The Kohima Carpenter and the Tribal Approval Bottleneck

Thekedolu was seventy-three. His hands had carved every significant morung (community hall) restoration in Angami country for the past thirty-five years. He'd trained under his father, who'd trained under his grandfather—knowledge that lived in the wrist, not a manual. The patterns he carved told stories: protection symbols, clan histories, the memory of the first morung builders. When the government scheme arrived last year—PM Vishwakarma, they called it, "divine architect"—it promised ₹15,000 in new tools and ₹3 lakh in credit at 5% interest, the kind of money that could buy better chisels, hire his grandson to apprentice formally instead of informally, maybe even restore the village's oldest morung before it collapsed entirely.

But it had now been six weeks since he applied.

The Waiting

The PM Vishwakarma portal at pmvishwakarma.gov.in was easy enough. Thekedolu's grandson—Kevito, twenty-six, working in Dimapur as a construction electrician—had filled it out online one evening, uploading photographs of the morung work, bank statements (sparse, cash-paid), and a letter from the village headman confirming Thekedolu's thirty-five years of craft. The portal assigned him an application number. Progress.

Then came the rule that the website didn't mention clearly: hoho approval.

The hoho—Nagaland's tribal council of village elders—governed everything from land disputes to resource allocation to which external schemes were permitted in a village. It was governance that predated the Indian state by centuries. And for PM Vishwakarma, in many Naga villages, the hoho had to certify that the applicant was a legitimate craftsperson of the village community, that the craft was traditional, and that the credit wouldn't destabilize local knowledge hierarchies or clan monopolies.

"Traditional morung carving," the hoho rule stated, "belongs to the clan that builds it. Outside carpenters cannot access morung work. But for maintenance and restoration of existing morung by the original clan carver—hoho approval required, two-week minimum."

Thekedolu's family had been the authorized carvers of Angami morungs in his village for four generations. This should have been straightforward. But the hoho met once a month, on the second Saturday. The first meeting—when Thekedolu's application was submitted—was already a month away. The second meeting, where approval would be formally recorded, would follow two weeks later.

So the timeline was locked: five weeks minimum, six if the meeting was delayed for feast days or grief.

Kevito called the PM Vishwakarma helpline at pmvishwakarma.gov.in three times. The agent told him the same thing each time: "Approval will be processed once hoho documentation is received. You may contact your village council directly to expedite." The portal wouldn't proceed without that documentation. The portal was indifferent to waiting.

The Tension

The beam was drying. Not rotting—Thekedolu had sealed the ends with lime and oil—but waiting. The morung it was meant for, the one belonging to a neighboring Ao clan, had begun to show structural cracks in the central beam. The family had asked Thekedolu to restore it before monsoon, ideally six weeks from now. Water damage would require replacing the entire frame, not just reinforcement. The cost would triple. The timeline was closing.

Meanwhile, Thekedolu had already spent ₹8,000 from his own savings on the elm wood and transportation. His last morung job—a small altar repair three months ago—had paid ₹18,000, cash. He'd spent that on his wife's medical expenses and a month's rice. His tool budget was zero. The PM Vishwakarma credit was supposed to fund new chisels (₹12,000), better saws (₹5,000), and a proper apprenticeship stipend for Kevito (₹1,000/month for six months, a formal training cost). All of it was locked behind the hoho approval letter.

He couldn't even start the formal apprenticeship without the credit funding. Under the informal model—which is how his father had taught him, how his son had learned—there was no wage, just meals and gradual skill transfer. But Kevito had a job in Dimapur. He could only apprentice on weekends and monthly holidays. To scale that to a genuine six-month apprenticeship, Thekedolu needed to pay him. The ₹3 lakh credit, at 5%, would cost ₹5,600 per month in EMI over three years—manageable if he took one major morung job per year at ₹60,000+. But none of that math worked until the credit came through.

The hoho meeting was confirmed for the second Saturday. But there were whispers in the village about the approval itself. One elder—Ketino, who'd held a grudge against Thekedolu's family over a land boundary dispute decades ago—was rumored to be pushing for stricter criteria. "Why should a carpenter use government money for work that's already profitable?" Ketino had apparently said. "The morung belongs to the clan. If we give credit to craftspeople, they'll sell their time outside the village."

Thekedolu hadn't built enough savings to take that risk. If the hoho rejected him, the application would be closed, and reapplication would take another four months. The beam would rot. Kevito would stay in Dimapur, working as an electrician for ₹1,200/day, and the carving tradition would continue to thin.

The First Pullquote

On the eve of the hoho meeting, Thekedolu sat with the beam, chisel in hand, and carved a single practice pattern—an old Angami symbol for persistence, the kind of mark his grandfather used to make on the underside of beams, where only the wood itself would see it. The grain was perfect. His hands remembered the angle without thinking.

He said something to Kevito in Nagamese, the language the morung spoke:

"Hoho mü mü chen apfü moyu ho. Kenewo lüho sü apü kesha lechu, atu mü moyu yem sensu te."

"The hoho is the root and the sky both. When the root says no, the sky doesn't change. But we carve anyway, because the wood doesn't wait."

It was not resignation. It was the old philosophy—that craft persists outside bureaucracy, that the act of carving is the act of claiming kinship with the generations before. But it was also pragmatism worn thin. Kevito heard the exhaustion underneath.

"Hoho mü mü chen apfü moyu ho. Kenewo lüho sü apü kesha lechu, atu mü moyu yem sensu te."

— The hoho is the root and the sky both. When the root says no, the sky doesn't change. But we carve anyway, because the wood doesn't wait.

The Shift

Two days before the hoho meeting, Kevito did something that surprised his grandfather: he walked into the Hornbill Festival Committee office in Kohima (a forty-five-minute bus ride from the village) and asked if they'd be interested in hiring a senior morung carver for festival sculptures and structural carpentry.

The committee coordinator, Kenelie—a younger woman from a Lotha clan—knew Thekedolu's work. She'd seen the altar carvings in the Kohima Baptist Cathedral. And she was, in fact, planning the infrastructure for the upcoming October Hornbill Festival. She offered Thekedolu a contract: ₹1,400/day for four weeks (October), for carving festival decor and structural wood elements, with a formal payment receipt and e-payment clearing.

It wasn't a morung job. But it was documented work. It was wage history that showed credit-worthiness.

More importantly, Kenelie suggested something else: "Have you tried filing the PM Vishwakarma application with a formal employment letter? Not just hoho approval—a letter from me, from the festival committee, saying Thekedolu is a contracted carpenter with documented income. That might be enough for the bank to move forward even while the hoho deliberates."

Kevito understood immediately. The PM Vishwakarma portal was designed for formal workers with bank accounts and salary records—the proverbial 9-to-5. The portal struggled with traditional craftspeople who had no fixed employer and mostly cash income. But the e-SHRAM registry (eshram.gov.in) was meant exactly for unorganized sector workers like Thekedolu. If he enrolled there, the e-SHRAM record would act as a digital wage history. Combined with a formal employment letter from the Hornbill Festival Committee, it might be enough to push the credit through the bank's automated workflow, even while the hoho was still deliberating.

Kenelie sent over the employment letter that same day.

Kevito spent an evening enrolling his grandfather in e-SHRAM—twelve data fields, a digital signature via Aadhaar, and a mobile confirmation. The e-SHRAM portal updated within two hours. Thekedolu had a digital identity as a construction worker, registered with social security benefits, accident insurance of ₹2 lakh, and a permanent record of his employment.

Then he logged back into the PM Vishwakarma portal and re-submitted the application with the new attachments: the Hornbill Festival employment letter, the e-SHRAM registration number, and a bank statement showing the first ₹1,400 payment (which Kenelie had processed immediately as a good-faith deposit).

The portal's automated eligibility checker—which had been stuck on "awaiting hoho documentation"—refreshed. Thekedolu's application status changed to: "Approved for Credit Processing — Bank Review."

The bank, NABARD (which handles PM Vishwakarma disbursement), reviewed the file in five days. The formal employment letter and e-SHRAM record were enough. The hoho approval, while recommended, wasn't a hard requirement for individual applicants with documented income. On the sixth day, the credit line was activated: ₹3,00,000 at 5% interest, EMI ₹5,600/month for three years.

The hoho meeting happened two days later. The approval letter was issued anyway, filed with the district administration and the panchayat. But by then, Thekedolu had already withdrawn ₹15,000 for new tools and registered Kevito for a formal six-week PMKVY carpentry certification at the Kohima ITI (using part of the credit as apprenticeship subsidy).

What Changed

Three months later, Kevito was in his grandfather's workshop every Saturday and one weekday evening, working through the PMKVY carpentry curriculum on top of the hands-on training. The first five projects were joinery fundamentals—mortise and tenon, box joints, dovetails—the language of modern Western carpentry. But Thekedolu taught the morung patterns in parallel: how the geometric Angami symbols encoded load-bearing principles, how the curved chisel made certain cuts impossible to detect from inside the morung, so the work seemed to arise from the wood itself.

The morung restoration for the Ao clan was completed six weeks before monsoon. Thekedolu and Kevito worked together on the main central beam—Thekedolu executing the final detail work, Kevito doing the structural reinforcement and finish sanding. The new chisels (purchased with the PM Vishwakarma toolkit credit) made the work faster without sacrificing precision. The cost came to ₹45,000 for materials and labor. Thekedolu's share was ₹32,000, against which he paid the first ₹5,600 EMI on the credit line. The rest covered Kevito's apprenticeship stipend and tool maintenance.

The Hornbill Festival contract ran for four weeks in October, bringing in ₹56,000 (₹1,400 × 40 days). The work—carving festival gateway structures, restoring some of Kisama Heritage Village's aging traditional morungs—was exactly the kind of visible, documented employment that built credit history. Thekedolu was paid via bank transfer, his name on the receipt, proof that he was economically active.

By month four of the credit, Thekedolu had generated enough secondary income and formal employment records that he could have taken a MUDRA micro-credit loan (mudra.org.in) if he'd needed to scale tool investment or buy timber stock. He hadn't, but the option was open. The digital wage record—from e-SHRAM and the Hornbill Festival receipts—made him visible to every financial institution in India, not just the PM Vishwakarma bank.

More importantly, Kevito's PMKVY certification was complete. He passed the final exam—a blend of traditional morung carving patterns and modern joinery—and received a government diploma. He quit his Dimapur electrician job and returned to the village, setting up a formal partnership with his grandfather: Kevito would take larger projects (residential interior work for Kohima developers, which paid ₹900–₹1,200/day), while Thekedolu focused on morung and heritage carving (which commanded premium rates: ₹1,400–₹1,800/day when booked through festival committees or cultural organizations).

The e-SHRAM registry meant that both of them had formal wage records and social security benefits—the first generation of Naga carpenters with a digital footprint.

A Conversation in the Workshop

One evening, Thekedolu and Kevito sat in the workshop as Kevito explained what had changed, in a mix of Nagamese and Hindi:

Thekedolu: "Hoho said yes, then. Took six weeks?"

Kevito: "Hoho said yes after three weeks. But the bank said yes after two weeks, from a different door. The employment letter—Kenelie's letter from the festival committee—that was the key. The bank didn't need hoho permission if we showed them you had regular work and were already earning money."

Thekedolu (in Nagamese): "Hoho mü hoho. But the government scheme works faster if we use the government's own tools."

Kevito (translating to Hindi and back): "हाँ। होहो तो हमारे समुदाय के लिए। लेकिन PM Vishwakarma तो सभी के लिए है। अगर हम e-SHRAM में पंजीकृत हैं, तो हम पोर्टल को दिखाई देते हैं। बैंक को होहो की जरूरत नहीं। होहो का अनुमोदन अच्छा है, लेकिन डिजिटल इतिहास तेजी से काम करता है।"

(Yes. The hoho is for our community. But PM Vishwakarma is for everyone. If we're registered in e-SHRAM, we're visible to the portal. The bank doesn't need hoho approval. The hoho's blessing is good, but digital history works faster.)

Thekedolu: "और अब तुम पास में हो। पढ़ाई पूरी।"

(And now you're here. Training complete.)

Kevito: "गाँव के दूसरे बढ़ई के लिए भी यह रास्ता है। अगर वे होहो की प्रतीक्षा नहीं करते हैं, अगर वे त्योहार या अस्पताल के लिए काम करते हैं—तो e-SHRAM + employment letter के साथ, वे क्रेडिट पा सकते हैं।"

(There's this path for other carpenters in the village, too. If they don't wait for hoho approval, if they work for festivals or hospitals—then with e-SHRAM + employment letter, they can get credit.)

Why We Built It

The hoho system isn't broken. It's the governance layer that kept Naga villages cohesive for centuries. But it wasn't designed for credit workflows that measure time in weeks and systems that require paperwork to move from one desk to another.

Three bottlenecks converged on Thekedolu:

1. Offline governance hitting digital timelines: The hoho met monthly. The PM Vishwakarma portal expected approval documentation within days. No one had built a bridge.

2. Traditional craftspeople were invisible to banks: Thekedolu had forty-five years of morung work, a reputation, clan credentials. But he had no wage history, no tax record, no formal employment letter. Banks defaulted to "no credit-worthiness."

3. The scheme assumed a different worker: PM Vishwakarma was designed for small business owners with sole proprietor licenses, artisans with bank accounts, or workers registered in formal labor schemes. It struggled with the majority of Nagaland's skilled trades—informal, clan-based, village-governed, cash-paid.

What would have been needed to avoid the six-week wait:

• A digital hoho interface: A simple web form where village elders could upload pre-approval letters, reducing the monthly-meeting bottleneck to a two-week turnaround.
• Employment letter requirement in the portal guidance: One line—"If awaiting hoho approval, a formal employment letter from an established employer (DONER contractor, government hospital, cultural festival committee) can substitute as proof of craft-worthiness."
• e-SHRAM auto-linking: When a traditional craftsperson registers in e-SHRAM, their PM Vishwakarma application should automatically flag them as eligible, even if hoho documentation is pending.
• Gig employment normalization: Seasonal work (Hornbill Festival, DONER projects, hospital maintenance) should generate formal receipts and e-payment by default, not as a special accommodation.

We're not arguing against hoho governance. We're arguing for the hoho and digital parallel tracks. Thekedolu didn't need to bypass his village council. He needed to move forward while the council deliberated.

What We Hope Happens

If Thekedolu's path becomes the common path, a few things shift:

For Naga carpenters: The knowledge transfer accelerates. Kevito returns to the village with formal credentials, attracting younger learners who want both traditional skill and government-recognized training. The morung carving tradition strengthens because it's economically viable, not a subsistence craft.

For Nagaland's skilled trades broadly: The informal wage economy doesn't disappear, but it gets a formal parallel. A mason or electrician can still take cash-paid DONER project work, but they can also register that work in e-SHRAM and generate credit history. No one has to choose between tradition and formal finance.

For state administration: The hoho remains the keeper of cultural authenticity—which clan can carve which morung, which knowledge belongs where. But the state's digital systems recognize both the hoho's role and the worker's need for speed. Parallel tracks mean no one has to wait for perfect governance to access credit.

For gig economies in the northeast: Hornbill Festival, DONER projects, hospital maintenance—these are already large employers. If they issue formal payment receipts and e-payment by default, they create the wage history that unlocks credit for thousands of informal workers. The incentive is simple: formal payment receipt = government can issue credit to their workforce = more skilled workers available for rehire = better project execution.

The Email That Arrived (Hindi + English)

Two months after the credit disbursement, Thekedolu received an email (Kevito read it aloud in the workshop):

Subject: PM Vishwakarma Repayment Successful — Thank You

Dear Thekedolu,

Your PM Vishwakarma credit account has processed your first EMI of ₹5,600 on 15 May 2026, via automatic bank debit. Your remaining balance is ₹2,94,400.

You have 12 months of repayment records and zero missed payments. Your credit score with NABARD has improved to 750+, and you are now eligible for:

• MUDRA Micro-Credit (up to ₹10 lakh, for timber stock purchase or workshop expansion)
• PM Svanidhi extension (if you expand to small-scale retail crafts)
• BOCW Nagaland tools subsidy (₹5K–₹10K toward chisel or saw replacement)

Your e-SHRAM social security is active. You have digital proof of:

• 12 months documented income
• Accident insurance coverage (₹2,00,000)
• PF/ESI eligibility (pending formal employment registration with a contractor or self-enrollment)

Your grandson's PMKVY carpentry diploma is registered nationally. He is eligible for:

• PMKVY Advanced Certification (higher-income specializations)
• State apprenticeship subsidy (₹1,000/month for future trainees he mentors)
• DONER contractor pre-qualification (fast-track vetting for government projects)

Keep carving. India is watching.

GabFORGE Desk
PM Vishwakarma Support
[email protected]

Thekedolu didn't fully understand the email, but Kevito broke it down: "आप अब सिस्टम में हो। आपका डेटा है। आपका इतिहास है। अगले बार, कोई भी आप पर विश्वास करेगा।"

(You're in the system now. You have data. You have history. Next time, anyone will trust you.)

The beam he'd carved for the Ao morung had been installed before monsoon. The geometric patterns—Angami protection symbols wrapped around load-bearing wood—would outlast him by generations. That was the craft.

But the credit, the employment letter, the e-SHRAM registration, the digital wage record—that was something new. It meant Kevito didn't have to choose between tradition and economic mobility. It meant the next generation of Naga carpenters could apprentice formally while honoring the hoho's authority. It meant credit could reach a village workshop without waiting for a monthly meeting to conclude.

Thekedolu picked up his finest chisel—the one his father had forged, the one he'd planned to retire after his last morung—and began work on a new piece. Not a morung beam. A master piece for Kevito's PMKVY portfolio: a demonstration of every Angami carving technique, documented for digital archiving.

Hoho and harbor both. Tradition and tomorrow. The wood didn't distinguish.

Resources That Helped

• PM Vishwakarma Yojana Portal: pmvishwakarma.gov.in — Collateral-free credit (₹3L), toolkit subsidy (₹15K), free training access for traditional craftspeople
• e-SHRAM Worker Registry: eshram.gov.in — Universal social security enrollment, accident insurance (₹2L), wage history for informal workers
• PMKVY Skill India: pmkvyofficial.org — Free vocational training certification; Kohima ITI offers carpentry, electrician, welder, plumber tracks
• Hornbill Festival Committee: [email protected] — Seasonal employment (Oct, 3–4 weeks, ₹1,200–₹1,600/day); formal payment receipts, wage history
• Naga Hospital Authority (NHA): [email protected] — Year-round maintenance contracts for carpenters, electricians, plumbers
• DONER Project Networks: State-managed infrastructure (roads, schools, hospitals); contractor hiring through government channels; ₹400–₹1,400/day standardized wages
• BOCW Nagaland Welfare Board: labour.nagaland.gov.in — Death/disability insurance, maternity benefits, tools subsidy for registered construction workers
• MUDRA Micro-Credit: mudra.org.gov.in — Growth capital (up to ₹10L) for small business expansion; craftspeople with PM Vishwakarma credit history qualify faster

Coda

The hoho approved Thekedolu's application in the third week. The letter was filed with the district panchayat and archived—a formal record that the village council blessed his work. It was never used to unlock the credit, but it was important that it existed.

Ketino, the elder who'd opposed the approval, visited the workshop three months later and ordered a carved altar panel for his family shrine. Thekedolu quoted him ₹8,000. Ketino paid ₹10,000.

"The credit worked," Ketino said, in Nagamese. "You have tools. Your grandson is here. This is good."

Thekedolu didn't argue. He measured the wood.

The credit line—₹3 lakh at 5% interest—would be fully repaid in 36 months. By then, Kevito would have completed his advanced PMKVY training and taken on heritage restoration contracts across three states. The morung tradition would have one more generation of skilled hands. The digital wage record would open doors that paper couldn't.

But the first morung they carved together—Thekedolu's final major work before stepping back—was still carved with the old chisels and the old patterns. The hoho's approval didn't make the craft. The craft made the hoho's approval worth granting.

Both paths. That was the shape of the future.