In Nagaland today, public discourse is saturated with familiar phrases like ‘educated unemployed’, lack of opportunities, corruption, and a struggling economy. These issues are repeatedly raised by leaders at every public forum, often with grave concern and strong language. Yet for many young people, this constant talk has begun to ring hollow, as lived realities remain largely unchanged and confidence in meaningful reform continues to erode. This has produced a more corrosive outcome: systemic pessimism among young people.
What is often missing from these conversations is sociological imagination. Coined by C Wright Mills, the concept urges society to look beyond individual failure and instead examine how personal struggles are shaped by larger social, economic, and political structures. Without this lens, unemployment is framed as a personal shortcoming, ambition is reduced to individual effort, and frustration turns inward.
Young people in Nagaland are not merely facing a lack of jobs. They are caught in a system marked by limited industrial diversity, dependence on government employment, weak private enterprise, and entrenched corruption. When these structural realities are ignored, youth are left feeling trapped, blamed, and powerless. Over time, this breeds resignation rather than resistance, silence rather than innovation.
Sociological imagination offers a way out of this deadlock. It shifts the question from why young people are not succeeding to why the system repeatedly fails to absorb talent and energy. It demands accountability not only from individuals but from institutions, policies, and leadership cultures. More importantly, it restores dignity to struggle by recognizing it as socially produced, not personally deserved.
For leaders, this requires more than speeches. It calls for honest diagnosis, data driven planning, and long term investment in education aligned with local economies. For society, it means valuing diverse forms of work and redefining success beyond government jobs. For young people, sociological imagination can transform despair into critical awareness and collective action.
Nagaland does not suffer from a lack of ideas. It suffers from a failure to connect personal pain with public responsibility. Until that connection is made, pessimism will continue to deepen. Hope will return not through rhetoric, but through a shared understanding that systemic problems require systemic solutions.
