Whether we talk of health, education, road connectivity or water and sanitation the situation in rural Meghalaya remains grim. People continue to die of preventable diseases like malaria, tuberculosis, and water borne diseases like diarrhoea dysentery and typhoid. And now we have the resurgence of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis to add to the dilemma. For the rural population things have just not worked. They have diligently elected MLAs and MDCs but at the end of the day they have got nothing.
The launch of pro-poor, pro-people schemes like the National Rural Health Mission (NHRM) has not had much impact in Meghalaya because the health infrastructure in the rural areas has not been created. A 100-bedded hospital in Nongstoin inaugurated a year ago is yet to take off. Doctors have not been appointed and equipments are yet to be installed. Would this have happened in a private hospital? In the private sector once an infrastructure if created it is made use of so that the return on investments is not delayed. In this regard while the health sector is a social service sector it ought to function like a private sector enterprise so that people will learn to have faith in the state and its services.
Health care in the private sector is unaffordable. People have had to sell or mortgage land and property to meet the health expenses of family members. Why should the choices be so stark? Why can’t the Government provide basic tertiary health care? In 37 years Meghalaya should have been able to come up with state of the art cancer treatment hospital or a heart care centre where the best services are available on payment for the wealthy and the service is free for BPL families. Surely this is not an unachievable goal if only successive governments had the vision and knew where to pitch the goalposts.
The plight is similar with all other services. Education is in the doldrums in rural Meghalaya. The Right to Education (RTE) might look good on paper but its implementation unless launched on a mission mode with dedicated officials, who empathise with the poor, will be yet another unmet goal in Meghalaya. It’s time to take stock of the 37 years of statehood and do a realistic auditing of where all the money has gone.
