It is not heartening to know that the Government of Nagaland is reeling under the Rs 1500 crore deficit with no immediate solution in sight, or even in the near-foreseeable future. It is not surprising that the centre is concerned as it did not anticipate that the state would not be able to come out of the present financial crisis. But it is good that Chief Minister T.R. Zeliang is sincerely appealing to the state legislators to create all round, all level awareness among the people of the state to pay taxes and charges due to the Government for the services that the state is rendering to the people. The Chief Minister has also increased tax wherever and whenever applicable to shore up finances. Austerity measures have also been strongly advocated.However, all these measures will prove to be too little too late if the legislators fails to retake and exercise the legitimate power which it has more or less forfeited to the government servants and the higher echelons of bureaucracy in the state. In today’s Nagaland, government servants no longer fear the government. Actually it is the government servants who indulges in maximum corruption, but it is the politicians that gets the flack. It is not as if it is the politicians who have racked up the Rs 1500 crore deficit. It is no rocket science to not know that the bulk of it all has been retched up by the government servants who all have become an authority in themselves, parallel with the political. Unless the political wield the sword and becomes the boss, as empowered by the constitution, corruption in the maxim is going to remain.
It is now in the public domain that the Prime Minister’s Office had reminded the state government that in the last financial year the centre was silent on the deficit presuming that the state would wriggle out of the seemingly avoidable predicament. Here, one gets the feeling that the centre had expected the state government to exert power and not buckle under the pressure and strain of its employees. And that the centre is not going to come to any semblance of a rescue if the state is not seen to be doing its home work.
These are interesting times for Nagaland. We have an all party government, and thereby a strong and secure Chief Minister. Exactly the correct prescription to make use of authority and clean up the stables. If not this time, then maybe never.
When government servants becomes the proxy of lawmakers, not for bringing about governance and development but for laundering the ill-gotten public funds, and with the law as mere spectator, mere people just becomes more cynical. Let us look at the elections in our state. Elections in Nagaland today have become very expensive that ordinary Naga people actually have no say in the political process. Government servants enriched by corruption have been setting the parameters of legitimate debate and drowning out independent voices. No wonder, dissenting opinions are not getting the public hearing they deserve, and illegitimacy have become the new legitimacy.
It has become the fashion of the powers that be to proclaim that it is the people who during election time sell their right to voice out against injustice, and therefore, the blame lies squarely with the people. People do agree to this fact. But now, for how long will the people carry the burden of this blame? Is it not the time for the innocent unsuspecting people to let know that all these time they all have been slowly but surely conditioned to what they are now, and what they are made to think? Many of our responsible leaders and elders have been baking the cake and eating it too. It is time for the people to wizen up and be fed the truth.
