On 10 May 1996, starting 24 hrs ahead the previous night, an unusually big number of climbers, were set to scale Mount Everest. The members were all set to reach the summit latest by 2 PM after which they must head back because the weather conditions were expected to worsen. Some of the members had paid more than 32 lakhs rupees -32,50, 000/ for the trip. The team leader has to reach them to the top and return them back. But the last climber reached the summit only by 4 pm.
They headed down but it was too late, already the deadly wind soon became a storm, then quickly a hurricane and the snow ‘white out’ was too thick to see their way down. The climbers were all stuck up on the exposed face of Mount Everest. Eight climbers died including the leader. The tragedy was one of the worst in the history of Everest climbing. The lone Naga, a woman, who is the first Naga to reach the summit of Mount Everest, Major Dr. Neikhrietuonuo Linyü, a month ago, narrated to me she saw in the snow on the Route dead bodies here and there. The tragedy cited above is not due to underlying technological deficiencies but is due to a ‘perceptual failure to be aware one’s environment’, what psychologists call the ‘SA’ -‘Situational Awareness’ failures.
We sometimes tend to over rule set limit by supposedly small slight margins, but once a rule is broken, further breaking by slight bits do not alarm us and finally the slight deviations add up together into a tragedy. We think we are right and fail to see the reality of the Situation around us. A gliding balloon accidentally rose slowly off the ground the control team trying to stop it: a tourist gave in his hand to hold it down but the balloon rose slowly a few feet, then higher and higher and the spectators on the ground shouted to the Tourist to let go his hold. He did not, perhaps thinking it will come down ultimately, but it rose higher and higher until the Tourist could hold no further and crashed to death.
The human brain is set to show us order in random disorder, reason in perplexing situations and meaning in a senseless situation. The brain helps us form theories to find solutions of situations. We develop theories to help us set order in the quandary or in solving a senseless perplexing murder for example. However our theory sometimes goes awry without us realizing it. Some empty whiskey bottles were found hidden in the boundary of the garden of a deacon of a Church. Our human brain would give us a theory to the perplexing find. We stick to our Theory and go wrong.
The Writer fears a similar situation has descended upon Nagaland on the Issue  of Prohibition. The principle of prohibition is desirable and good. The embarrassment, the pitiably harassed: Wife, mother, brothers, sisters and the children in a drunkard home in the Naga society, everybody fully understands. We all disapprove it but in our naïve simplicity to stop drinking, we imposed prohibition, expecting it to stop Alcohol consumption in the people. It failed, but we are so strongly set in our mind the prohibition would stop the malady that we continue to support it against all indications to its contrary. We may be suffering from a perceptual failure to be aware of the reality of the situation, what the psychologists and expert call ‘SA’ –situational awareness failure. The malady of drinking in Nagaland is due not only to a single factor alone. It is a ‘perceptual failure to be aware of the reality of one’s environment’, -a combination of many defects: in the person, the Family, in the Husband, in the Wife; in the Home atmosphere, in the atmosphere of the Society a whole, in the Politics of the Land, in the Church behaviors and a little in everyone of us as a member in our Society.
The inability to enforce Prohibition is not due only to failure of the Government of Nagaland or the police alone. The blame on government and the police is partly true but it is not the whole truth. The whole Society which includes the government and the societal atmosphere in whole of the State is responsible: We ourselves are not at all wholly beautiful and the unsatisfactory Photo therefore can not be blamed to the photographer alone.  There is not the slightest hesitation to condemn Drunkenness; lock, stock & barrel, drunkenness is wrong be it in uncivilized Nagaland or civilized Switzerland. All the headhunting Nagas the Writer has talked to, all the teetotaler Pharisee Christians in Nagaland, all the well meaning opinions sought, have not the slightest hesitation Drunkenness is awfully bad. There is however not  a single ‘awared’ Naga who is not aware Prohibition has miserably failed.  
The hard reality in Nagaland however is that we are today not up to the mark in producing a government or police as efficient as those in UK or Australia because we are what Nagas we are and not British or Australians and we can only produces a Government we deserve. In civilized people, driving under alcohol is not only unlawful but is generally accepted as such. In UK it a person who has consumed alcohol in the party would not drive his car home but would request another of his friends to drive him home in the car. 
The trouble lies in being less privileged, economically hand-to-mouth, the able bodied without a permanent job or sons of the well to do, all dressed up but nowhere to go, or Hotel which can not run on profit without serving Alcohol secretly, or divorced unskilled worried woman with several small children her husband has abandoned to look after, or those who have no hope to live a decent life. The privileged powerful and the wretched without any alternatives to food and to decent life, would privately and secretly continue to trade and consume Alcohol. Alcoholism is a human social problem more commonly met in illiterate, downtrodden, exploited, minority indigenous people without a hopeful future whether Christians or not, just like the phenomenon of corruption in the elites, the powerful Haves and the privilege; is not just a simple thing to stop completely in one Ana Hazare’s lifetime.
Manufacture, trade and consumption of alcohol is far too big and powerful deep seated an Issue to be controlled completely. More over, as language can not be legislated and controlled like a herd of cattle, similarly alcohol, perhaps the oldest drink after water, is a food item of man and should not be legislated too easily. it may  in all probability, continue even if there is an all-women government or a woman chief minister in the Government of Nagaland.
Alcoholism is a composite symptom of many ills in the society: Impoverishness, lack of opportunity for economic well being, inequality, ignorance, exploitation, lack of confidence in the self and in the community, power in the hands of a minority few in the midst of an overwhelming majority of helpless poor and many other ills known or unknown. You may like it, you may not like it: prohibition has failed in Nagaland. The trouble is: The Church leaders are afraid of the Church to admit the failure and shift the blame to the government and the police: The government is afraid of the Church.
Both the government and the Church are afraid of the Church. We have cut off the bridge after crossing the river and now we have no bridge to cross the river back!
Then what is the honorable solution?
My opinion is:
i. Let the Church continue to support prohibition of drunkenness vehemently, even condemn Slavery Jesus and Paul did not but let them not threaten to pull down the Government: Jesus and Paul taught Christians to respect the rulers of the land and to pray for them and to honor the government.
ii. Let the chicken hearted Government take heart the Church can not pull down a legally constituted Government.
iii. Let the government take the decision boldly for the good of the state for which they were elected.