By Imkong Walling
Remember that day, May 23, 2025, when the Nagaland Legislative Assembly’s Committee on Environment and Climate Change, announced it was on “mission mode” to address the environmental issues facing the state? The Committee’s mission goals listed, among others, urban waste management— a pain in the neck that has been pricking the state for years without any tangible way out. It was a first in the state’s history that the Assembly constituted a legislators’ committee on the environment.
The 7-member committee chaired by MLA Achumbemo Kikon spoke of scientific waste management plants that were “in the offing.” The fruition of the claim banked on funding from the 16th Finance Commission.
According to the committee, the new site acquired for relocating the controversy-marred Dimapur Municipal Council’s (DMC) landfill in Burma Camp needed building a scientific and functional waste management plant. Relocating the DMC landfill, however, was not a voluntary government initiative. It was the result of a February 2023 directive from the National Green Tribunal to move the landfill to another location, by January 31, 2024.
The committee appeared confident, with its chairperson chiming, “When there is a will, there is a way.” The responsibility though was shifted to the community. Per his belief, resolving the waste management quagmire needed more of civic sense than government enforcement.
Almost a year later, as of April 2026, the claims remained verbal, none of the assurances realised. Meanwhile, the garbage landfill in the state’s most densely populated municipality — Dimapur — is filled to the brim, and agencies, organisations and villages that were using the landfill on payment facing the threat of lease revocation after April 2026. The ‘lessees’ have been advised to make necessary alternative arrangements by the DMC, the agency responsible for managing landfill.
That, the DMC landfill is saturated is a well established fact. It has also been a cause of great concern for the adjacent Dhansiri River’s ecosystem, and the surrounding neighbourhoods. By any environmental sustainability metric, the DMC’s latest move seems rational, a move that was compelled by circumstance.
But where will the waste generated beyond the limits of the Dimapur Municipal area go? And, this is the one question that must be on the mind of anybody, who has been following this issue.
The answer to that question lies in behavioural shift. Individuals, including the policy-making lot, can start by making a habit of waste segregation at home, not as an exception but a norm. In return, the authorities — the government as well as Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) — should ensure that a dedicated workforce and equipments are put in place, and more importantly, sustained.
It is not that waste segregation is an alien concept to the government and ULBs. In early 2024, the DMC had introduced a door-to-door collection of waste, segregated at source, as a pilot project in Ward-11. It came with specially retrofitted pick-ups to serve the envisioned purpose. In keeping with tradition, the project did not go far.
ULBs should be coming up with people and environment-friendly strategies, instead of shock tactics like halting access to landfills to entities outside their municipal scope. If there is a “will,” there are innovative and cost-effective methods, with proven results, that the government and people in general can adopt.
As an aside, when a garbage truck or tractor breaks down, there is no stand-in available, implying waste lying unattended until the vehicle is repaired. Ironically, while the ULBs and Municipal Affairs Department claim helplessness over replacing ageing garbage disposal vehicles, the Agriculture Department is handing away tractors with hydraulic trailers at subsidised rates, or for free, purportedly to farmers, without any visible improvement in agricultural output. Welcome to Nagaland.
The writer is a Principal Correspondent at The Morung Express. Comments can be sent to imkongwalls@gmail.com
