-A deafening silence over endemic corruption in Nagaland
Moa Jamir
Over a decade ago, this column reflected on A Deafening Silence, prompted by a Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report detailing widespread discrepancies across Nagaland’s social, economic, revenue and general sectors, which was quietly buried in a fleeting 13-minute Assembly session. What followed was barely a murmur from the State’s historically vocal social organisations, student bodies or civil society groups.
More than ten years on, with audit after audit meeting the same quiet exit, the fundamental question only grows sharper: Why does the silence remain so deafening?
The question has resurfaced with renewed urgency. At the XXIII Morung Lecture on August 19, themed “Truth and Integrity in Naga Public Life,” two public servants, one retired and the other serving, returned to the same uncomfortable reality: corruption, nepotism, favouritism and the misuse of public resources have become so normalised that many people no longer question them.
More worrying than corruption itself is the resignation surrounding it. There is an acceptance that this is simply how the system works. No questions. No outrage. No consequences.
The retired officer drew from personal experience to speak of the inequalities created by nepotism and VIP culture. Young people without influential connections often struggle to access jobs, education and other opportunities, while deserving entrepreneurs lose out to those with connections. Yet politicians alone, she cautioned, cannot be blamed. Government decisions ultimately pass through public servants who process and sign them.
The observation on the CAG was particularly telling. Normally, one of a department head’s greatest fears is coming under the scrutiny of the CAG. In Nagaland, however, audit findings are not taken seriously enough, as there is little sustained social, political or public pressure to demand accountability and, consequently, little deterrence.
The serving officer from the CAG office made a similar point: deterrence is absent because “all of us are not speaking out.” Corruption, nepotism and favouritism, he said, have been normalised and accepted as a way of life. Silence, therefore, is not merely indifference. It sustains the system.
Officially, Nagaland remained largely “corruption-free” in 2024, reporting zero fresh graft cases under the Prevention of Corruption Act and related provisions, according to the latest Crime in India report. On paper, the State’s record on corruption is nothing short of impeccable.
Does this mean corruption has disappeared, or has it simply been silenced?
This is where the familiar refrain about Naga “priceless values” becomes particularly uncomfortable. Honesty and integrity are supposedly among the priceless qualities of the Nagas. Yet the widening gulf between proclamation and practice is hard to miss. Truthfulness, solidarity and moral courage are celebrated in speeches and sermons, while nepotism, favouritism, selective outrage and public apathy continue to shape lived reality.
Perhaps the deeper crisis is not merely the absence of values, but the performance of them. A decade ago, this column argued that corruption had become so deeply ingrained that institutions were unwilling to shake the status quo, fearing collective implosion. The public, lulled by years of corrupt practices, had become increasingly immune to such findings. More than indifference, the silence is thus an admission that the problem has become endemic and its tentacles have reached into every section of society.
The serving officer poignantly highlighted the core irony at the lecture: a society supposedly rooted in traditional Naga values of honesty, hard work and family honour, and now overwhelmingly identifying as Christian, strikingly struggles to practise the very ethics it claims to hold dear.
The question, then, remains: Will Naga society break out of this vicious cycle? Perhaps the answer will continue to be sought every decade, comforted by speeches on “priceless values” and invoking an imagined moral paradise of the past. After all, if corruption has become endemic and silence has become normal, perhaps integrity, too, has simply become too cheap to practise.
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