Who Runs the State?
Besesayo Kezo, IPS, Retd DGP
In Nagaland, a question of considerable importance has arisen—one that goes to the heart of democratic governance and the social contract between the people and their institutions. Who, in fact, exercises authority over the state’s affairs? Is it the elected members of the Nagaland Legislative Assembly and the government they form, or the many non-governmental organizations operating under a wide range of names and pursuing an equally broad array of objectives? The answer is not merely academic; it determines whether ordinary citizens may conduct their lawful affairs in peace or must live in continual apprehension of those who claim the authority to regulate their conduct and appropriate a portion of their resources.
Broadly speaking, the inhabitants of Nagaland may be classified into two distinct groups whose fundamental interests are in conflict. The first consists of individuals who earn their livelihoods through their own labor—including farmers, artisans, traders, and professionals directly engaged in creating wealth—and who seek only to support themselves as ordinary people, like their counterparts elsewhere in the world. They recognize the dignity of labor and trust honest endeavor. The second group consists of individuals who engage in no productive work but seek to sustain themselves by extracting resources from the first. Typically, they begin with persuasion and appeals to charity; when these approaches fail to achieve their intended outcome, they resort to threats and, in some cases, violence.
Because they compete for the fruits of labor, these two groups are natural rivals. The former seeks development and economic prosperity for himself, his family, his community, and the state. He believes progress results from hard, conscientious work and is prepared to accept the discipline it requires. The latter seeks the finest things life has to offer without engaging in any economic activity that might raise his standard of living through honest means. When appeals to conscience and charity prove ineffective, he resorts to coercive tactics, including threats to life and property, systematic extortion, kidnapping, abduction, and, in the most extreme cases, the murder of those who refuse to yield.
The second class appears to be expanding rapidly and actively recruiting young men and women. Its incentives are clear: influence without responsibility, income without labor, and status without achievement. Meanwhile, the state government observes these developments with a detachment that borders on indifference. It neither intervenes to protect innocent, hard-working citizens from harassment nor takes decisive legal action against those who have made intimidation and extortion their profession. Consequently, the rule of law is eroding, while non-state actors’ influence continues to grow.
Nagaland is rapidly approaching the condition Thomas Hobbes described as the state of nature—a condition in which no common power exists to keep all men in awe and life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. This comparison is not hyperbolic. When every organization of consequence can issue its own decrees, impose its own levies, and enforce its own sanctions, ordinary citizens have no recourse. They cannot turn to the police, who often face the same political calculations that constrain the government. Nor can they turn to the courts, which operate within a framework that assumes an effective executive. In short, they are reduced to subjects of whichever local power prevails in their district or profession.
The Members of the Legislative Assembly’s decision to establish an ‘oppositionless’ government has further complicated matters. By effectively abolishing the institutional expression of political difference, the legislators have removed one of the principal mechanisms for scrutinizing and correcting the executive’s performance. This raises the question of whether the state government has itself become merely another non-governmental organization—an entity that collects revenue and distributes patronage but has abandoned the state’s distinctive duty: maintaining public order and protecting citizens’ rights. What rationale can be offered for such a complete suspension of normal parliamentary practice? How can individuals who, only a short while ago, contested elections on platforms reflecting marked political differences now find themselves in such perfect harmony? Given these circumstances, why should the politically conscious people of Nagaland continue to support any of them?
At present, no single authority in Nagaland is both willing and able to enforce the rule of law. Each non-governmental organization operates within its own sphere of influence and employs its own methods of extraction, without being subject to the ordinary legal constraints that apply to state agents. Consequently, citizens face multiple claimants on their resources, none of which they can hold accountable at the ballot box. Given the elected government’s apparent inability to address these developments, it is reasonable to consider whether it might, for a limited period, devolve or share responsibility for maintaining order with an alternative mechanism capable of restoring a measure of normalcy. Any such measure would be temporary, aimed at creating conditions in which lawbreakers can be brought before the courts, honest citizens can be protected, and the ordinary processes of democratic government can once again function without obstruction.
Nagaland’s history offers numerous examples of the costs incurred when state authority weakens. Periods of intense political mobilization have been followed by periods when non-state actors have filled the vacuum left by a weakened administration. In each instance, ordinary farmers and traders have borne the burden. They have paid the ‘taxes’ demanded by successive organizations, endured disruptions to work and transport, and watched as a portion of the wealth they created was diverted into channels that contribute nothing to society’s productive capacity. The present situation differs from earlier episodes only in the extent of fragmentation and the apparent reluctance of elected authorities to reassert their proper role.
Some argue that the organizations in question perform useful social functions: they settle disputes, enforce community norms, and provide a measure of order where the state’s formal institutions are weak. This observation has merit, but it does not resolve the broader difficulty. Settling disputes and enforcing norms are properly the responsibility of institutions accountable to the community as a whole and operating under established, generally applicable rules. When bodies accountable only to their own members perform these functions, and when the rules they enforce may be altered at the discretion of those who hold power within them, the result is not order but arbitrary power. Citizens submit to such power not because they have consented to it, but because they have no practical alternative.
Recruiting young people into these organizations is especially concerning. A generation that might otherwise develop skills, start businesses, or enter professional fields is instead being drawn into political agitation and economic extraction. The long-term implications for the state’s productive capacity are significant. Capital and enterprise are unlikely to flourish in an environment where investment returns are subject to unpredictable and unaccountable levies. Young people who might have contributed to economic growth are instead engaged in activities that consume resources without generating any. The result is the gradual but persistent impoverishment of society as a whole.
The doctrine of the dignity of labor is not sentimental; it is a practical necessity. A society in which a significant portion of the population can subsist by appropriating the products of others’ labor will, over time, produce less. The incentives are inverted: honest workers are penalized, while those who extract value from others’ labor are rewarded. Over time, the former may leave the state or reduce their efforts, while the latter will find the pool they draw from has diminished. This process is already evident in many small traders’ and contractors’ reluctance to undertake new projects, as well as in the emigration of skilled young people to other parts of the country.
At the time, forming a government without an opposition was presented as a way to foster unity in the face of external challenges and to accelerate development. In practice, however, it has had the opposite effect. The absence of an organized opposition has removed the executive’s principal internal check. Freed from defending its record before the Assembly, the executive has shown little inclination to confront the non-state actors that have come to dominate significant areas of public life. The result is a striking inversion of responsibility: the government elected to govern has, in many respects, become a spectator, while unelected organizations exercise a form of de facto sovereignty.
The politically conscious citizen is entitled to ask what, under these circumstances, he is supporting when he casts his vote. If the parties that contest elections are prepared, once the votes have been counted, to set aside the very differences that defined the campaign, the electoral process becomes a formality. Voters are asked to choose between competing programs, only to discover that successful candidates abandon them as soon as they take office. In such a situation, the incentive to participate in elections diminishes, and the legitimacy of the resulting government weakens accordingly.
Restoring the rule of law does not require permanently suspending democratic institutions. It requires only that existing institutions be permitted, and if necessary compelled, to perform the functions for which they were established. The police must be free to investigate complaints of extortion and intimidation without fear of political reprisal. The courts must be free to hear cases and render judgments without interference. The Assembly must be free to debate the government’s performance and hold its members accountable. These are not radical proposals; they are the ordinary requirements of a constitutional democracy.
If the present government is unable or unwilling to create the conditions for these institutions to function, citizens of the state may consider temporary arrangements that achieve the same end. Such arrangements need not be permanent, nor do they need to displace the elected government altogether. They might take the form of a limited period of special powers, exercised under the supervision of a body that includes representatives of the productive classes and the judiciary, with the sole aim of restoring a tolerable degree of public order. Once that aim is achieved, normal constitutional government could resume.
The alternative is a continued decline into a condition in which power is fragmented, productive citizens are systematically disadvantaged, and young people are drawn into careers that offer no lasting benefit to themselves or society. This outcome is not inevitable; it results from choices made and choices deferred. The people’s elected representatives still possess, in law, the authority to reverse the present course. Whether they have the will to do so remains to be seen. Until they demonstrate that will, this article can offer only one conclusion: Nagaland is governed not by those the people have elected, but by those no one has elected.
Restoring authority is not a partisan matter. It concerns every citizen who wishes to live by his labor rather than by the labor of others, and every parent who wishes his children to grow up in a society where effort is rewarded and coercion is restrained. Democracy’s institutions were established to secure these ends. When they cease to do so, it is the duty of the citizen to insist that they resume their proper function, or, if they cannot, to consider, for a time, alternative arrangements that may be necessary to preserve the possibility of a return to normal constitutional life. In the end, the choice is between a democracy that governs and an anarchy that merely collects.
(The views expressed are those of the writer and not of the newspaper)