By Toki Blah
“To market, to market to buy me some votes.
Home again, Home again, elections are won!”
A friend, a sitting MLA, who is really more of a business man than a politician, gave me a piece of unsolicited advice. He earnestly recommended that I should go in for poultry farming. Kroilers he proclaimed, a breed of dumb but fast growing table birds, are the best breed to invest in. ‘Guaranteed money churners’, he claimed. Returns can be expected within 3 months at 3 to 4 times the investment made. Govt subsidy is assured. According to him the birds were quite easy to rear. The only care needed was in the initial stage, the fattening period to be precise. After that just leave them alone, they take care of themselves. They manage to survive on leaves and grass or whatever edible rubbish they are given. They also fetch a good market price. Best business enterprise ever invented. Well, he should know. An expert speaking from years of rewarding experience. Speaking of something his livelihood depends on. Only difference is that instead of a chicken coop he probably was talking about his constituency and its electorate.
Chicken coops and electoral constituencies indeed! By what stretch of the imagination can they be compared to one another? Well in a modern deep litter chicken coop, the farmer concentrates solely on the development and growth of selected birds. He takes time and trouble to feed them, cater to their needs and in general looks after them. The attention paid is so intense that the poor bird brains are eventually led to believe that their collective wellbeing and survival is the sole reason for the farmers existence, little realising the self-seeking intent behind the facade of benevolence. The brainwashed and manipulated chicks actually exist only to bring in the best possible profit to the farmer. What happens to them is no concern of his as long as his interests are served. The problem here is that the scenario bears too much of a similarity to what is happening within the political system we live in. Our institutions, our Dorbars and society itself has allowed itself to be overly dependent on political handouts. Money, especially ‘money for votes’ has completely overtaken whatever political good sense existed. We are treated no better than chicken in a coop and tragically we seem to like it. We even have a name for those who feed us rubbish. We call such people ” ki briew ba bha”( Good people). I mean how gullible can one be?
Well dear readers, with the 2013 elections round the corner, the ‘chicken coop’ exercise in the different constituencies of Meghalaya has already begun. For starters there is the story of a certain well heeled 2013 aspirant, seeking a Congress ticket, who recently threw a lavish tea party at a lakeside MTDC hotel, for a group of 1500 Congress party workers. The bill came to a whooping 10, 00,000/- (@ 666/- per head, gold biscuits must have been served with the tea!) All doubts as to whom the constituency Block Congress Committee would recommend for the 2013 elections were instantly put at rest. This 666 shock and awe attack caused massive collateral damage elsewhere. The sitting MLA now walks in a daze. All the good work he had put in the last decade wiped out with one sip of 666 tea. He didn’t know what hit him. In his despair he has been tearing off the most luxurious beard lovingly cultivated over the past 20 years. He is so depressed that his duplicate now represents him at all official functions. The reason? Everyone is now busy extolling the virtues of the new messiah. ‘U bru wada bha chisha seh’, and in keeping with the ‘Chicken Coop’ theory, this praise from those who wouldn’t even know the 666 host from Adam!
Then there’s this other Good Guy, a sitting MLA from the coal rich constituencies of East Meghalaya. He was first introduced to the Chicken Coop game of politics about fifteen years ago. By that time he had dropped out of primary school, made his pile from his rat hole enterprise, buried alive a few unnamed miners in his mines, polluted quite a few streams, but he had not forgotten to donate a tidy sum to the faith he belongs to. (A nice way to ensure God’s on your side). He was considered a Good Guy by one and all and seen as prime MLA material. He had the ability to spend and fifty lacs that first attempt got him his MLA seat. He never did much but a few lacs more got him his life’s ambition- an official vehicle with a red light! In 2008, he won again by spending more than Rs 3000 per vote. Today, mainly because of inflation, his constituency expect him to spend not less than Rs 6000 a vote in 2013. Business sense got the better of him and now he is considering shifting his generosity to a constituency to the North. “The poor people of Ums—g have assured my 2013 electoral victory for less than 500 rupees per vote. They are poor people and it is my duty as a God fearing person to help these poor folks” he piously proclaims. A Good Man who desperately wishes to help the poor. He’ll simply give them money for their votes.
The whole of Meghalaya, especially its rural constituencies, already are or will soon be, surfeit with similar going-ones, aimed solely at exploiting the poor. We have a 66 % BPL population (real or manipulated still a suspiciously moot question) but definitely a section of our society that is most susceptible to the influence of a note with the picture of the Father of the Nation printed on it. (Gandhi Ji must be turning in his grave as he suffers the nefarious indignities our politicians pile on his picture. His soul probably does a double turn each time the very same netas again venerate him on the 2nd of every October) To the delight of many Good People, especially those with a vultures eye on a ‘money for your vote’ opening, the more BPL there are the better their chances of winning the polls. What alarms such Good People most is the disappearance of poverty from our society. It would mean the end of the Politics of Patronage; the end of feudal representation in electoral politics. Poverty alleviation would destroy forever the fertile conditions that are so conducive in transforming ‘Good People’ into good for nothing political leaders. Our ‘Good People’ will therefore never allow such a thing to happen!
So do we have a problem? Of course and it probably lies in the fact that as an electorate, we have yet to learn how to differentiate between ‘good people ‘ and ‘capable people’. Our perception of goodness is conditioned by an image of Santa Clause handing out free goodies. In an environment of increasing poverty, a person with the ability to dole out free money is perceived as Good. This perceived Goodness is then used to tilt the balance at the polls. One can understand and even sympathise if this misconception is limited to the needy, the deprived and the ignorant. The disturbing fact is that society leaders; traditional heads, religious leaders, leaders of NGOs and pressure groups- actually all those who should know better- shamelessly subscribe and encourage this corrupt practice and belief. The outrageous fact is that Political Parties of Meghalaya openly support only such candidates who openly declare their ability and intention of winning through the purchase of votes. It is the one and sole reason why people with money but with little brains and even less morals to match, now rule over us. Why we cry for Meghalaya – Far too many ‘Good’ people; so few ‘Capable’ Leaders.