Z. Lohe
I love to watch Discovery/National Geographic channels in my TV specially African Wildlife century. Watching these channels, I come to know the habits of the animals and the birds shown and understand how they cohabitate in their natural kingdom. Watching these channels, I see all the activities of each of the animals and birds shown. Watching these channels, I see how the gullible and the weaker category of animals remain to be the prey of powerful cannibals all the time and on all seasons. Watching over these channels, it is interesting to understand the characteristics of those animals and birds in the zoo.
Life in the African zoo is that the weak and the gullible section has hardly any peace as they live under constant life threat. The survival of stronger animals is dependent on the weaker section. When an animal is killed and eaten by lion, the leftover will be eaten by wolves and jackals. If carcass is left, the vultures and crocodiles come to finish it. This is always the natural process of how the parasitic animals make a living in their lawless world.
The two laws that everyone is bound to follow in the African wildlife century are that one is born to be eaten as prey of the other and the other is survival of the fittest.Like anyone does, I too have been watching over the situations in Nagaland over the years. Similar to that of Africa’s animal kingdom, lawlessness is the law in Nagaland. The present day system of over-governance in Nagaland is exactly similar to that of wildlife in African reserved forest. Have introspection at how the process of Assembly elections began and ended in the land of Christians with the slogan ‘Nagaland for Christ’.
When a human becomes totally bereft of particularly three essential and basic ethics as the Shame, the Fear and the Taboo, one becomes less than human. When election campaign tremor started and picked up the tempo, the Christians in Nagaland used to change drastically from shame to shamelessness, from fear to fearlessness and from sense to senselessness and ruthlessness. During peak season of campaign, I could meet fewer human beings as the rest become animals. Those human animals with cannibalism characteristics become like hungry lions looking for prey. These human animals go to any extent to coerce, to cheat and to threat so as to extort as much amount of money as one can from more than one candidate or from more than an agent of a candidate. During this season, any candidate is made to become like an antelope fully surrounded by hungry lions. The candidate had no escape route, the only passage is to lubricate the palms of hungry lions, to prostrate and beg at the cost of leadership dignity and to promise anything under heaven in the face of distrust phobia. To be brief, let this be Scene 1 to be filmed and telecast.
Just returned from war to form new ministry for those who managed to buy mandate and with two great jetlag imperatives: to serve with zeal and to clear the huge financial backlog. In the process, the zeal to serve is overtaken by the burden of compounding 10% interest of loan availed and the property mortgages. The chair of power that everyone sought after is found to be thorny and it does not give expected amount of comfort to the one who sits on it. Post election the human animals are now just turned into angels. They continue to swarm the residence and the office of their VIP with each of them having endless stories of how unconditional was their support, how one worked without sleep and food and how one had spent from his saving without taking a paisa from his candidate and so on. Now the VIP had no option but to dole out whatever he can to please his angels in recognition of their sacrifices, and in certain cases he receives more curses than thanks in return.
And in the melee, when funds from Delhi come for the general public are hijacked with deft and velocity within the power of VIP to the tune of 40%/30%/20% more than the rate fixed by God, the Jehovah. The human animals had harassed the so called leader for over a month and it is the turn of the one who purchased the mandate to return the harassments for the next five years. The candidate mortgaged all his properties to buy the mandate and his voters mortgaged individual rights, the most powerful public legal rights, to the one who bought it. Despite of 5 years harassments, what else the turned Christians after election can do to cross-check and warn the one looting their money in broad daylight. This is Scene 11.
In the past, bureaucracy used to be the major pillar of governance in Nagaland. In the past, bureaucrats were the powerful custodian of Rules of Executive Business and were responsible for upholding the systems. The bureaucrats of yesteryear were the punctuations against incoherence and lawlessness. Whereas, with due respect to very few of those God fearing remnants, today’s bureaucracy in Nagaland under the banner of ‘Nagaland for Christ’ is found equally, if not more, daring in looting the poor State. May be it is more convenient for the hierarchical bureaucrats in a Department to have syndicate to loot funds meant for public by sidelining the Minister/Parl. Secy. in-charge of a Department in certain cases. Riding quality highways and roads like New Ministers’ Hill Road, Kohima, state of the art health care facilities, uninterrupted power supply, castles, etc, etc. are being built (in the air) according to paper reports furnished.
Yet, in reality many of the viable and essential projects are devoured by bureaucrats themselves or in hobnob with their bosses. This is how funds that come from Delhi for the people of Nagaland do not permeate down beyond the security fencing of a Directorate.
I do not justify any politician having properties disproportionate to one’s known income. Yet, we talk about the assets of corrupt politicians and we do not much talk about the same assets of Govt. employees of how many multi-storey commercial buildings, few palatial residences and acres of land one has. Think about clerks having massive assets. With the mere monthly salary can one employee, how substantial is his perks, create so much private assets? How honest, how dedicated and sacrificial and how accountable to public services are the 1.20 lakh State Govt. employees be depicted as Scene 111.
The African zoo Scene IV can be very lengthy one and can be boring to watch. Let us concise the depiction. The Govt. of India is fortunate to have the ultimate fragmented Naga sovereignty and integration movement. Several years ago, I watched the TV interview of the once famous actor Kabir Bedi. The actor was interviewed by a foreign correspondent and asked how and what local situation he used to face in Bollywood industry. In response, Bedi narrated a memorable visit to a sea food hotel in his foreign tour. In that hotel he had chosen to have fresh crab. The actor was given chance to indicate any specie of his choice. The different species of crab from few countries are kept in separate buckets country wise. The actor found buckets containing crabs from other countries are all covered with lids except one bucket filled with full of crabs without lid. The actor curiously asked why the storage is not uniform. The reply was that crabs from other countries stocked in the buckets will disappear lest those are closed with lids, but the bucket without lid is filled with crabs from India.
The Indian crabs do not come out of the bucket as when one tries few others will pull it down. The lid is therefore not required.
After all, we, the Nagas, are in India, and we have been busily pulling down each other all these years. The Indian crabs do not produce anything good and the crabs do not do anything in the bucket except moving up and down and moving around to pull down one another.
Inside the bucket of Indian crab, there is one thing, that is confusion. Confusion is the mechanism used extensively by Let me conclude with brief scene on Churches in Nagaland. I have seen the road end of Naga political movement. The Naga divisional boulder has blocked the road. The boulder is so huge which cannot be removed despite of the use of modern machineries. No new technology is found fit for its removal and so the boulder is going to remain. Secondly, the governance of Nagaland State has been in shambles for years.
People expected that change of guard would bring improvement and yet it brings sheer worsening. And with the kind of Naga election, the worst wine in the new bottle will be produced after every election.
I expect that our last straw is the Church. Apart from soul saving, I expected that the Churches in Nagaland have the last options in store to protect the perishing common man from Naga made calamities. But to my utter disappointment, the Churches in Nagaland are found tired of the Naga mess. The Naga Churches seem to prefer evasiveness and escapism. The Churches are found drunk with self-contentment of Churches and of individuals. The adopted posture of the Churches seem to be that good is good and bad is also not bad with the slogan ‘Let it be’. The ground situation calls for the spirit of radicalism and reformation and whereas the Churches are satisfied with stereotype rhetoric. Thus, the Churches in Nagaland enjoy watching all the Scenes in a zoo called Nagaland.
May God answer the prayers of the lowly.
