[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he comment of Nagaland Governor PB Acharya on the economic status of the people of the state has provoked the thought of the thinking community. Addressing the Niathu Sports Festival in Dimapur on Thursday, the Governor rued that Nagaland has provided rich natural resources to the people but these bestowed blessings have not benefited them. Here, one can read the comment of the Governor in two ways. Acharya’s comment could mean that the people of the state are not industrious or not creative enough that we let the blessed rich natural resources go wasted or not utilized. The Governor’s comment could also mean that the governments both the Central and the state have failed to channelize things that the rich natural resources are not made to be utilized by the people.
Again, another interesting thing the Governor mentioned was that youths from the state choose to invest their skills outside Nagaland. Acharya said the cream of the youth from the state goes outside for employment and takes up other professional services. The trend has to be stopped if we want to be developed at par with other states, however in order to achieve that we have to find the ways and the means and create more avenues for the youth to take up, the Governor added.Now, these views of the Governor cannot be taken lightly by all and sundry including the state government. Local NGOs and other concerned organisations ought to carry out a concerted movement in this regard by way of organizing awareness programmes. The sole objective of the movement should be to instill in the mindset of the people that Nagaland has everything to develop ourselves. It is rather quite late to ask as to why we continue to remain economically very weak for so long. We should realize now that we are living at the mercy of the Central government. We should also realize now that accumulating wealth from the government funded schemes is temporary. We should be learning to catch fish and stop the habit of gathering others’ catches.
