By Wanshan B Khardewsaw
Come December and it will be magic again, as someone sung. In this chaotic and confusing town of ours, we are about to immerse ourselves into a mood of festive extravaganza, where we all like to celebrate, and as we celebrate, life seems very, very good to us. We celebrate birthdays, weddings, anniversaries… and the list goes on. But can we celebrate freedom? Can we celebrate life? The question echoes as the American writer, Malcolm Boyd asked in this book “Free to Live. Free to die.” How free are we to live, to die? It is a question that is being asked by more and more people. I have a number of friends, who believe that life in this land of ours, and particularly in this proud city of Shillong, will be extinct or intolerable within a few decades.
Some fear environmental factors such as air and water pollution, and acute scarcity of drinking water. Others are strongly aware of nuclear overkill and its grim possibilities (with the alarming number of cancer cases and other chronic ailments in the state). Increasingly there is an even greater fear of the cheapness of life- indeed, the savagery of existence and death of the spirit- in the specter of a sponsored-gang state that haunts and disturbs some of the most sensitive people within the society. Writing this, only reminds me of the simple answer my university professor gave when being asked of why computer prices are coming down every day. The straight answer is “because it substitutes human beings”.
The much greater threat however, that I believe the Jaidbynriew is facing today is the threat of being landless and homeless within our own land and home. Babet Sten’s idea of Palamiere and the like, when she/he talks about “who owns Shillong” is agreeable to most of us. Without doubt the objective of the Land Transfer Act itself is defeated by the aggressive acquisition of land by these coal-barons, tycoons, mafia, politico or whatever we call them. Truly the threat is from within rather than from outside, in as far as land acquisition is concerned here.
We have now reached the point where it is impossible for a family with average income to buy a small plot of land of even less than two thousand square feet which is supposed to be the minimum requirement for a modest settlement; that too in the outskirts of town not to mention Shillong, where sellers and agents do not even bother to look at you, if your dialect or tone of speech does not resemble the rich people of the east. Simple economics explain this as the situation of excess demand, or rather the situation when, “too much money is chasing too few goods,” goods here being land. Can we celebrate this? Can we say that we are growing richer, when the wealth of the land is being exploited to be accumulated by only a few, who mostly dare!
Many will be unhappy with this write-up, but can we deny the fact that whereas the benefits are enjoyed by a microscopic minority, the cost is being paid by the majority poor and landless lot. How many an innocent soul is lost because the road quality and traffic condition which is being over-used by the so called tycoons does not even permit a smooth and regular flow, to be able to reach help on time? Or a farmer who has to abandon farming because of toxic waste that compromises the soil quality, all being by-products of senseless industrialization and massive environmental exploitation by a certain affluent elite.
Land belongs to the people in this God-given land of ours, we all agree. But I believe it implies more of equal opportunities and judicious allocation of land than the right to exploit and grab, as we have all along misinterpreted and misused. Shall we all keep silence and wait for a civil war to break up and divide us between the rich and the poor, or the landlords and the landless. Freedom is on our minds, including of course the landless.
What the so called landless are thinking about (which is mostly of being exploited by the landlords and the rich) have the potential to become the precursor to a civil rights movement. Does any in the government ever read these writings on the wall?
The Jaidbynriew needs freedom from doing things the way they have always been done. Increasingly, this freedom calls for an end to massive acquisition of land by a person(s); we need to push for a redefinition of land acquisition and possessions rights and radical changes within the social and clan set-up, adding new power for the poor and landless, with its own definitions of morality.
It is high time for the state to have its own “Land Ceiling Act”, whereby, a person(s) should adhere to a set limit in as far as acquisition and possession of land is concerned. Even as bringing the Act might affect a minority rich, it will judiciously be weighted out by the justice done to the majority poor and landless in the state. We all know how much more value a small plot of land means to a landless family than to a big landlord. An accepted norm of compensation can even be formulated, which should be one time, only at the initial implementation of the Act.
The illegal acquisition of land through Benami and hence the massive tax evasion therewith can somewhat be combated if ever this Act is to be implemented, as massive acquisition of land can be halted, thereby preventing a single person(s) to acquire land for whoever befriends him/her for business motives. With public opinion and contribution, the Act might even consider the cases of land acquisition by descendants of mixed marriages, to certain extent, not ignoring the fact that the Land Transfer Act has failed to arrest this particular confusion from the minds of the public.
We need to combine thought and action in a basic style of being. This is our best way to achieve that elusive quality called social welfare, and also to maximize it. It is also the best way to help others achieve the benefits that they have long been denied.
This small write-up is a reflective openness to situations that we are now confronting. And the writer does believe that it will encourage authentic response from whatever ends.
None of us can help the things life has done to us. They are done before you realized it and once they are done, they make you do other things, until at last everything comes between you and what you’d like to be, and you’ve lost your true self forever.
— The Grand Weaver.