Every festive season, Mokokchung witnesses the same spectacle. Firecrackers explode across the town, disturbing the peace, frightening animals, endangering people and creating unnecessary noise pollution. This happens despite repeated prohibitions and appeals by district authorities, municipal council, ward authorities and various organisations. The announcements are made, the warnings are issued, and then, for all practical purposes, nothing changes.
The problem is no longer just the bursting of firecrackers. It is the blatant disregard for rules and collective decisions. What is the point of issuing prohibitions when people can openly defy them without consequence? What credibility do these authorities retain when their directives are blatantly ignored?
Let us be clear. Bursting firecrackers is not an inherited Naga tradition. It is an imported festive habit that has gradually found acceptance in our society. Repetition, however, can turn a habit into a custom. If the practice continues unchecked, future generations may grow up believing that setting off firecrackers is an inseparable part of festive celebrations. That is how new customs take root, whether desirable or not.
But perhaps a more disturbing culture is already taking shape: prohibition on paper, defiance in reality. We issue orders but do not ensure compliance. We make appeals but do not follow through. We publicly endorse restrictions while allowing the very conduct they seek to prevent. This is not merely administrative weakness. It reflects a failure of collective discipline and respect for authority.
The authorities cannot escape responsibility either. If a prohibition is necessary, it must be enforced. Repeated announcements without action only teach people that official orders can be ignored. Ward authorities and organisations must also move beyond issuing seasonal statements that have little practical effect.
Citizens, too, must stop treating public restrictions as optional. A celebration does not give anyone the licence to disturb an entire neighbourhood or put others at risk.
Culture is not shaped by tradition alone. It is also shaped by what a society repeatedly practises and allows to continue. When people openly defy public restrictions and authorities make no serious effort to enforce them, disregard itself becomes a habit. Over time, that habit can become a culture. Mokokchung risks normalising precisely this: rules announced but ignored, prohibitions imposed but never enforced, and public discipline treated as optional. The issue, therefore, goes beyond firecrackers. It is about the kind of social behaviour we are gradually accepting as normal.
The concern is no longer simply whether firecrackers will be burst during the ensuing festive season. It is whether public prohibitions will remain empty declarations, openly defied by the public and quietly tolerated by those responsible for enforcing them, until both defiance and firecracker bursting become accepted parts of our social culture, whether by choice or by default.
