Early July, as elsewhere across the region, Nagaland too saw heavy rains that not only flooded several parts of Dimapur including colonies but also caused floods in the hilly capital city of Kohima. While it is tempting to say that these rains were “unprecedented”, “the heaviest so far”, “never seen before”, and the like, one wouldn’t give in to the temptation because till the 1990s and possibly the early 2000s, the monsoon rains didn’t hold back when they poured, not least in Nagaland’s low-laying areas.
As for Kohima and other hilly areas, besides this time of the year, rains would anyway pour down ceaselessly almost throughout the year either in drizzles or moderately. But floods in Kohima? Not so shocking or even surprising because of the much clogged drainage system in this capital city, which was categorized as “Smart City” a few years ago and a lot of hullabaloo was made of it. Obviously, everyone is asking what happened to the crores allotted for this Smart City.
The early July heavy rains also caused numerous landslides, destroyed roads, houses, paddy fields and crops across Nagaland, per news reports. Roads were turned into rivers but the hilly terrain provided outlet for the rain water to flow downhill. That didn’t happen in Kohima town early this month because there is no or little space for flooded water to flow downhill as such space have been built over or the drain were clogged with garbage to allow the rain water to escape.
At such times of natural and other disasters, human beings are wont to apportion blame on someone or something. So, when Kohima and particularly Dimapur were facing the worst of these floods and neighbourhoods were inundated rendering the residents homeless and helpless, accusations, allegations, blaming and shaming were flying hard and thick. As always in Nagaland, the people are blamed for all woes so not surprisingly blamed for constructions over drains and every possible piece of land. The blamers forgot who issued land pattas and the numerous town planning, urban building laws, etc., and their implementation thereof. The aftermath of the torrential rains early this month was a result of everything the people and Government of Nagaland did and/or didn’t do mindlessly and myopically. We can either focus on that or take precautionary and remedial recourse because we increasingly face unprecedented climate change impacting our weather systems.
Now, while we aspire to live ‘developed’ lives in clean cities, fact is we are neither clean nor developed. We still live lives in our urban areas that are not too far distant from our old ways in the villages. Ironically, in the past few decades our villages have become so much cleaner and disciplined not simply because of increased educational outreach and media and technology reach consequently more exposure to the outside world but because the effective and efficient traditional system of village governance continues without compromise. Ultimately, it is preparedness of governance based on scientific knowledge and the political will in terms of policy revisit and recalibration. Things are no longer the same therefore we cannot go on with the same old ways. Simply pouring in funds into Band-Aid measures after the fact will not mitigate problems. Because large parts of the Northeast region have become increasingly prone to climate change and States like Nagaland are seeing debilitating disasters such as floods, landslides and landslips more and more every year, our Governments need to make State and region-specific policies.
Indubitably, in Nagaland a lot of landslides that are wiping out our crores worth of quite newly-constructed roads cannot be attributed to the rains alone because the soil composition of our quite young and fragile terrain, say our geological and other experts, cannot sustain the heavy assault of modern road-making. So now, we deal with parts of our highways that have turned into no-lane-no-road. Development has not only rendered us road-less but also forest-less. Who will answer for and take responsibility for our devastated environment that foretells our impeding homelessness and hunger? Clearly, a world-class road system built with space technology is not so suitable for Nagaland. So the problem seems to be a development model that ignores the pan-India environmental diversity. Such a model impacts all aspects of our rural and urban development and the rains have only exposed the failure of this model.
Further, the issue of dubious expertise unleashed on fragile terrain such as ours aligns with the issue of corruption and nepotism in road construction. There are several PILs filed in the Kohima Bench of the Gauhati High Court, the hearings of which are regularly published in our local newspapers. The National Highway Infrastructure Development Company Ltd. (NHIDCL), besides the State Government, make promises and set timeframes but the condition of our roads remain unchanged and worse still erode after even a light shower. The NHIDCL is a very large faceless agency of the Ministry of Roads Transport & Highways, the bosses of which are not only Delhi based but do not hold lifelong permanent posts. For the public here to litigate such a large and powerful governmental monolith is impossible. Perhaps, responsibility can be pinned on the road contraction companies but here again they are either backed by or allegedly owned by powerful entities that have a vice like grip over the people of Nagaland. We fight a losing battle. Meanwhile, our Government swears by its dedication to development and boasts of the funds it brings from the Centre but remain silent on which road construction companies are tendered to build our roads. Pity the rains have not only failed to uncover the corruption and nepotism that pave our roads and highways but also provide alibis.
Apparently it is too late to reverse the climate change and its impact however it is not too late to reverse man-made mindlessness and myopia. Some kind of mitigation is the need of the hour, which entails respect for environmental diversity and policies that centre-stage the human being and the environment. We don’t know what twists and turns the climate change will take and we have already lost too much ~ now we need measures to salvage the little that’s left for we too deserve tomorrow.
(The Columnist is a journalist and poet. Published in the July 26, 2025 issue of Assam Tribune)
