By Patricia Mukhim
This article seeks to deal with two issues. One is the demand of the people of Ri Bhoi for a ‘local’ Deputy Commissioner and the other is of the CSWO RTI showing how the land acquired by Meghalaya Development Authority (MUDA) has been allocated for different educational, health and other institutes. In the first issue, regarding appointment of a local (I suppose this means Khasi or better still a Bhoi) as Deputy Commissioner, I hope that we are not suggesting that the rules of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) be rewritten to bring down the standards to that of a local or locality leader. One can understand that people have a grouse against a particular Deputy Commissioner and this is not the first time that one has heard a cry for local DC. It happened in Jaintia Hills as well but the Government remained firm in appointing Abhishek Bhagotia as DC of the newly created district of East Jaintia Hills at the time. He has done his job commendably including handling of a major bus accident just a few days after taking over the district. So the detractors are silenced.
When opportunistic parochialism enters the domain of the admin-istration and if the Gov-ernment succumbs to each of these threats and intimidation, it will not be long before Meghalaya turns into a banana state where each NGO will hold the state to ransom and compel it to agree to every irrational demand. Soon there will be anarchy and Government might as well fold up. The DC is just one of the functionaries in a district. He has additional district magistrates to assist him. This is true of all districts in this country. To speak of language as a constraint is a bit far-fetched. On a given year very few Khasis, Jaintias and Garos make it to the Indian Administrative Service (IAS). In other words the demand is to appoint an officer of the Meghalaya Civil Service (MCS) as DC. There are districts where MCS officers have been appointed as DCs and they have shown an extreme form of venality such as in colluding with coal mine owners to allow them to have their way. So to imagine that a ‘local’ officer is the solution to all woes is puerile.
Ri Bhoi is in the throes of a major developmental revolution with land being acquired right, left and centre for major roads and the airport expansion project. Wherever there is land acquisition the stink of money is not far behind. It is also to be expected that politicians will want to meddle in money matters. That’s all that some of them are good at. The DC is the front person for paying compensation to land owners. Very few DCs have the spine to stand up against political comp-ulsions. So how deep is Akash Deep in this mess? Wherever our NGOs are involved, there is some commercial interests somewhere. So things are not as innocent as they look. I can only say that if pressure groups begin to dictate which officer to post where, whom to remove and whose transfer to stay, then we are looking at an anarchic Meghalaya where the Government will be hamstrung and unable to function.
My next problem is with the one-woman army, Civil Society Women’s Orga-nisation (CSWO) leader, Agnes Kharshiiing. She has been it’s one and only leader for decades (where is the democracy here and are there enough members to elect someone else in her place? A question most of us shy away from asking because we are a polite society and because we have outsourced all our problems to Ms Kharshiing and Ms Angela Rangad). Kharshiing did an RTI on how the Meghalaya Urban Development Authority (MUDA) parcelled off all the land it acquired. And one sees nothing wrong in the way Government chooses to give away land it owns. Perhaps the only problem is with the Civil Service Officers’ Welfare Society which in a sense is not a government body but a sort of NGO. Government has not allocated land to any NGO, only to the above body. Although the land is given on payment of a token sum of Re 1 per sq ft., the problem is that if you sell something you don’t usually sell it at a loss. The land was acquired @ Rs 3 per sq ft and sold @ Re 1. If this land was meant for some public purpose that would benefit the larger society we might have looked the other way. But the land is meant as a housing society for the elite citizens of this country – the IAS officers. This is a group that could easily buy land at any price quoted by land owners. It’s a different matter that the non-tribal officers would not have been able to buy land in Meghalaya. The MUDA housing society in a way facilitates the transfer of land to IAS officers who have served the State of Meghalaya. That is fair enough. But why can’t these well to do crème de la crème of our society not cough up a decent amount as cost of land? Even if they paid Rs 10 per sq ft it would have made some sense. The money from the transaction would have accrued to the Revenue Department or to MUDA. That is immaterial. What matters is that Government is not seen to be generous with the affluent.
This is what Ms Kharshiing and Ms Rangad are sore about. They have raised a stink on that issue but should they clamp down on further acquisition of land on the plea that all land will be sold off to the rich? Shillong is overburdened. Some of the existing schools or hospitals or offices have no space to expand. They need to move out to the suburbs as is happening in Guwahati and other cities. And I am sorry but development cannot be stalled unless these two activists and their camp followers have sought the opinion of people across the state. No one has the right to freeze the expansion of a city. This is part of the process of civilisation. Can we halt the population growth? Can we accom-modate families who have multiplied twice or thrice over in Shillong city? Can the government not think of townships for those who can no longer afford to buy land? Those who demonise development should them-selves start walking to wherever they go and live in tent houses because building a house requires land and the other parap-hernalia. Now these activists both have comf-ortable homes to live in but obviously do not want others whose voices they represent to make their own informed choices. What most tribals in this country suffer from is that their lands are taken away free of cost with no relief and rehab-ilitation plan. In the case of Meghalaya, the Government has always compensated land owners whether they are owned by clans, individuals or by the raid.
It is a fact that Gover-nment should learn to stay away from agricultural land and try and develop areas that are no longer agricu-lturally productive because that seems to be the grouse of the people of Mawpdang or wherever MUDA now wishes to spread its wings. There are several areas in East Khasi Hills that are so depredated that they no longer support vegetation. Why not look at these areas instead? Government of Meghalaya should take a leaf out of the Government of Mizoram’s book. The Mizoram New Land Use Policy (NLUP) that has been launched last year has been able to bring in radical land reforms and allocate land to the landless. This has been done in a very systematic manner. These are enlightened, pro-people measures. Why is no one in Meghalaya clamouring for a Land Ceiling Act which would bring in more equilibrium by taking away from the zamindars to give to the poor because the former have far too much land while the poor are landless. A landless tribal is an oxymoron. She is no longer tribal because land is the basis of tribal culture. Land is worshipped as a nurturing mother earth. It is not a commodity to be bought and sold. Granted that we are now at the crossroads of civilisation and some commodification is inevitable, but that cannot override justice and equity. I would join the bandwagon of anyone who proposes that this Legislature implement the Land Ceiling Act because if this does not happen soon we will have blood on our hands.