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Dimapur, Aug. 15 (EMN): Governor RN Ravi on Saturday said that 'the waves of positive transformation and growth sweeping across the country' appears to have bypassed Nagaland, relegating it to that status of 'the worst performing state in the country on almost all the significant indicators of human development'.
In his Independence Day message, Ravi said that Nagaland, the 16th state of the Indian Union, is the second oldest state in the Northeast.
"It is endowed with one of the finest of human and natural resources. For quite some decades since its birth, it raced ahead of several other states in the region despite odds. Unfortunately today, it has the dubious distinction of the worst performing state in the country including the Northeast region on almost all the significant indicators of human development.
"Our human resource, which is our most precious asset, crucial to fulfil the Naga dreams and aspirations is on steady decline. Some 25% of our children are not enrolled in the schools and 60% of our youth have not seen high school. Literacy in Nagaland may be technically over 80%, in reality, those who have not even been to high school cannot be called functionally literate," he said.
Despite the highest pupil-teacher ratio in the country, the dropout and failure rates in government schools are alarming, the governor said.
"Absence of internet connectivity and Information communication technology facility in majority of our schools is holding back our youth in the global race for progress. It has made online teaching, especially in Covid-19 situation, impossible, pushing them further behind.
"Investment climate in Nagaland is worrisome. We need to build investment-friendly ecosystem so as to encourage investors from outside and within the State to have sufficient confidence to set up enterprises. Unfortunately, government job is the main source of employment and economy is largely based on salaries of government servants. Even our agriculture and horticulture sectors, which are the mainstay of our state’s economy, are in distress. We have to encourage and incentivise entrepreneurship," said Ravi.
According to the governor, when the security forces and the Naga armed groups agreed to suspend operations against each other, paving the way for political settlement, the legitimate expectation of the people of Nagaland was dividends of peace – freedom from fear of guns, better health, better education, better infrastructure, better livelihood opportunities, an atmosphere to dream and an ecosystem to pursue their dreams.
"Incongruously a deeply entrenched network of vested interests has emerged during the period which has misappropriated the dividends of peace and did not allow them to reach the people. There is mass scale mayhem and miscarriage of dreams and expectations of the people of Nagaland. It is unendurable and unacceptable," he said.
Ravi asserted that 'we will have to break the vice-like grip of the vicious circle of the network of vested interests and make way for the virtuous circle of peace, prosperity and happiness for our people'.
The governor went on to state that today Nagaland is better prepared to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic. "We have built our own BSL laboratories in record time. Though we need to build more laboratories, we no longer depend on the neighbouring states for testing suspected Covid-19 samples.
"Our doctors and lab-technicians are testing far more samples with far greater efficiency. Our frontline workers have better protective equipment, our hospitals have better treatment capacities with greater availability of life saving oxygen and ventilators. Our citizens are better aware of the Covid-19 preventive protocols and the state government is better energised and synergised with the Covid war room at the state level and the district task forces at the districts," he said.