On May 10, the 1st Nagaland Edu Connect Conclave got underway at the magnificent Capital Convention Center, Kohima in the presence of the Advisor for School Education, and SCERT, Nagaland as well as the Advisor for Technical Education. The 2-day conclave is being organized by the Investment & Development Authority of Nagaland (IDAN) in association with the Northeast Education Council (NEEC).
The manner in which the event is being organized can be said to be as good as it can get in Nagaland. Visuals of the event as seen in the media suggest that the conclave is being meticulously planned and gives one the impression that Nagaland, after all, is progressing. As per media reports, the primary aim of the conclave is to attract prominent educational institutions to open branches of the institutions in Nagaland.
Organizing events like the Edu Connect Conclave takes a lot of planning, coordination and painstaking organization to succeed. Such events bring “opportunities to the doorsteps” of the target group and it is hoped that the event will live up to expectations. It is not clear how many students from Mokokchung and the rest of Nagaland will be taking the opportunities brought to the “doorsteps” in Kohima.
Meanwhile, on the same day, about 200 or so kilometres away from the capital Kohima, around 500 students of various government schools took to the streets in Tzürangkong to demand deployment of teachers to their schools. According to the Tzürangkong Kaketshir Mungdang, the apex students’ body in the area, there are 9 government schools there including a lone government high school catering to the educational needs of at least 20 villages. They took to the streets to protest against the government’s apathy and indifference to their repeated demands for deploying Math, Science, Language and Hindi teachers to the schools in the area. It was claimed that there was a shortage of 14 teachers and that a number of teachers have been transferred out from the schools in the area over the years with no replacements deployed.
In one part of the state, there is this high end conclave going on with big dreams while there is this part of the state where students are demanding teachers be deployed to teach them. If there is a need to prove that there is no equitable development in the state, this is one. The students in Tzürangkong deserve the opportunities just as much as the students in Kohima do. Unfortunately, the whole universe is transpiring against the students in Tzürangkong or so it seems.
This is not to say that the Nagaland Edu Connect Conclave in Kohima is not beneficial. This is just to say that the plight of our students in Tzürangkong, and all other neglected areas of the state, deserve our attention. The discrepancy in the form of lack of adequate number of teachers in Tzürangkong can be addressed to a large extent by the simple stroke of a pen by a single person in authority, if only he would.