By HH Mohrmen
Now that the election is less than a hundred days away, the town and the villages in the suburbs of Jowai are agog with the election fever which had begun to blow in the area for more two years now. Till the time of writing this article it looks as if Jowai is heading for a triangular fight. The fight seems to be between the candidates from the two main parties in the state, the Congress and the UDP and an independent candidate supported by P.A. Sangma’s National People’s Party.
It is a matter of grave concern that for an urban area like Jowai very few people have shown interest in entering the election fray. For three decades now politics in Jowai is dominated by three individuals, Dr. R.C. Laloo, Sing Mulieh and Moonlight Pariat. Laloo joined politics and won the election to the august house in 1983, represented the constituency for three consecutive times till 1993. In all the three elections, Laloo’s main contender was Singh Mulieh who was also an MDC and a Chief Executive Member of the Jaintia Hills Autonomous District Council, Jowai. Mulieh was able to break RC Laloo’s winning streak by first defeating him in the year 1998. It was a historic win for the UDP because in that particular year the party was able to win all the seven constituencies from Jaintia Hills District. The people of Jowai constituency reposed their faith on Mulieh and elected him for another term in 2003. However RC Laloo was able to reclaim Jowai for the Congress in 2008 and now the battle ground is ready again.
Another strong contender in the coming election is Moonlight Pariat. He too is no dark horse in the politics of the area. Moonlight was once RC Laloo’s blue eyed boy and was close to Laloo through family connections and until the eve of the 2008 election was the right hand man of Dr Laloo. He has represented a section of the Jowai Constituency to the JHADC as the MDC of the Jowai Central since 1994. He was elected as the Chief Executive Member of the Jaintia Hills Autonomous District Council after the 2004 election and remained in the office till March 2007. Moonlight was again elected as the Deputy CEM of the Council in December 2008 till the elections in February 2009 when Qually Suiam became the CEM. Since he was first elected in 1994 until 2009, Moonlight was elected as the MDC for the fourth consecutive term. Since the 2009 election Moonlight has virtually become the one man opposition member in the JHADC. So the three contenders for the prestigious Jowai constituency are not novice to politics anymore, the only exception in this case is Moonlight Pariat who has never been elected to the State Assembly till date.
Has Jowai fared any better during these three decades? Has Jowai seen any tangible progress during the last thirty years? If we may start from education, Jowai’s only government run institute of higher education is the Kiang Nangbah Government College, the World Bank sponsored polytechnic in the KNB Government College campus and the ITI in Khliehtyrchi. In fact these are the only non-school educational institutes run by the government in the entire District. The courses offered in the Kiang Nangbah Government College remain the same basic arts, sciences and commerce streams, when other like Shillong College have started business studies etc. Not only that no new courses of study were introduced in the college, but even new subjects were not introduced in the existing streams either. Jowai which is the headquarter of the then Jaintia Hills District and the seat of the Jaintia Hills Autonomous District Council has not seen development as such and on a Iawmusiang market day, Jowai is no different from any village market in the state.
There is no thought of a planned Township; it does not strike the minds of the representatives of the need to have a new and planned Jowai township. Jowai keeps on growing without any plan whatsoever and this has an impact on the way the town manages its waste. A modern town is judged by the way it manages its waste and Jowai till now has no proper sewerage system. Liquid waste from the entire town runs to the river Myntdu. There is also no mechanism in place to conserve and protect river Myntdu and if this trend continues Myntdu will in no time go the Wah Umkhrah way. Or is initiating programme on planning a proper drainage system for the town and protection of the river not the job of the public representative? The Jowai portion of the river Myntdu is the only part on the entire stretch of the river (which starts from near Jowai and flows to Bangladesh) that is free from becoming a dead river. Yet none of the three public representatives have taken cognizance of the seriousness of the issue of protecting river Myntdu.
Traffic on the main part of the town from Iawmusiang to Ladthalaboh continues to be a problem and it is still the same since the 2008 election when easing traffic congestion in Iawmusiang area was part of R.C. Laloo’s election promise. In the health front, the Jowai Civil hospital remains as it is since 1983; there is no improvement as such. The hospital does not even have a blood bank and the Jaintia Hills districts both east and west are yet to have their own functional blood bank. For reasons best known to the health department; the newly constructed building in a sprawling premise at Ialong village was not occupied till today. In the five year period since 2008, the town has only seen one new road which was expected to help ease traffic congestion but unfortunately it did not serve its purpose.
Jowai is the only place where one can experience a regular electric power cut without previous notice even if it is not raining anymore. In Jowai it now seems like it is mandatory to have two or three hours blackout every night; still nobody complains. People will talk about it in the tea shops and residents of the bereaved family and may complain to the reporter of the newspaper or leader of the NGO. That’s about it. Nobody ever dares to take the issue to the powers that be, and neither of the candidates has ever raises their voices against it. It is only in Jowai where the staff of the Municipal board can stop working for months together and still nobody complains. Has anybody every thought how people dispose off their rubbish? In Iawmusiang market the people burn their rubbish in the open. But neither the public nor their representatives complain. Well, the MLA does not live in Jowai, so maybe he doesn’t know about it but what about the other two? Or maybe they are busy visiting their prospective supporters.
On the battle field the major change in the delimitation of Jowai constituency is the inclusion of Mukhla village to the Jowai constituency. Mukhla by virtue of being one very big village is going to have a drastic impact on the election in this constituency; in fact the battle ground in Jowai constituency is now zeroed down to Mukhla. Of course the voters of Jowai town will ultimately decide the winner of the 2013 election to LA, but the swing of votes in few major villages like Mukhla, Khliehtyrchi, Sohmynting and Mihmyntdu will influence the decision of the fence sitters.
What this means is that Jowai constituency will not see much difference after 2013 election. Ultimately it will be the same people taking turns to represent the constituency. People have already seen their performance in various capacities, therefore one cannot expect to see much change no matter whoever they elect this time. It will be the same old people with no new ideas to take the constituency in general and the town in particular to new heights. So this time around another challenge for the candidates is to convince young educated people to come out to vote. One has overheard that as a mark of protest some young people of Jowai are even contemplating of surrendering their EPIC before the election. For the people of Jowai the choice seems to be between the devil and deep sea.