“Is Nagaland a Failed State?” Yes! Now What?

Dr. K. Hoshi has written an article titled, “Is Nagaland a failed state?” It has appeared in the November 23, 2016 issue of The Morung Express, the Nagaland Post, and the Eastern Mirror. I found the article as articulate, insightful, and concise an analysis of the serious problems of Nagaland as I’ve read. He structured the article in labeled parts, such as Political, Administrative, etc., and tries his best to summarize problems clearly that are very complicated. I recommend the article to everyone. But as impressed as I was with the body of his article, I was as equally disappointed with his “Conclusion,” and although there are many technical issues to discuss about the body of his article (for instance, why does he blame immigrants for controlling “80-90% of the State’s market economy,” when there are, according to him, “over 70,000 educated unemployed” registered in the state and over 100,000 unregistered? Why do the immigrants succeed, where the Nagas do not?), but his conclusion is disturbing and incomprehensible enough to me to deserve my full attention here. Here are the relevant words of his conclusion: “Statehood experiment has failed....The time has come for Nagas for serious appraisal. The need to review statehood in its entirety has become imperative. Nagas need serious parliamentarians who will have the honesty and courage to speak on the sovereign right of Nagaland on the floor of NLA. Nagaland’s parliamentarians have a great deal of lesson to learn from the parliamentarians of Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania who had the courage to declare their independence on the floor of parliaments in the early 1990s. Their lone rallying point was that, they were independent prior to Soviet annexation in WWII. Nagas too have our own history of independence that precedes India’s independence. Naga nationalists blamed statehood as the greatest impediment to sovereign Nagaland. Needless to say the only role the State parliamentarians can play to end Naga political problem is for them to shun the failed experiment of statehood.” So in the end, after all of Dr. Hoshi’s analysis, his conclusion is that the only solution is the rejection of the state and the establishment of a sovereign Naga nation. I have argued against that solution in a number of articles (see, for example, The Morung Express on April 4, October 31, and November 7, 2016), arguing each time that my rejection of this solution is not because I think the Nagas don’t deserve a sovereign nation (I in fact take no position on that critical point), but because I have every reason to believe that the government of India (hereinafter GoI) will not, CANNOT, grant the Nagas a sovereign nation. I also state that, not if, but when the details of the Framework Agreement of August 3, 2015 finally are revealed, after nearly 20 years of negotiating, and do not offer the Nagas a sovereign nation, the Naga rejection of any offers made, with a continuation of a demand for a sovereign nation, will lead the GoI, through its military, to crush the Naga people. That is my prediction. But I do not want to deal with my prediction here. I do, however, want to point out some things to Dr. Hoshi, and ask him a question or two. The first thing I want to point out is the false comparison between the Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania and Nagaland, not in the historical background, which is analogous, but in the reality on the ground (something I insist on in almost all my articles. The key point is never the historical analogies, the moral or political arguments from the past, even the views that God is on the side of the Nagas. The only thing that matters are the facts on the ground, that is, reality. All nationalists owe it to their fellow Nagas to deal with the real world, as it is, not with the world as it should be or as they wish it to be). Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are members of NATO! There are 28 members of NATO and all are pledged to come to the rescue of any of their member that is attacked. Nagaland is not, nor will it be, a member of any similar military organization. If the Nagas do anything, affirmatively, or even passively, such as ahimsa, nonviolent non-cooperation, the GoI will view the Nagas as traitors and will treat them accordingly. The world will express all sorts of words of sympathy for the Nagas, and my country, the United States, will encourage the GoI to use only necessary force to maintain the integrity of its nation and avoid atrocities, but no country will come to the rescue of Nagaland. None. Now that Donald Trump is president-elect, even Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are afraid of Russia. Each of their countries have a substantial group of citizens who speak Russian and are sympathetic to Russia, and Trump has threatened to pull out of NATO if the other members don’t pay more of its costs. If the USA pulls out, there are serious questions whether the other members will have the will to stand up to Russia if they go into the Baltic states. After all, the world stood by when Russia recently took over Crimea and the eastern part of the Ukraine. The focus must be on reality, always reality. But forget for a moment my pessimistic views on the consequences of trying to break away from India. Let us presume for a moment that it were possible for the Nagas to succeed in getting a sovereign nation. How many of the problems that Dr. Hoshi discusses so articulately in the body of his article would be resolved. I predict that none would. I think think that Hoshi’s analysis of corruption in Nagaland is weak. He states that corruption, “is the direct by-product of corrupt elections.” I disagree with that. That is a simplistic view of the issues involved. There is corruption in all, or nearly all, states in India, but certain states, for instance Tamil Nadu, are prosperous. I do not think the problem are the elections. I have stated in previous articles that the MLA are controlled by the corrupt and violent NSCN(IM), and that all corruption leads back to that group, not just in Nagaland, but in Manipur and elsewhere. That its hold on the MLA and all others is based not just on illegal payoffs, but also on coercion and intimidation. That the NSCN(IM) is the only organization that has their own standing army, in Camp Hebron. The group is more powerful than the state government, and all corruption is allowed only with the permission of the group. From the MLA, all further corruption goes downward, to the state bureaucrats, the police, the contractors, who get all the money to fix infrastructure which never gets fixed. (I will be shocked if the four-lane Dimapur-to-Kohima road ever gets fixed. All the photos now in the papers of the contractors and state ministers standing on parts of the road under construction is enough to make you laugh. How many years have you heard that that road, the most important one in Nagaland, will be repaired?) If Nagaland became a nation, the only thing that would change would be that all the oil and other minerals under Naga soil would be at the complete disposal of the corrupt and violent people who now have their hands around the throats of the Nagas. Does Hoshi actually feel that all those hundreds, even thousands, of Nagas who benefit from the corruption will voluntarily give up their corruption because the state were now a sovereign country? Does he think that the police will stop demanding bribes, or that the gangs going around extorting money from businesses threatening violence, in the name of nationalism, will stop doing so? Will, all of a sudden, the illegal immigrants stop coming or the tens of thousands of unemployed find jobs? Where does Hoshi get his optimism that things will be any better Things would not, in my opinion, be better. But more importantly, as I said in my very first article on the subject, on April 4, 2016 in the Morung Express, the solution given when confronted with all the problems in Nagaland is always a sovereign nation for the Nagas. I have felt from the beginning, as I still feel now, that this “solution” is an excuse not to do the hard and dangerous work of addressing the endemic corruption that makes Nagas so miserable. This state is not run by the rule of law, as any civilized state should be; it’s a state run by men, men with guns, and willing to use them. A future nation, which will not happen in any case, is still an excuse not to do the work that is possible, the work of building Nagaland into a prosperous and honest state.

(Robert A Silverstein is from Albany, New York. He can be contacted at rsilverstein@nycap.rr.com)