By Patricia Mukhim
The other day I was pleasantly surprised to read a positive blurb on the Facebook page “Meghalaya anti-corruption forum.” It said, not all politicians are corrupt and that some of them are, in fact, very nice people when you deal with them on a one to one. That was a far cry from the strident voices of condemnation which labels all politicians as corrupt and unworthy of our trust, much less our respect. Coming from a young person, that remark made me think awhile before I posted back that we live in such an inscrutably, convoluted world that it seems so easy to blame someone for our ills. It has, in fact, become a congenital need to blame somebody somewhere for what goes wrong in our world, except ourselves of course.
Well even hardened souls like this one can make amends. You live and learn after all. But you know what? If I write a sober piece of article, a contemplative one, an article that claws at my own soul, people do not relish it. Everybody wants a “hard hitting” write-up to slay the devil of corruption. Some people call me a ‘firebrand’ journalist. I don’t even know what that means except perhaps that I have been hounding and pounding on as many politicians as I know since I took up journalism on a serious note. And often we columnists tend to want to please our readers (play to the gallery?) rather than remain faithful to our theme and to the larger objective of journalism. Rather late in the day for that, isn’t it, some might ask? Well, I have decided to take a sabbatical from that hounding and pounding mission. Those who want to fire the gun from my shoulders ( and God knows how I have lent these poor shoulders to fire both live and dead bullets) can find someone else, for now.
Life is tough enough chasing horrendous deadlines which never seem to end. Over and above that you have to ferret around for non-existent skeletons in somebody or the other’s cupboard. In the end life takes a toll and you realise you’re on a roller coaster of your own making which is just shortening your life span. Is it worth being on that mental and spiritual treadmill? Some friends in high places who are perhaps tired of my ‘vitriolic attacks’ on unfortunate victims decide sometimes to send me a message in the form of a book. What they want to say is ‘read this stuff you …….)’. One person who has had to face a lot of flak for a misadventure during his service tenure gifted me a book he had read. It’s called “Getting Past No” by William Ury. It’s a do it yourself (DIY) book on how not to get your proposals shot down. The book is a fabulous read and has taught me some of life’s well deserved lessons.
One lesson I learnt from Ury’s book is that not every platform is a battle field, which is what we in the media tend to think. Over the years I have hounded so many people out of their comfort zones, made so many enemies and earned so much of expletives that they would in themselves constitute the contents of book. Everyday we set out of our homes donning gloves that can be compared to porcupine quills, ready to land a punch on the first victim of our over-enthusiastic, hyper-sensitive journalistic overdrive. A quarter of a decade later of doing the same thing week after week, one realises that every day need not be a battle. We do not need to don combat gear or come out victorious all the time. Life is about winning some and losing some.
A great lesson, albeit one learnt very late in life is that not everyone in government is the enemy. There are people who do good things; who deliver; who care and who are as concerned as we are about the State. Unfortunately it’s the bad apples that draw our attention and sap our energies. Of course we are duty bound as journalists to report lapses and to prevent those who are custodians of public resources from creating private wealth by chanelling those resources into their private bank accounts. And God knows we do not do enough of this stuff! Sometimes people have dragged us to court on flimsy grounds, just to harass us. Mani Kumar Subba the lottery baron filed a case against me and this paper in 1992, 1993 for linking him to MS Associates. The case was filed at a North Lakhimpur court. Imagine his gumption!
The whole world knows Mani Kumar Subba is MS Associates and MS Associates is Mani Kumar Subba, yet he insisted on wearing a halo. We fought Subba and gathered so much of dossier against him that the CBI which was pursuing several cases against him at the time wanted us to share those documents with them. Incredible, isn’t it? One would have thought that the agency would have more papers than a journalist could ever collect. I guess that’s how the cookie crumbles in most of the investigations. And Mani Kumar Subba was very close to most of the Congress politicians in our State. He did brisk lottery business here and still owes Meghalaya crores of money, but I suppose the amounts have been written off as quid pro quo. Sometimes I wonder why the RTI activists pick and choose their victims and why Subba has never come within their ambit of investigation. As far as politicians are concerned, many of them enjoy the hospitality of Subba’s farmhouse at Vasant Kunj in New Delhi. Nowadays, Subba seems to have lost a lot of clout! I often see him travelling on a flight from Guwahati to Delhi like a commoner. Gone are all the airs of a mafia don.
Of late, I find that it is getting more difficult to detect corruption in high places. Has everyone had a change of heart? Or is it because the government or those who run it have been on notice and therefore unable to steal public money? The answer could be anywhere in between. Either we journalists have become naïve or the manner in which money is channelled has undergone some metamorphosis, or those who are used to short-changing the public are not in a position to abuse their positions. I think the last one is the most plausible reason. Some of the elderly political gentry have really made hay while the sun shone on their fortunes. They have built little kingdoms for their children and grand-children and ensured that they would never be in penury. Not unlike the family down the lane which has become poorer after inflation and cannot even take their kid to the doctor because the consultation fees are so high, so they decide to self-medicate the child.
I have also noticed that some departments in the Meghalaya Government are getting wiser. The health department though the NRHM is sending me several messages on my cell phone asking me to breastfeed my child until the age of two… to go to a doctor if I have fever because it could be malaria …. to adopt family planning methods and space my child-birth up to three years .. etc. I wish we had this technology thirty years ago. Alas, now I have transcended that part of my life! But computers and mobile phones are gender neutral and neither can they identify the age of the mobile phone owner, so the messages go to all and sundry. Nevertheless, it’s a good try. The messages are force multipliers. I usually forward them at my cost to those in their child bearing years and hope that others do too. We owe it to ourselves to take note of the spiralling population. And mind you before we point a finger at the ubiquitous Bangladeshi we need to look at our own statistics. The NFHS survey 2010 says Meghalaya records the highest fertility rate and is the lowest in condom use. So we are ourselves to blame for the spurt in population. It’s always better to keep our own homes in order, although I suspect that’s difficult because we have all been tutored to play the blame game.
Delayed wisdom, is I suppose better then being intransigent. And with that I end this soliloquy! And also surrender my claim to being a soi-disant saviour of the world.