Ideology Vs bank balance

Nagaland’s unfinished clean election questionMoa JamirAt the valedictory session of the All Nagaland College Students’ Union Collegiate Meet 2026 on October 23, MLA and Advisor Achumbemo Kikon urged young voters to choose leaders based on ideology rather than bank balance.It is a timely appeal, but one that invites a healthy dose of scepticism. In Nagaland, elections are frequently shaped by money, tribal affiliations, regional alignments and competing power structures. Calls for clean elections have become familiar rhetoric among political stakeholders, particularly parties and candidates, yet the electoral practices that undermine these ideals persist. The question, therefore, is not merely what voters should choose, but whether the system enables them to do so freely.As noted in this column in April, Nagaland’s electoral politics presents a striking contradiction between official expenditure declarations and independent estimates of campaign spending. According to the Association for Democratic Reforms’ analysis of the 2023 Assembly elections, winning candidates declared average expenditure of Rs 8.87 lakh, barely 32% of the prescribed Rs 28 lakh ceiling. Yet, five years earlier, YouthNet’s Post Election Watch Report for 2018 estimated average election expenditure at Rs 5.41 crore per candidate.The 2023 Post Election Watch Report remains unpublished, and its release appears uncertain, particularly as a key individual associated with the organisation behind the earlier study contested and won the 2023 Assembly election. Meanwhile, inflation and other cost pressures would reasonably suggest higher election expenditure since 2018. Indeed, how much money is spent remains a recurring question in Nagaland’s electoral conversations. Elsewhere, political parties’ audited accounts offer another point of scrutiny. The audit reports submitted by the Naga People’s Front (NPF) and the Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party (NDPP), including the latter under its former nomenclature, show that declared contributions exceeding Rs 20,000 were minimal in several financial years up to 2025-26, and nil in most. These disclosures warrant closer examination alongside the apparent scale of electoral mobilisation and spending.The disparity between official declarations and earlier independent estimates therefore raises a fundamental question: how accurately do declared figures reflect the financial realities of electoral competition? Money power, however, is only one dimension. Earlier reporting on electoral threats and coercion, malpractice, and the ground and systematic realities of clean elections has documented the social pressures and institutional challenges confronting free electoral choice. On polling day, concerns over proxy voting resurface, while in some areas, village declarations have become an established practice.The Clean Election Movement has kept these concerns in public discussion for years. Yet its persistence underscores the limits of awareness campaigns without corresponding institutional action. Such realities cannot be addressed through voter awareness alone. When collective preferences constrain individual choices, inducements turn political support into a transaction, or intimidation compromises independent judgement, the democratic value of the ballot is diminished. Transparent campaign financing, credible expenditure monitoring, consistent enforcement of electoral rules and accountability for violations must accompany appeals for ethical voting. Political parties cannot leave this responsibility to voters alone.Ultimately, the challenge is to make elections contests of public trust and accountability rather than financial capacity, social influence or coercive power. A clean election is not achieved simply by asking voters to choose principle over money. It requires a system that safeguards voters’ freedom of choice and holds those seeking power accountable to the very principles they espouse. Nagaland’s unfinished clean election quest must therefore move beyond campaign rhetoric to meaningful electoral accountability.For any feedback, drop a line to jamir.moa@gmail.com