DIMAPUR, NOVEMBER 9: The seventh instalment of the Morung lecture series was held here today at Elim Hall, DABA with Neichute Doulo of Entrepreneurs Associates as speaker. The lecture was on: A Vision for a Self-Sufficient Naga State.
Neichute, winner of the 2016 Social Entrepreneur of the Year award, drew parallel between the “half-clothed” generation of Nagas who, in 1947, had the “audacity” to tell “mighty India” that “we are independent” and the current lot whose survival depends entirely on annual packages from New Delhi.
The difference between the two generations, he said, was that the “half clothed” Nagas of 1947 had “self confidence” and thus, self reliant. “Today in spite of getting thousands of crores (of money) from Delhi every year, we do not have the confidence to say that we can survive (on our own).”
He identified “poor man programming” as the reason behind the current generation’s predicament. Neichute defined “poor man programming” as the need to hold on to a job in order to survive. In the Naga context, he said, it was the need to get a government job for survival. “Ninety-five percent of Naga parents think economic development will come from government jobs. People tend to think that economic development will take place through factories and industries. But it is possible, development can happen without industrialisation,” he said.
The government, especially the bureaucrats, do not have the imagination to understand this, according to Neichute. “To make Nagaland prosperous, we have no choice but to look at business. In ten years’ time, we can change Nagaland. I have done my homework.”
His “homework” and “hard-proven examples” involved three crops: millet, French kidney bean (
kholar) and Job’s tears, and the Naga favourite, pork. According to him, if one lakh Naga farmers were to cultivate said crops, by current market rate, the annual turnover from these crops would be Rs. 6000 crore.
In the case of pork supply, the same number of farmers could achieve an annual turnover of Rs 420 crore. But in order to turn such imaginings into the hard currency of money “we need entrepreneurial minds”, Neichute said.
With more than 1 billion population, it’s almost impossible for the world to feed India, he reminded. “It is not difficult to create an annual turnover of Rs 500 crore in the Indian market.”
If Nagaland could produce ten thousand entrepreneurs, similar to the (in)famous NBCC promise to produce the same number of Baptist missionaries from Nagaland, then an annual revenue of Rs 1000 crore would be easily achieved, he said.
While asserting that it takes “ten years to achieve instant success” in business, Neichute said Nagaland could become “extraordinarily self-sufficient” in 15 years.
“I dream of a self-sufficient Naga state by 2030. Fifty percent success by 2025 if ten thousand Naga youth take up entrepreneurship and if fifty thousand Naga farmers graduate from subsistence farming to micro-commercial farming.”
For a small community like the Nagas – with 90% of the land owned by the people – the land must be “turned into producing cash”, he said. “For that we need entrepreneurs.”
