By Imna Longchar
Dimapur (Nagaland), Nov 6: Chief Secretary, J Alam, said that the Nagaland government could not focus on many developmental activities during the Covid-19 pandemic but learned how much the state was dependent on the “outside world” and how much requirement was there for everyone to be “self-dependent” in terms of economic needs.
He commented this recently during an experiential visit to KAAS Coffee, Sedenyu Village, Kohima, accompanied by Nagaland’s Agriculture Production Commissioner (APC), Y Kikheto Sema, and officials from the Land Resources Department.
While expressing that he was delighted to experience an actual “hands-on” in the field for coffee harvesting and processing, Alam also marked that his visit was once in a lifetime experience at the same time was amazed as to how much work is actually going on in the ground reality and expressed his admiration to see the progressive villagers undertaking such activities.
He also stressed that the government employment has reached its saturation point for which he was of the view that the youths have to find and invest in other avenues and coffee being a very promising crop, encouraged to take up the kind of activities which according to him are “labour intensive” and provide sustainable income.
“Potential has always been there, and we are blessed with a very fertile land and huge resource, for the last decades we have been experimenting in different land based activities for viable crops unfortunately, it failed because substantial activities was not taken into consideration,” Alam added.
He also lauded the village for being a biodiversity conservative village and appreciated the efforts of the “cautious” villagers for protecting and conserving the density of forest which would contribute a lot in balancing the biodiversity.
Later, he assured that the state government would support in possible areas for the requirements and would take up with the concerned department for further development.
Agriculture Production Commissioner (APC), Y Kikheto Sema, also shared that the hills of Nagaland are now growing organic coffee which is not only being sold locally but also exporting it in international markets.
