By Patricia Mukhim
There are 12 ministers in the MUA cabinet. But except for an occasional inauguration of this or that one does not hear of any one of them taking up substantive issues. Or addressing issues of urgent public concern! When 15 miners were trapped inside a coal mine in Garo Hills, the Mining Minister did not even consider it his duty to visit the site and to get a first hand account of the cause leading to their deaths. Rescuers had to come from Assam although such accidents are common in coal mines. This mining disaster made it to the headlines of most national newspapers. For us in Meghalaya it was just another unfortunate accident. The labourers are not our kith and kin, so who cares. Worse, the Government is still silent on the Mining Policy – a piece of work that was actually not spontaneous but which was directed by the Supreme Court of India following a petition to save the heritage limestone caves of Jaintia Hills!
Mr BM Lanong the Deputy Chief Minister, a person who is not driven by any hurry has of late become much more punctual and devotes more attention to Sports but not to Youth Affairs. The one reason he has to sprint and not walk is because his beta-noire the sprightly Ampareen Lyngdoh is like ‘doe a deer a female deer.’ They say the deer is one animal that has more stamina than its other friends in the jungle. Well in the political jungle of Meghalaya the one who gets up early literally catches the worm. The minister for Urban Affairs we are told, slogs outside and pore over files inside. Where she has failed to make a dent is in Khyndailad. And that’s because she has no control over the PWD. In Meghalaya collective responsibility is not a buzzword. Each department is a kingdom and each minister a law unto himself. And if you want to needle a colleague then you can use the Department to embarrass him/her. So that piece of road in Khyndailad which is hardly a kilometre long and was dismantled last year remains incomplete (khohruh-khohram). No one knows that Urban Affairs is not the constructing department so all the abuses from anyone who slips and falls and breaks a bone or gets a slipped disc, falls on madam Ampareen.
As far as mining goes Mr Lanong has not moved an inch. His perpetual carp is that he has put the Mining Policy together, but what’s the point if it remains in his closet and is of no real use to the millions of people whose lives are affected by the reckless and ruthless mining? I have a strong suspicion that this present Government does not have the spine to pass the Mining Policy for reasons of political expediency. As a voting public we should make this an election issue otherwise we are only voting a set of lawmakers who have hardly made any law worth its salt in the last five years. Funnily the opposition too seems to have been compromised as far as the Mining Policy is concerned. Else why are they not creating a ruckus on this issue? If I am to judge Mr BM Lanong it will be purely on whether his being the Mining Minister has been able to effect major changes in the way mining is carried out or whether we have gone from bad to worse.
Then we have an Education Minister who is least visible and hardly audible so we really don’t know what he does or does not do. There have been no earth-shaking policies in Education which could reduce drop-out rates and increase the presence of rustic children who still spend more time outside of school, minding cows or their younger siblings, then in the classroom. This despite the SSA and RTE and what have you?
The perspicacious Tynsong who is now in charge of our green canopies (now slowly turning to glades) speaks only when spoken to. So if the media does not hound him he is happy doing his thing (but what thing?). The last time he mouthed wisdom was when he spoke of the possibility of the Mawphlang Water Supply Scheme churning out sand and slush instead of water. He also said Government would try and acquire all catchments (very tall order indeed!). That was the last we heard. He has not deigned to speak so we don’t know if he has put his best foot forward as yet. He is also a person who is still hunting for a constituency, we are told.
The Power and Transport Minister and IPR minister, AT Mondal is a silent worker. He too prefers to stay away from media glare lest it burns him. But one fails to understand why ministers do not want to tell people what they are doing and what is in the offing. After all not everything they do is wrong. Some things at least are going right otherwise we would not be having the ‘power’ to sit and write this article on a computer powered by electricity. Things are pretty bad elsewhere. In Manipur you would be fortunate to have uninterrupted power for four hours. In Nagaland it’s a little better. But that doesn’t mean we should compare ourselves to the laggards. In the area of transportation, Garo Hills needs many more public transports to connect the interiors to the sub-division and the district headquarters. But a transport system can only be of help if we have roads. We cannot put the cart before the horse, but Mr Mondal might be able to persuade his colleague the PWD minister to buck up!
Yes, coming to the PWD Minister who is also the Home Minister, the less said the better. While the GNLA and the factionalised ANVC have been having a free run of the land, Mr HDR is heard gnashing his teeth in Shillong and threatening to finish off the gun-toting, fatigue wearing extortionists and killers. They are getting more adventurous by the day while the police is looking apologetic. I mourn for the dead cops and for innocent souls who have been labelled ‘police informers’ and shot mercilessly. When will our cops be able to take on those murderous loud-mouths? What does it take to scare the hell out of them? I am not sure that the Government even has a plan to tackle militancy in Garo Hills. And because others are seeing how easy it is to shoot and kill, even those who have laid low for so long are now raising their ugly heads and talking big. The HNLC has asked us all to splash anti-India slogans and paint the town with those ‘bloody’ jingles! What happens if we are arrested for sedition? Does the Home Minister even care to respond? Sometimes I wonder if he even reads the newspaper!
Some ministers do not even make a difference whether or not they exist. The PHE Minister, I suppose is totally controlled by the Chief Engineer PHE, so he really has no profile. The Rural Development Minister we are told goes along with what his senior bureaucrats in the department tell him. Thankfully they are trustworthy officers. But if I understand the politics of governance then it is the chief minister who is actually back-seat driving the Rural Development Department since most of the schemes launched in recent times for the rural populace have his unmistakable stamp of authority. And Mr Hek the water resources minister perhaps is still unsure about his role. What is water without PHE?
About the Health Department, we are told the Health Minister is himself not keeping good health. So his ability to understand the health demands of people in Meghalaya is suspect. Thankfully this Department is driven by a manager bureaucrat who we are told leaves no stone unturned to bring in state of the art, health care equipments for Meghalaya. What he would need however is a more dedicated team of doctors. As of now their commitment is more to their private practice.
Next we have the Social Welfare Minister whose department seems to be colluding with the rich food suppliers instead of providing nutrition for the poor. What an irony indeed! The Department is trying its best to eliminate the Self Help Groups (SHGs) and smaller players in favour of rich suppliers. Is this the new term for ‘Social Welfare?’
My analysis of the functioning of this Government is that the chief minister is a tireless runner with adrenaline pumping his body to span the distance between Delhi and Meghalaya and trying to bridge the Garo Hills. It’s a wonder he has not lost steam. And then there are schemes galore that the chief minister has launched. We find his billboards smiling at us all over the city but we have lost track of which scheme means what. It will take a superhuman effort to get those schemes rolling and for them to show results. There’s only six months to go before its going to be party time here. Even now we have contractors springing up like mushroom. I was shocked that a woman who can hardly spell the word ‘contract,’ got a contract for some MLA scheme in my locality. More of such contractors will come up between now and 2013. I guess that’s the name of the game!
But Dr Mukul Sangma is it possible for you to take stock of things with such a disparate group? All this running against time is bound to take a toll even on superman! Just think…. inter-state boundary… influx…unemployment… militancy.. degrading environment … what’s your priority?