Dimapur, Nagaland’s commercial heart, is often described in metrics: population density, rising temperatures, pollution levels, waste generation.
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Cities Are Not Structures, they Are Agreements
“Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.”- Jane Jacobs. Cities and towns do not grow only through infrastructure, policies, and budgets; they grow through a series of silent agreements among people, agreements about how we live together, how we show respect, and how we take ownership and responsibility. Dimapur, Nagaland’s commercial heart, is often described in metrics: population density, rising temperatures, pollution levels, waste generation. But beneath these numbers lies something deeper: a shared moral fabric that determines whether a city thrives or merely survives.
Thus, the question “What is the role and responsibility of citizens in caring for their town or city?” is more than a civic inquiry. It is a deeply reflective one. What kind of citizens do we become when we stop believing that we have a stake in the shared spaces that hold our lives? “What kind of city do we create when we decide that “someone else will fix it”? There is an old Greek proverb: “A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit.” This simple act planting with no expectation of reward captures the moral heart of Active Citizenship. This essay reimagines citizenship as care, as a moral obligation expressed through practical actions, through indigenous values, and through collective ownership of Dimapur’s future. It argues that the ‘Right to the City’ is not only a political demand but a cultural one. It is the right to belong, and the responsibility to contribute.
The Moral Weight of Belonging: A City That Shapes Us, and a City We Shape Back
Dimapur is a city of movement, commerce, and connection. From the aspirational buildings of City tower to the evening bustle of Hong Kong Market and crowded New Market, the city pulses with aspirations, of migrants seeking opportunity, of Naga youth imagining modern livelihoods, of families hoping for stability. Every clean stretch of road is a sign that someone decided to do the right thing. Every clogged drain is a sign that many decided not to. Citizenship, in this sense, is not merely a legal status; it is a continuous negotiation with conscience. It demands that we move from being bystanders of urban decay to co-authors of a liveable, thriving Dimapur.
Moral Obligations Begin at the Smallest Scale
A city is simply a larger house. Our moral obligations appear not in dramatic gestures but in quiet enduring habits: Not littering when no one is watching, treating public spaces with dignity, segregating waste at home, defending public property as if it were personal property, respecting markets, streets, and rivers as shared commons, treating sanitation workers and informal vendors with dignity, holding each other accountable with empathy, not hostility. These actions are not heroic; they are human. But collectively, they form the ethical spine of a functioning city. By sharing responsibility for our town, we cultivate ownership, and ownership deepens commitment.
Listening to the City: Stories of Responsibility and Neglect
The Man Who Sweeps Before Sunrise: At 4:30 AM, before Dimapur wakes, a sanitation worker named Bijay begins sweeping the lanes of Circular Road. Supporting a family he sees only every few months, he performs his work with calm dedication every morning. When asked why, he said: “If I don’t do my part, the city will punish someone else.” His words reveal an ethic of interdependence: irresponsibility by one becomes burden for many. How many of us, far more privileged, carry that same ethic?
The Drain That Gives Back: Earlier this year, Dimapur documented that repeated urban flooding across the city was relatively less a failure of municipal engineering and more a result of citizen behaviour: plastic bottles, food waste, and packaging dumped directly into the drain. When approached, one said: “That’s why we pay fees. The municipality should handle the mess.” Here lies the moral fracture of our cities: we expect civic bodies to perform miracles while we personally contribute to the problem. A city will only be as clean as its citizens are honest.
The Greening Dimapur Project, A Case Study in Active Citizenship: If neglect can shape a city, so can collective care- and nothing in recent memory demonstrates this better than The Greening Dimapur Project. The project, covered widely by state media, mobilised hundreds to imagine a New Vison for Dimapur. Led by a coalition of young professionals, the Municipality, retired bureaucrats, and a consortium of NGOs the project sought something deceptively simple: to steer a state-society coalition to regreen the city to tackle the multi-faceted issue ailing Dimapur in the form of Heat stress, flooding and air pollution. But its deeper accomplishment lay not in the tangible metrics of its outcomes, but in the civic imagination and engagement it engendered. The Greening Dimapur Project revealed a powerful truth about Active citizenship: people care for a city when they can see their fingerprints on it. It encouraged the shift from “someone should do something” to “we will do something.” And perhaps most importantly, it showed that Dimapur is not indifferent, it is waiting to be invited into responsibility.
Run4GreenDimapur, When the City Became a Community: Similarly, the Run4Green Dimapur Marathon illustrated the city to witness what it can look like when citizens feel part of something meaningful, a collaboration of line departments and local NGOs, showed what Dimapur could be when citizens step into collective purpose and a shared agenda. A Dimapur for cleaner air, a liveable city and a community of mindful citizens towards our shared futures. For one morning, Dimapur was not a city struggling with civic disorder, it was a community in motion. The Greening Dimapur Project and the Run4GreenDimapur both illustrate that: transformation begins when citizens see themselves as contributors through meaningful engagement and participation.
When citizens act together, even briefly, we glimpse the kind of city Dimapur could become. The question, then, is how to make such participation not an exception but the norm, how to democratise our towns so that public life becomes a shared responsibility. This is where the idea of democratising our towns becomes essential. Democracy is not merely a system of government; it is a way of life expressed daily through participation, dialogue, and collective stewardship. To democratise our towns means expanding who gets to shape them: youth contributing to local planning, women’s groups influencing the design of public spaces, market unions collaborating on waste management, and colony councils evolving into participatory platforms. If citizens have a claim to public goods, they must also share in the responsibility of creating and sustaining them; haphazard urban growth often emerges precisely when policies fail to reflect local realities. The answer, therefore, is not protest alone but participation, citizens who refuse to remain mute spectators. This becomes especially urgent when we consider the “Right to the City ,” a concept that extends beyond the right to access urban spaces to the right to shape them. For Naga youth, this right means demanding inclusive spaces for sports, arts, and entrepreneurship; advocating for pedestrian-friendly streets; co-creating neighbourhood-level environmental solutions; and embracing digital tools to hold institutions accountable. Youth are not merely the future; they are the pulse of the present. And a city that does not empower its young people risks stagnation.
Indigenous Identity as Civic Wisdom: Reclaiming What We Already Know
For Nagas, the idea of shared responsibility is not new, it is ancestral. Long before modern planning frameworks existed, our villages were governed through practices that today’s world calls participatory governance, social accountability, and nature-based stewardship. Morungs taught collective responsibility. Community wells and forests were managed not by enforcement alone but by consensus, duty, and respect. Land was held in common trust; decisions were shaped by dialogues that involved elders, youth, and clans.
These are not relics. They are civic tools waiting to be revived. In the language of global development, these values map directly onto what the world now calls Nature-based Solutions (NbS), community-led planning, collaborative governance, and even alternative development financing, areas where indigenous knowledge can provide leadership rather than merely compliance. Our traditional systems recognized that land, water, and community well-being are intertwined. What cities today call “green infrastructure,” our ancestors called balance.
To imagine Dimapur’s future, therefore, is not to import ideas from outside but to translate our indigenous principles into an urban context: Communal ownership towards shared care for public spaces; custodianship of land towards stewardship of urban ecology; Consensus building towards participatory planning; Intergenerational thinking towards climate resilience. In other words, the city must learn from the village, not the other way around.
The City as a Daily Responsibility
Caring for a city is not a one-time campaign; it is a discipline. A culture. A habit. The role of citizens becomes visible in small, repeated actions that shape the moral fabric of Dimapur:
Waste as a Moral Issue, not Just a Technical One: Segregating waste at home is not difficult. Refusing to throw plastic into drains is not radical. But these small decisions determine whether our city floods each monsoon. A clean city emerges when waste becomes a matter of conscience, not convenience.
Heat Stress and Greening as Collective Action: Dimapur’s rising heat is not merely climate data, it is lived discomfort. Planting trees, protecting waterways, and adopting NbS are ecological responsibilities and cultural ones. Initiatives like Greening Dimapur demonstrate how heat mitigation, citizen participation, and indigenous stewardship can converge into a powerful civic movement.
Colonies as Civic Laboratories: Colony councils can become participatory hubs, spaces where residents review local issues, shape solutions, and work with authorities. Democracy must be lived at the colony level before it can succeed at the city level.
Digital Civic Accountability: Youth today have tools previous generations never had, mapping waste hotspots, tracking service delivery, and mobilising communities online. Civic engagement must evolve with the city. Practical solutions do not require perfection. They require participation.
Conclusion: The City We Inherit, the City We Leave Behind
A city is, at its core, a moral project. It reflects what we tolerate, what we prioritise, and how we choose to treat one another. Dimapur is not broken, it is brimming with possibility. The Greening Dimapur Project and Run4GreenDimapur Marathon have already shown us what becomes possible when citizens reclaim ownership of their city, when youth step forward as partners rather than spectators, and when governance becomes a shared effort instead of a distant responsibility. The question is no longer “Who will fix Dimapur?” but “Who will choose to belong enough to care?” And this responsibility is not a one-time act of magnanimity, it is a daily habit shaped by our decisions: how we use public spaces, how we dispose of waste, how we support one another, and how we imagine our future. Dimapur will not transform overnight. But it will transform the moment we decide that the city is not “theirs” to fix, it is ours to co-create. Every small act of responsibility becomes a brick in the foundation of a more liveable, more humane city. Every moment of participation, whether planting a tree, segregating waste, or joining a marathon for clean air, moves the city closer to the one we claim to deserve. Ultimately, the question is simple: What kind of city do we want to leave behind?
(Winner of the Chalie Kevichusa Essay Award -- Senior Category)
Boka K. Rochill