By Moa Jamir
Nostalgia is not a strategy,” declared Mark Carney at the **56th Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, urging global leaders to be principled but pragmatic. Spoken to a world unsettled by shifting power, eroding norms, and uncomfortable truths, the message reaches far beyond geopolitics. It speaks directly to societies and political movements that draw legitimacy from history yet risk stagnation when memory begins to substitute strategy. In this sense, Carney’s assertion resonates sharply with both the condition of Naga society and the protracted political issue.
At a general level, Nagas rightly take pride in their “priceless values” such honesty, community solidarity, dignity of labour, courage, and moral clarity. These values are deeply rooted in social traditions and are frequently affirmed in public discourse. Yet the widening gap between what is professed and what is practised has become increasingly difficult to ignore. Corruption is routinely condemned in public but quietly accommodated in private, to the point of appearing endemic. Ethical decline is lamented even as transactional politics and selective accountability persist. Values that are endlessly invoked but rarely enforced risk degenerating into symbolic comforts rather than functioning behavioural standards.
This is where Carney’s rejection of nostalgia becomes relevant. Nostalgia looks backward for validation, assuming that moral inheritance alone can secure present outcomes. However, without institutional reinforcement and collective discipline, values do not automatically reproduce themselves, erode quietly, replaced by convenience and other vices. To remain meaningful, values must shape systems, incentives, and consequences, not mere rhetoric.
The same tension is evident, perhaps more acutely, in the Naga political issue. Few political struggles in South Asia possess the historical depth, moral conviction, and narrative coherence of the Naga movement. History, sacrifice, and identity are central to its legitimacy. Yet decades of negotiation have shown that historical righteousness alone does not compel political resolution.
Repeated invocation of history, uniqueness, and honour can gradually shift from a source of strength to a source of cynicism when practice is absent. Carney’s insistence on being principled but pragmatic offers a sharp lens: principles define what cannot be surrendered, but pragmatism determines how outcomes are secured within existing constraints.
The prolonged nature of the Naga political process has also introduced a problem of time. Generations that lived the formative years of the struggle are giving way to younger Nagas whose experience is shaped less by memory and more by uncertainty, unemployment, and governance failures. In this context, clinging only to the language of the past risks disconnecting the issue from present-day aspirations.
Crucially, pragmatism does not mean dilution or surrender. It means translating moral claims into concrete, enforceable arrangements; distinguishing between core non-negotiables and tactical positions; and recognising that unity, clarity, and credibility are themselves sources of leverage. Without these, even the most principled cause risks being administratively managed rather than politically resolved.
Taken together, the broader social malaise and the political impasse point to the same underlying failure: the inability to translate values into workable strategy. Whether in governance or in negotiations, ethics without execution quickly lose their force. In this context, Naga society must stop living on nostalgia and begin practising its values. This requires being firmly principled on core commitments, while remaining pragmatic enough to design pathways that work in the world as it exists today.
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