Measuring what matters beyond ten days festival

Every December, Kisama Heritage Village fills with log drums, war cries and the smell of smoked pork and local rice beer, and the Hornbill Festival is declared a triumph once again. The spectacle is real, and the branding achievement is considerable. But the accumulated reporting and commentary on Nagaland’s tourism sector points to a harder question, whether a model built around a single ten-day event can serve a state whose cultural wealth lies elsewhere.

The central contradiction is difficult to ignore. Substantial public resources are invested each year in staging “authenticity” at a…