The pro-ILP pressure groups need to come up with more creative ideas of agitation on an issue they consider important enough to pursue for months together. Mere night road blockades with intervals during the weekends are becoming a bit clichéd. The Government obviously is not affected by these blockades and therefore unresponsive. But there is a climate of fear and uncertainty when during an ongoing agitation. And certainly those affected are not VIPs who can travel with escorts but the ordinary person who often has to undertake the journey because of exigencies. The pressure groups need to travel around and convince people about the big picture if the Inner Line Permit is implemented. In doing so they should also give people both the up side and the flip side of the ILP and let people make an informed choice. That they have not done so shows their propensity to take the citizenry for granted.
In fact the ILP has created needless fault-lines in society. The pro-ILP groups feel that their idea alone is practicable and that those who oppose it are pro-Government. Such binaries are dangerous in a democracy where there can be more than view on a problem and also more than one solution to that problem. The ‘either or’ stances reflect an intolerance for other ideas even before those ideas have been fully explored. Why have institutions of higher learning which have the wherewithal to take a pragmatic view of the issue of influx and illegal immigration not been used to throw up innovative ideas to address these twin problems not been engaged? Let them take a view of the ILP and give us the pros and cons of adopting it. Of course those who have made us believe that the ILP is a dominant view in Meghalaya must also be able to accept that their beliefs do not necessarily hold good.
If the pressure groups seem recalcitrant, the Government too is no better. The Tenancy Act is touted as a remedy to influx. This too is only a partial solution. Both the parties in conflict are unwilling to have an open mind, least of all to talk to each other. What do you lose by talking? In fact that’s the only way to bring down the temperature! Perhaps the citizenry should now speak up. They have been silent for far too long and watching this game of one-upmanship from the sidelines.