Public policies essentially capture the intentions of the government. Without a policy there can be no governance. To govern there must be a set of guidelines. Policies provide those guidelines. Policies enable the public to measure the achievements of the government. If there is a public policy it can be critiqued and government can be pulled up for not implementing its policies. A policy document lists out the intentions or objectives of the government for a particular department. Take for example education. The Education Department should know what its long term and short term objectives are. Meghalaya encounters several problems in Education. There is poor literacy, high drop-out rates, poor pass percentage at the school final examination. Many more children remain outside the school than inside. Even in the suburbs of Shillong many parents prefer to make their children look after their younger siblings or make them work in the fields. Despite the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) and many other innovative schemes in education, government has not been able to motivate parents to send their kids to school. This obviously means that additional intervention and incentives are required in Meghalaya to make ‘education for all’ a reality. Since we do not have a policy we would not be able to take on board suggestions put forward by NGOs specialising in educational research about the gaps in educational pedagogy. The MPA government that held power for a year from 2008 tried to come up with an educational policy after wide consultation with various stakeholders. But before the policy could be passed by the Assembly the MPA lost power. The Policy is now cold-storaged perhaps never to be revived. Sadly in Meghalaya people don’t even care to demand a white paper from every department. For the government not having a policy allows it to function in opacity. It is difficult for the opposition to find fault with government if it does not know what the deliverables are.
Policies on important subjects like Health, Mining, Water Use, Land Use, Revenue Generation, Public Works, Public Health Engineering, Forests and Environment etc. are conspicuous by their absence. Policy enunciation should become a major public demand in the 2013 election. That Meghalaya has been functioning without a policy for 37 years is disgraceful. It shows the lack of seriousness among legislators and those in government and an equal absence of awareness among the public about importance of public policy.