By HH Mohrmen
The day the Shillong City Police arrested some of the leaders of the Khasi Students’ Union (KSU) alleged to be involved in the violence and vandalism on the Khasi awakening day I was expecting the Union to oppose the police action and as usual organize strike and bandhs to pressure the government to release its leaders unconditionally. Expecting the worst to come, the memory of those non-stop days of protest organized by the KSU came back to me and I said to myself, ‘here we go again.’ But although it looked as if that the odds were staring against anything that is good, I still held my fingers crossed and hoped against hope that good sense would prevail and inwardly wished that the KSU will not take the State down the vicious cycle of protest, vandalism and violence yet again.
And the KSU took a bold new step. The Union applied for bail to get its leaders released. By doing so, the Union has shown its maturity and magnanimity at not interfere with the proceedings of law but to let the law take it own course. This is not a sign of weakness, but a sign of strength. Strength that comes from within; that does not rely on the old outdated pressure tactics but on the knowledge that it has the unflinching support of the masses! That is all that it needs to fight injustice. It is also a strength that comes from the knowledge that it is fighting for a just cause and therefore it needs all the help and support of the people irrespective of caste or creed to achieve its goals. The present leaders of the KSU deserve to be congratulated for this courageous act for in spite of the pressure from its rank and file and even from outside forces to proceed with the proposed road blockade, they chose to do the right thing.
With the kind of arrogant politicians that we have and a Government that is not sensitive to the real needs of the people, having a strong pressure group like the KSU is a boon for democracy to thrive in the state. The new leaders of the KSU are a wiser lot. They realize that the times are changing and the old tactics of the 70s, the 80s, the 90s will not work anymore, and so they need to be innovative and think of some new ideas of protest to pressure the government to work for the welfare of the people and not for the interest of the politicians and their cronies.
Talking of different ideas of protest, reminds me of the summer of 2009 when I was part of the protest in front of the White House at Washington DC. I was part of the inter-religious group to protest against torture in the US. The protest march met at the Lafayette park in front of the White House and after a short meeting some of the religious leaders then walked over to the White House and handed over the organisation’s demands to the officials there. But that was not the only protest before the White House that day. There was one lady who had permanently camped at the place to protest against nuclear armament or the stockpiling of nuclear weapons by the US which is also a threat to the world. I was told by my Unitarian Universalist friend that the lady has been camping in front of the White House for many years now. She reminded me of our own iron lady of Manipur, Irom Sharmila who continues to protest against the Armed Forces Special Powers Act – a cause she believes thinks is right. On the other wing of the White House I saw two men shouting slogans and waving a familiar yellow flag with a tiger head insignia in the middle of the flag. I realized that the people shouting at the top of their voices were Sri Lankan Tamils who were then perhaps seeking US intervention to end the genocide against the Tamils in Sri Lanka. I know the President was not in his office because it was reported that he was on his foreign tour, yet the protest continued.
Bandhs, road blocks and hartals are things of the past. They may or may not have worked in the past and surely the negative impacts of the strike, the bandhs, the hartals surpass the positive impact, hence there is a need of a new form of protest now. We can organize protests without disturbing the day to day life of the people; we only need to be innovative and come up with new protest ideas that would attract the attention of the press and those in power but at the same time does not bring the city or the entire State to a grinding halt. Why would we want to disturb people when our main target is to pressure the government? This is the need of the hour for the KSU and other pressure groups if they want to stay relevant in the contemporary society, because one cannot hurt the same people that supports you.
The issue that the KSU has repeatedly and unceasingly highlighted since its inception, with not much change, or should I say with change from bad to worse is the issue of the outsiders or the non tribals in the State. In the four decades the issue has undergone a sea change, from what is known as ‘foreigners’ issue in the 70s and the 80s to a more stylish term – the ‘influx’ issue. This issue is a real and the large scale influx is a threat to the stable demography of the state. There is indeed a presence of a large population of migrant labourers and traders in the state. I have always maintained that this is a complex issue. We can solve half of the problem if the government can stop coal and limestone mining in the State because the people who are involved in mining activities are mainly migrant labourers. If there is no demand, there will be no supply and I need not remind the readers that simple law of economics work here, but the question is can we do this?
I think more than 75 percent of the construction workers come from outside, mostly Bihar and Assam, yet our youths remain unemployed. This is a very serious issue. Of course we cannot expect our young graduates to do the menial job of a construction worker. That’s not what they were educated for. But the government can support the young people by training them and providing them with tools and construction machineries to take this job in a modern and organized way. Or the government can train more young people to do tiling work, plumbing and electrical works and if we have people who can take up quality construction work, where is the need to import workers from outside?
Perhaps we need to prepare our youth to do construction work sooner than later as I learn this from the cobbler in front of the SBI, Jowai. The cobbler who repairs my shoes told me that he is very happy with Nitish Kumar as there is all round development in the entire state. He also said that if the pace of development in the state continues, very soon he may not have to come to Jowai for work as he hopes there will be plenty of work available in Bihar. Is Dr. Mukul Sangma preparing for this? I also wish that Dr. Sangma would be similarly able to instill hope in the minds of the people, the way Nitish did on this cobbler in the distant land.
The government and the Students Union rather than being at daggers drawn need to sit together and work on strategies to prepare our young people to replace migrant labourers instead of unceasingly harping on the same issues. If we can do this we would have hit two birds with one stone. We solve unemployment amongst our youths and control entry of migrant labourers at the same time.