing through the various check gates being manned by the police personnel, are to say the least very frustrating. My boys accompanying the birds have on numerous occasions been forced to stop at the check gates for more than two hours, resulting in the deaths of tens of hundreds of birds due to asphyxiation thereby, causing huge financial loses, for reasons as strange as not possessing vehicle pollution certificate (one wonders whether it is within the purview of the police personnel to demand for such certificates). The excuses for these harassments are many, but in respecting the many honest police personnel’s, I will not go into all the details.
Here, the point I would like to make is, how long shall we go on tolerating this misdeeds of some few individuals at the cost of our livelihood. I sometimes want to just raise my hands and say enough is enough, and close down my farm. But then the question is how do I survive without being self employed. The government of Nagaland should see to it that the local entrepreneurs are encouraged at all levels of the governments, so that the year of the farmers truly turns out to be one, rather then the year of harassment for the farmers.
Dr. Sokishumo ithan
Vet-Care Veterinary Clinic
Circular Colony, Dimapur
