By Patricia Mukhim
Indigenous societies are guided by the ethos of common good. We are called tribal because of some characteristic behaviour one of which is that individual needs are subservient to the needs of the collective. In tribal communities, water, forests, land etc are common property resources and not a commodity owned and controlled by a few. Is that the reality in Meghalaya today? Are we still a ‘community’ guided by principles of working towards the collective good? Do we still uphold customary practices in critical areas of life or do we use them for selfish interests only? Realistically speaking the Khasis seem to have transcended community and become individuals living within a geographical space where those who can afford to are scrambling to buy up land (including forest land and catchment areas) at a frenetic pace. Once land is held by an individual the person begins to exercise absolute rights on that land by way of mining, quarrying etc. But that individualism used to exclude rivers and waterways. What is frightening today is that even rivers are leased out to individuals, which by no means can be said to be owned by anyone. The District Councils all over are leasing out rivers to those who can afford to bid for the price quoted by the Councils. As a result the Umtyngar River has become clogged with mud and slush on account of sand banking by those who have taken the river on lease.
Who gave the District Councils the power to lease out our common properties so they can raise funds for their upkeep? Do the rivers, waterways, forests and catchments belong to the Councils, or are the Councils merely the custodians of these public resources which they should be conserving? If the Councils have commodified rivers, forests and catchments then how can these resources be called community resources? In that case is the Sixth Schedule not an instrument of our destruction? Have the Councils ever consulted the community about the best way to use these common properties? How and when did we sign away our rights over these resources? I don’t recall the Sixth Schedule giving the Councils that mandate. Are these not issues of concern since they hit at our basic reason for calling ourselves indigenous people, or Khasi, Garo, Jaintia people with a tradition we are proud of? What is that tradition anyway? Do we still remember salient features of the oft quoted tradition?
The two- day retreat on water organised by the Meghalaya Water Foundation on July 23-24, 2013 at Sohra is timely in that it made us think of the complexities that define the tribal society today. While tradition still exerts control over the communities despite the plethora of constitutional institutions that govern us, the ability of the traditional bodies to control the activities of individuals is increasingly becoming suspect. No agency is able to stop individual land owners from mining and quarrying and bringing down entire slopes so long as their commercial needs are met. This is the most contentious issue facing our society today. The animator cum trainer at the retreat, Rathindra Roy after looking at the issues raised as “nature of the problems” surrounding water remarked that complex problems require equally complex answers. Coming up with such answers is not easy because it requires everyone’s consent on the protocols that govern the sustainable use of resources without denuding and degrading the environment.
On the way to Sohra every conscientious visitor would have noted the large scale quarrying where the green landscape is replaced by huge tracts of bare, brown earth cruelly ‘commodified’ as boulder and sand and not as a holistic environment sustaining bio-diversity and life. Are we telling ourselves that the owners of those tracts of land don’t understand the consequences of their actions and that they need to be educated by some modern educational template borrowed from the west? What happened to our indigenous knowledge? Where did it disappear? Is it not greed and commerce that has buried alive all that we learned from our ancestresses? It is true that with population growth there is a demand for more houses and other infrastructure. We should now be doing a social audit of whether the biosphere of Meghalaya is capable of sustaining the unrelenting quarrying and sand banking activities. Should we be exporting sand and boulders outside Meghalaya? Are we doing so? Are there no degraded lands from where boulders and sand can be extracted without too much loss to the environment and only for our domestic needs? Perhaps there are no easy answers to these questions because there are too many agencies that assert and exert control over the environment without wishing to be stakeholders in its conservation. Why? Because there is no money in conservation? The lakhs and crores of rupees allocated for conservation over the decades have gone into the pockets of the custodians of our forests, soil and water. So why should they bother what happens to this fragile eco-system today?
Unfortunately for them water is a great equaliser. The rich and poor, the victim and perpetrator all require equal amounts of water to survive. In fact the former require more because of their toilets and their shower baths and their need to spray clean their gardens and vehicles. Yet the availability of water as a free resource is no longer assured. Many of our springs have dried up because somebody upstream has decided to drill underground water and destroyed the aquifer. And downstream residents don’t seem to have any instrument by which to exercise their rights! I thought we empowered the District Councils to fight for those rights because we elected 30 members in each of the three Councils. If they are not fighting for our rights then pray what are they busy with? Can the Councils tell us what they have strived to retain as common property resources over all these years? Or have they signed away our rights to mine owners and quarrying mercenaries? It is time to ask the District Councils these hard questions because when the water wars come upon us it is possible that the smart Councillors might face the wrath of angry mobs.
And coming to our traditional institutions, I have several questions for them. They represent the collective not individuals. So why don’t they stop any activity by an individual that hurts the long term interests of the community? The Hima Mawphlang which is the custodian of the rivers that actually feed the Greater Shillong Water Supply Scheme (GSWSS) has failed to prevent deforestation, denudation and quarrying over the forest lands owned by clans, communities and private players. So whose interests do they serve? The collective interests or that of a few? And this looks like the rule, not the exception? If so can we continue to repose our blind faith on traditional institutions and consider them as “holy cows” when they have failed us consistently? Perhaps it is time to create new peoples’ institutions to meet the present crises – ones that can be held socially accountable. As of today who can hold the Dorbar, the Raid, the Syiem accountable? Can any individual or group do it? No we can’t because they wield the sword of tradition like the last existing fig leaf.
Other constitutional agencies dealing with water are all working at cross purposes. Not even the objectives are converging and each institution/department is working in a silo of comfort and often on adversarial terms with the others, thereby ending up doing more harm than good. We do need a body like the Meghalaya Water Foundation but it must have the teeth to advocate for pragmatic policies in the wide and all encompassing idea of water, such as its use, its conservation, protection, detoxification, quality maintenance, its equitable distribution, the maintenance of catchments, legislation on control over activities that threaten to destroy water sources, encroachments on water bodies etc and strict implementation of these enactments. At the level of Government there must be an overarching body to bring different water-related departments in a single roof where the buck will stop.
It’s time for tougher measures because water is not going to last forever. Already many citizens are buying water from private sources because they can afford to. What about those who cannot afford to pay or do not have adequate storage space? Don’t they have a right to potable drinking water and enough to wash and bathe?