With BJP on its side, CM Neiphiu Rio faces real test in Nagaland

April 7, 2018 375 Views No Comment

By Sanjoy Hazarika | Source—Economic Times

The reinstallation of Neiphiu Rio as Nagaland’s chief minister, ending his involuntary exile in Delhi, may have been a public declaration of victory. But it showed the challenge that undergirds his win.

Rio is looking at a reality that he may find difficult to handle over the next year: a complete dependence on alliance partner BJP, which captured 12 seats of the 20 it had contested. Rio doesn’t work from a position of strength any longer — his candidates won just 18 of the 40 they fought.

BJP helped Rio’s new Naga Democratic People’s Party (NDPP) to cobble together a working majority in the 60-seat assembly with the help of smaller parties. The NDPP-BJP alignment was sealed a few weeks before the polls, after BJP abandoned an earlier 15-year arrangement with the Naga People’s Front (NPF) with which it had held power in the state.

Over the next few months and years, BJP in Nagaland, supported by its ruling units in every state across the region barring Sikkim and Mizoram, and the power house at the Centre, will try to call the shots in Nagaland. How both Rio and NPF respond to this will be part of a larger process playing out across the region. That process lies in the narratives playing out even in Delhi.

That these exist within a governing coalition, as BJP at the Centre has found with the stinging disruption of relations with Telugu Desam Party (TDP), and angry voices from other ‘friendly’ parties such as Shiv Sena and the AIADMK. This is part of a larger political manthan that has seen the growth of BJP in the east and northeast, and robust challenges to its dominance in the north, west and centre.

Such challenges will sharpen as elections to various state assemblies and to the Lok Sabha edge closer. This is the major task before Rio and his partners, in addition to fixing broken infrastructure and improving poor human development indices.

Waiting in the wings is his old party, with a solid 26 seats, just five short of a simple majority. Nagaland’s politics is as much about one side ditching a mentor (e.g., Rio and former CM SC Jamir, Zeliang and Rio) for political gain. So, if NDPP feels it is not gaining enough in the political arrangement, there is nothing to stop it — or BJP, for that matter — from walking across to NPF and forming a stronger government.

There is also a larger issue at stake here. That challenge revolves around whether the Centre and NSCN will finally unveil the secret document that everyone has been speaking about since it was signed in August 2015 in the PM’s official residence. This is the three-point framework that isn’t quite an agreement, drafted in haste during concerns over the deteriorating health of one of the Naga leaders.

Hailed as historic by the Centre, it has, however, remained shrouded in silence. The pace is sought to be increased so that BJP can announce a specific gain for 2019 in the region. A negotiated political space defining the relationship of the Nagas with New Delhi has been the most difficult task before both sides for more than 70 years. It’s a time that has seen extensive fighting on either side, abuse of power and violation of basic rights, ceasefires and peacemaking. The latest effort to broker a deal has taken more than 23 years and gone through no less than six PMs.

The prospect of these long-drawn negotiations coming to a close could be panoramic going well beyond the lone Nagaland Lok Sabha seat. Public opinion in three states bordering Nagaland — Manipur, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh, all BJP-controlled — is volatile on the issue of territory, linked to identity. The party’s political hue does not matter on this sensitive issue.

There are deep suspicions about whether State interests are being protected at the hands of ‘national interests’. The non-territorial solution offer of a customary Naga Council that transcends borders fills neighbouring states with concern, as the legal parameters of such a body and its powers are unclear.

It may still be better to offer states manufacturing hubs on disputed lands (barring forests, of course) where people would benefit through ageneration of jobs and economic surplus. It would also feed into the narrative of the Centre’s ‘Act East’ policy. Tinkering with systems won’t work. A leap of faith and of imagination are called for.

The writer is international director, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative