By HH Mohrmen
The turn of events in the state with regard to the ILP issue will make every right thinking citizen of Meghalaya question, where this turn of events will take the state and its people. Whatever the two major parties in the conflict do is going to have a huge impact on the economy of the people and the state. Another question raised is whether this is a progressive move or a regressive one?
For me it is not the case of who will win at the end of this conflict, for in public conflicts nobody wins. It is the poorer and the weaker sections of the society that is going be hit the hardest by the agitations. The situation warrants that we realize we have reached a dead end, hence there is only one thing that sensible people will do in such a situation and that is dialogue. I must admit that I do not have a magic wand and I can’t even properly utter the magic words abracadabra to produce magical wonders, but I do believe in magic. I am not trying to say that I have the solution to the problem, but I believe that if people put their heads and hearts together and give all their strength to the cause they can do wonders sometimes even beyond their imagination. I believe anything can happen and there is nothing we can’t do if we only have open minds, generous hearts and a willing hands to work together to bring wonders. That is the kind of magic that I can believe in. Hence if we believe that people can create wonders through mutual love, respect and mutual cooperation then we can still hope to see the light beyond this dark tunnel.
Everybody knows that this is a long pending issue in the state, and we can’t move forward without looking at the efforts that previous governments have made to solve this complex issue. I again take a leaf out of Bah Phrang Roy’s book that if we really want to solve this problem once and for all, we need to take all stake holders on board. In the previous efforts, the government was not able to involve all the stake holders. The only stake holders that took a dominant position are perhaps the NGOs or to be precise the pressure groups like the KSU, the FKJGP, the JSU, the GSU et al. These NGOs do represent a certain section of the society but they do not represent the entire society. At least they do not represent me because I do not subscribe to their ideology and antic. Even the present conglomerate of ten or more NGOs which spearhead the ILP movement cannot claim they represent the entire community. If I am not mistaken not even the non tribal population was considered as stake holders and were not invited to the meetings of the HLC or any committee previously constituted to solve this problem.
Now Dr. Mukul Sangma has reiterated the MUA government’s stand on ILP issue but people’s worst fears are that if the NGOs decide to prolong and intensify their agitations programs this will have a drastic effect on the poorer sections of the society and the student community. If we are to take the news report of Dr. Sangma’s latest statement on the issue of ILP at face value, it is obvious that the government too has no solution at hand to solve this problem, except to strengthen the infiltration check gates and reinforce the labour law and also implement the Tenancy Act to control large scale influx of illegal migrants to the state. Some of these mechanisms have failed miserably in their mandate to check illegal entry of foreign national to the state. Even the Autonomous District Councils which were constituted as per the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution has failed in its duty to protect and preserve the culture, traditions and even trade of the tribal community. People are saying that outsiders are controlling the trade in the state, but the fact of the matter is, it is the autonomous district councils that are supposed to manage and control trading by non tribals. The question is who issues trading licenses to the nontribal traders?
Dr Sangma as the head of the government has done what is expected of a person in his position to do, because he is mandated by the people to govern and to take the state to new heights. He does not represent only a section of the society but the entire state, but the decision of the government to stick to its gun on the ILP issue will be perceived by many as autocratic hence he will not get the support of the pressure groups. If the government is not able to carry all the stakeholders with it, the settlement arrived thereof will be tardy and will at the most be a stop-gap arrangement.
In the past we have tried every trick in the trade to solve this problem. We began by constituting government commissions and High Level Committees, but these commissions and committees have obviously failed. The suggestion that one would like to make in order to rid ourselves of this quagmire is that the present Government should constitute a Commission to be headed by Phrang Roy to solve this problem. The head of the Commission should be given a free hand and the Government should not only financially support the Commission but should also make a commitment that it will abide by the report submitted. From the very outset it should be made clear that this is not just another government Commission or any HLC but instead it will be a Public Commission backed by the Government which will try to take all the stake holders on board in its effort to arrive at a solution to this problem.
The Commission is to make sure that it involves everybody in the process and the stakeholders should not only comprise of pressure groups, but representatives from across the political spectrum, developmental NGOs, the Churches or Religious organization like the Seng Khasi, Seiñ Raij, representative of the Hindu, Buddhist and Muslim community in the state. The Commission should also include at least the head of the traditional institutions and the list is by no mean exhaustive. This is a major issue of the State and we need a high profile, non-partisan Commission to help rid ourselves of this impasse. We need a Commission that represents the people of the state as much as possible.
In the new dispensation Bah Phrang Roy with his expertise in the international community especially in working with the indigenous communities of the world can involve any mechanism or process to help us arrive at a lasting solution which everybody is committed to keep. Or maybe in his able leadership the people of Meghalaya can come up with their own unique crisis solving technique which the world at large can learn from.
The basic premise to enter a dialogue is that we agree to disagree; hence with this understanding we can at least begin the dialogue that can help the state and its people move forward. The State cannot be taken for ransom anymore. Too much is at stake if we continue with the bandh, office picketing and traffic jam culture.