With so much power without inner checks and balances and without opposition, policy making is the first casualty though this is not peculiar to Nagaland alone.
Monalisa Changkija
Another chapter has been rehashed, rewritten and added to the political book of Nagaland. On October 21, 2025, the eight-year-old Neiphiu Rio-led Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party (NDPP) merged with the Naga People’s Front (NPF). In the words of the NPF General Secretary, the NDPP’s merger with the NPF “is complete, validated and legitimised”. Rehashed and rewritten because a good number of the NDPP members, elected or otherwise, were a break-away group of the NPF, the erstwhile Naga People’s Council, which incidentally was renamed Naga People’s Front by Neiphiu Rio himself, after he took over its leadership in the early 2000s. The NPF is a descendant of Nagaland’s first regional party Democratic Party of Nagaland that was formed in 1963 after statehood. Its nomenclature has been changed several times since then but its regional character has remained constant.
The NPF and NDPP coming together was not a mass defection but a consensual merger, so now the NDPP doesn’t exist anymore. Neiphiu Rio was elected the President of the expanded NPF at the party’s General Convention on October 21, the NPF Legislature party leader and remains the Chief Minister. Most likely this merger is a first in Indian political history of a party with a majority in the state merging with a party with only two MLAs.
There are several other MLAs of various national parties in our Assembly but much before this merger, some of them joined the Rio-led NDPP-BJP Government while others pledged support so Nagaland doesn’t have an opposition ~ in fact, hasn’t had one for a very long time.
With Rio elected as President of the NPF, NPF Legislature party leader and Chief Minister, clearly he has our political firmament in his broadened palms and his hands have been further strengthened, which has anyway been the case for over two decades with very brief intervals when he represented Nagaland in the Lok Sabha after the BJP came to power at Delhi. Even then, he basically called the shots. So, he has absolute power in Nagaland, which even the BJP strengthens ~ so desperate the latter is to be in power everywhere in the country. Obviously, democracy is fragile here and the corollaries are frightening, which none dare to challenge.
As much as this merger, this political development, this chapter in our political history has great political significance and we won’t ask why and for whom, it also has grave connotations that are directly impactful for the people. With so much power without inner checks and balances and without opposition, policy making is the first casualty though this is not peculiar to Nagaland alone. Over the past decade, we have seen bills being passed with no or hardly any debate. Except for groups of individuals that oppose to certain billed being passed and with good reason, which are more often than not ignored, no elected representative or even our powerful tribal bodies, NGOs and civil societies seem to have any gumption to disagree though there are rare exceptions. And such rare exceptions are grounded on unified collective tribal and civil society protests.
This implies that without the backing of the group, there is no individual who dares to stand alone and speak for the people. This further indicates that we don’t have any other mass supported individual leader, who is able, ready and willing to take on and call out power by the courage of his convictions. While this speaks volumes about how beholden our so-called sundry leaders are to the power-that-be here, this also speaks of how any form of opposition or dissent is crushed thus underscoring the text, context and sub-text of democracy in our society and state. There was a time when Nagaland had numerous leaders, who spoke their minds and clearly enunciated their visions to assert people’s rights and welfare. Those days are gone and are unlikely to reappear for a long time to come unless such leaders emerge before the next state elections in about a couple of years.
Obviously then, without well discussed, discoursed and debated, policy making in the absence of an opposition, the quality of governance becomes questionable. We have been seeing that in people’s dissatisfaction and dismay vis-à-vis the quality of life, not simply in regards to infrastructure development but also government’s skewed priorities, unsatisfactory delivery of health, education and the basic requirements of life, escalating prices of essential commodities and other goods, unemployment, corruption, increasing number of protests even by government employees, increasing number of cases filed by government retired and present employees all leading to a sense of despondency.
In his acceptance speech as the newly elected President of the NPF on October 21 last, Rio is quoted to have said: “Our collective aspiration must be to make Nagaland truly developed state, where merit, fairness and excellence are the only criteria”. If we go by our experience over the past twenty years or so, merit, fairness and excellence, as much as the aspiration, have remained stagnant ~ for instance, it was only recently the High Court voided over a 1000 controversial backdoor appointments in our Police force and directed fresh recruitment through advertisements in local papers. It is the similar backdoor entry into the state’s IAS cadre that major government employees’ unions are currently protesting.
Since 2003, Rio’s governments have prioritised the settlement of the Naga political issue and passed several resolutions in the Assembly and formed MLAs’ forums. However, the issue persists and resolution is still elusive. The fact is the state government is not a party to the talks between the Centre and the NSCN (IM) and the other Naga political groups so how the state government or elected representative could even ‘facilitate’ to resolve the issue is arcane. Of course, they can and do talk with all these groups but we don’t know the contents of these talks. And, it is beyond the purview of the state government to comment on the NSCN (IM)’s demand for flag and constitution. Since we don’t know what the shape and form the settlement would take, the talking point here is also of the fate of our current political parties and personalities should a settlement that marginalises them be finally arrived at. “What’s in it for me?” is said to be a normal reflex of politicians.
In Rio’s own words, this merger “embodies our resolve to stand together under a common purpose, to build a robust regional party that can more effectively represent the aspirations of our people and address the long-standing Naga political issue with renewed unity and strength”. Our people want nothing more than that and pray fervently for a tangible embodiment but at the same time our people have borne much so that there isn’t much hope, not after hearing the same intentions that have remained intentions decade after decade. At the end of the day, our people know that this rehashed and rewritten chapter in our political history and that too by the same people is old wine in old bottle.
(The Columnist is a Dimapur-based veteran journalist, poet and former Editor of Nagaland Page. Published in the October 26, 2025 issue of Northeast Now)