ABSTRACT
The issue of corruption by the state government officials and illegal taxation on the ordinary people by the insurgent armed Naga Political Groups (NGPs) has dominated the political discourse in Nagaland. This chapter elaborates and discusses the background and emergence of ACAUT in Nagaland and details its anti-corruption movement as a Foucauldian counter-conduct. The chapter analyses how the ACAUT utilised the technologies of citizenship such as public protest, Right to Information (RTI), and Public Interest Litigation (PIL) to address the issue of corruption in the state government and illegal taxation activity of the parallel underground state. The campaign for ‘One Government, One Tax’ is analysed as a Foucauldian counter-conduct towards the unethical and multiple taxation practice of the underground state with the larger demand to resolve the infighting among the various insurgent groups so that a single taxation can be channelised. While the ‘One Government, One Tax’ is analysed as a counter-conduct for the misconduct of the NGPs, the RTI and PIL are examined as techniques of citizenship vis-à-vis counter-conduct for exposing the local state government's corrupt practice of backdoor appointments. The chapter also analyses how the legitimacy and claims of the movement led by the ACAUT is determined not only by the popular support and demand, but rather through state sanctioned citizenship rights and constituted commission to assess the reports for the production of official truths. This need to harness the power of the state highlights Foucault's conceptualisation of power relations as a certain game of truth, and power as an asymmetric web that is illustrated in the power relationship between the public and the state that enhances the myth of the state as the guarantor of order and justice.
