Building A Resilient Ecosystem: The Case Of Nagaland

‘Resilience’ as defined by physics is, “The ability to store strain energy and deflect elastically under a load without breaking or being deformed.” Practices in Nagaland have been harnessing its existing skill-sets, traditions and materials along with newer systems to adapt and initiate progress within existing challenges in Nagaland. The case of Nagaland is an interesting trajectory to understand design a means to reinforce economic and social resilience in a context specific modus.

- Richard Belho

Nagaland, as the name suggests, is the native land of the Naga tribe. Their hilly villages sustained on an eco-system of agriculture, foraging and hunting. This system was altered by ‘reforms’ introduced by the British. The Missionaries from America and Europe introduced Christianity and somewhere the traditional Naga practices were deemed ‘pagan’ and hence, wrong. While the British administration brought formal education to Nagaland, the Morung Culture was rendered irrelevant. Fortunately not all was lost. Each tribe had their own distinctive annual festivals and these cultures were revived and preserved because of these festivals. ‘Angamis’ had a peer group system or Youth Institutions called ‘Peli’/’Pelikro’. Here the Village is divided in ‘khels’ and each ‘Khel’ had ‘Pelis’ based on Age group. These ‘Pelis’ actually are groups which carry out all cultural and even institutional and livelihood activities to help preserve the cultural resource of the land.

After independence from the British in 1947, Nagaland became an independent state in 1962, carved from Assam. Therein entered political unrest as further demands for sovereignty emerged. Along the same time, funds from the central government were also misused and the youth began vying for government jobs as a source of easy income. The work culture almost died. This resulted in loss of skills in addition to the damages done by British towards the indigenous traditions. Nagaland’s main resilience challenge lay in the degradation of available resources and skillset which had resulted in infrastructural and economic development. Herein, what can be the role of architecture and design to reinstate a resilient ecosystem in Nagaland?