By Patricia Mukhim
Every person in this country has a view on this presidential election because it is the most hotly contested one. Many from Meghalaya are silently hoping against hope that PA Sangma wins. When I ask them why, their answer is, “Because it is high time a tribal from Meghalaya occupies the august chair.” Others feel that the North East and Meghalaya would become the talking point in this country. There is this all pervasive sense of being redeemed from victim-hood should Sangma win the race. We are always looking out for an opportunity to teach the mainstream Indian a lesson for looking down on us or for not giving us enough attention. There really is no one who simply wants PA Sangma to win. He has to win because …… the reasons are as many as there are people in Meghalaya.
There is a particular reader who has a quarrel with this paper because its allows all kinds of views to appear and because our editorials are critical of PA Sangma’s modus operandi in this whole presidential race. We had said that Sangma never consulted his constituents in Tura as to whether they would release him from the onus of being their legislator. The former Lok Sabha Speaker had started his campaign from Tamilnadu after getting the blessings of Amma (Jayalalitha). Should those blessings not have come from his own people first? Politics is politics. It would be naïve of us to believe that Jayalalitha’s AIADMK and the Biju Janata Dal are supporting Sangma because of their empathy for tribals. They have their own political axes to grind and each one is looking at the next electoral alliance. PA Sangma is a convenient scapegoat.
The BJP and its mentors the RSS and Bajrang Dal appear to have joined the, “we will support a tribal candidate,” bandwagon but with an eye on 2014. In fact there is a not a single political party that is not using this presidential election to test the waters for the next general elections. Hence Mr Sangma is deceiving himself if he believes that all the support he has garnered for now is based on goodwill and that the political parties and individuals supporting him are actually doing so out of admiration for his excellent qualities. Sangma indeed has excellent leadership qualities and would have changed the face of Meghalaya had he succeeded in being chief minister for a full five year tenure in 1988. At the time he had honest intentions to govern and govern well. But that was not to be.
I recall how Sangma became deeply disillusioned by the deception from those he most trusted – those in his inner circle. But not to be deterred he went back to the Lok Sabha and the people of Garo Hills have indeed been loyal to him. If Sangma claims that he won 9 elections in a row, then it is not because of his own charisma. It is because the voters have repeatedly reposed their faith in him. They have switched parties whenever he did. They have listened to whatever he told them. They have had implicit faith that he would bring change to their lives. But has Purno Sangma made good those election promises? After being elected MLA of Tura yet again in 2008, Sangma was around for as long as the NCP-led Meghalaya Parliamentary Alliance (MPA) was in the seat of power. Once the MPA lost power, he spent more time in Delhi. People of Tura say that he is a visiting MLA, not available when they need him most. Now he has ditched them yet again by resigning as MLA. This means that the people of Tura will be unrepresented for the next eight months. They have no MLA and will have to go to someone else in case they need the MLA’s signature on any document. Will the people of Tura not feel orphaned yet again?
Coming to the Christian card, I am amused at the blatant support that some church elders cum politicians from Meghalaya have given to PA Sangma. Then there are some from Sangma’s religious fold who are vocal about supporting this ‘tribal and Christian son of Meghalaya’ because their argument again is that the Christians have never had a chance to hold the presidential office. (Perhaps many church elders have an ardent wish to have a church service in the Rashtrapati Bhavan premises). I am a Christian but I believe that in a secular and pluralistic country like India, religion is best kept as a personal and private affair. If we wear religion on our sleeves we are as guilty as those we condemn for using religion to get to power at all costs. We are only provoking others who believe in divisive ideologies like Hindutva to take hardened stances. Of course the Christians in this country are a small minority but would it make a difference to the large number of poor Christians in the poor enclaves of this country if we had a Christian as President? At best it would make them feel good but it would do nothing for their hungry stomachs.
But it is not as if Pranab Mukherjee is a perfect presidential candidate either. Unfortunately in this country it is not ‘we the people’ who get to vote for the president. It is our elected representatives who vote on our behalf but they all take partisan postures. You cannot expect the Congress MPs and MLAs to vote for PA Sangma because they too have to guard their flanks and they rely a lot on the support of their parties to win elections. Because the people of this country have so little to do with the presidential polls they have remained aloof and watched the intrigues and shenanigans from a distance. No one was happy when Pratibha Patil became the President; not even the women of this country. But did we have a choice? It was one woman who wielded that power to suggest that Pratibha Patil would become president and she became the president.
I find it preposterous that the Congress should choose a presidential nominee who has failed as finance minister in the current tenure of the UPA. The Congress is literally dumping Pranab Mukherjee on us! The UPA had to get rid of Mukherjee if the economy was to get back on the rails. It would have been fatal for the UPA in 2014 if Mukherjee were to continue as Finance Minister. The rupee was on a free-fall, last touching the Rs 57 mark per dollar. And now that the prime minister himself is holding the finance portfolio he has already announced some immediate steps to prevent the economy from sliding further. Apologists for Pranab Mukherjee say that he could do nothing in the light of the global recession. But a number of economists believe that the Indian economy is stagnating. In March 2008 the Indian GDP was growing at 8.6%. This year in March the GDP had gone down to 5.3%. Agricultural growth is at its lowest. Services slowed to 7.9 percent in the fourth quarter led by slowdown in trade, hotels, transport and communication sub-sector. The country is facing the sharpest deceleration in manufacturing. Inflation has just hit the roof and the poor are getting poorer despite the plethora of pro-poor schemes initiated by the UPA. If things continued the way they are doing, India would have reverted to the pre-liberalisation era when it had to mortgage its bullion.
So perhaps it’s a blessing in disguise for the country that we have a change of guard at the Finance Ministry at this time. But why should Pranab Mukherjee be rewarded for making a mess of the economy? This is something Indians do not deserve.
It is in the light of these disillusionments that this country must now debate on the role of the president and whether the current mode of election of the president is the best one. Of course the president is only a ceremonial head but we could rethink that role as well. That’s the beauty of democracy. We are supposed to change things when they become untenable.