Economy of Nagaland

Nagaland has basically an agricultural economy. A great ambition of the villager is to have a bumper harvest. One of the important motivation behind the practice of head-hunting in the past, was the belief that it would ensure a good harvest.

A remarkable feature of economy, is that there are no absentee landlords and there is no class of landless peasants. The village society is so organised that the basic requirement of food, clothing and shelter are guaranteed to all the members. The population as a whole, remain gainfully employed in productive activities and there is no surplus labour. During the Kheti season, it becomes difficult to get hired labour and if at all they are available, very high wages have to be paid.

There is, however, a system of providing communal labour by forming what are called ‘field companies’ of men and women of the same age group. Every member of the company gets the benefits of company’s labour by turn. The major source of revenue for the government until recently has been the house-tax. Now it is supplemented by the sale proceeds of forest products and tax of urban commodities.

In tribal area like Nagaland, the obstacles to economic development generally arise out of the prevailing physical, social and economic conditions. The physical condition relate to the hilly terrain, dense forests and difficult communications. The social obstacles are the people’s initial apathy to any kind of innovation, lack of education and primitive methods of production. The economic difficulties are the dearth of capital, absence of marketing centres, and similar other factors.

To these we may also add the political condition arising out of the subversive activities of the underground Nagas. A planned effort in nevertheless being made to circumvent these bottlenecks and develop the area. Preliminary investigation were carried out by the National Council of Applied Economic Research, and this was followed by a detailed examination of the techno-economic data.

In education and road building, the progress has been phenomenal. The urge for education has today replaced the old craving for heads. A girl may refuse to marry an uneducated man in the same manner as, in the earlier days, she refused to accept a partner who had not taken a single head. In the field of education Nagaland is not so developed. Even though there are educated people, they prefer white-collar employment. They hesitate to take agriculture as occupation. Hence, government has to take steps to find suitable employment opportunities for them.