By Phrang Roy
In November 2013, I was in London celebrating with our daughter who succes-sfully passed all her examinations to become a Member of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (MRCOG). During this stay, I took some time to visit the Head Office of Christian Aid. I was struck by the slogan at the entrance to their office building: “We believe in Life before Death”. The slogan caught my imagination. It reaffirmed my personal Christian and indigenous belief that what is truly important in life is to respect and defend the right of everyone to a life of dignity and well being, a life without fear, a life with identity and a life that is not subjected to the extortion of our simple joys and happiness of living. It reminded me that our people do not need to live in a world of fear where even the simple chore of collecting firewood from nearby woodland is seen as a heroic act. This is indeed the test of our civilization.
In 1994, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) produced a milestone Human Development Report on human security. It pointed out that the most serious dangers to human security are no longer military threats from rival great powers, but rather human security threats that emanate from within poorly governed communities. Incompetent, self seeking and inconsiderate governance leads to the delegitimisation of the State and the eventual rise of all sorts of violent mafia groups who basically plunder the people and Mother Earth for their own vested interests. Such situations have given rise to the phenomenon called “failed states”. Unfortu-nately, state failure causes a wide range of social, economic, environmental, cultural, humanitarian, legal and security problems. The total collapse of state institutions in Somalia and the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia to the varied crises in Rwanda, Haiti, Liberia, Congo, Sierra Leone and Afghanistan have left behind horror stories that we would not want to tell to our children’s children.
In the 1980s, I worked as the Project Controller of the International Fund for Agricultural Development of the United Nations (IFAD) for Sierra Leone, Liberia and The Gambia amongst other African countries. It was an assignment that I truly loved because the rural communities of these West African countries were warm and loving to outsiders, respectful of their own traditional knowledge holders and always eager to share with outsiders the pleasures of their food and cuisines. I learned a lot from the natural resilience of ordinary small farmers of West Africa.
However, by the late 1980s, I saw that things were beginning to fall apart in these West African countries. Corruption and mismanagement started to creep in at the upper echelons of the Governments and bureaucracies and quickly spread throughout their systems. Toothless, pliable and often corrupt bureaucrats worked together with the political leadership of the time and eventually led their countries into a destruction and perversion of every state institution through corruption and nepotism. For example, Sierra a country of only about 4 million people in the 1980s but with huge natural resources of gold, diamonds and fisheries, became bankrupt by 1990 through plunder and the financing of projects that supported only selected supporters of the regime. With the breakdown of its institutions of governance, Sierra Leone became embroiled in an ugly civil over its diamonds, gold and other natural resources. It quickly got engulfed by crimina-lisation, human rights abuses and economic decline. I was shocked to see how this country of hard working and innovative farmers, with a very well educated middle class, a country that was once West Africa’s most well known centre of academic excellence, could bring so much destruction, violence and fear to its own people. Young people lost all hopes and many were forced to be part of the destruction of their own country.
The Fund for Peace, a US civil society organisation that monitors global peace, uses 12 factors to ascertain if a country could be considered a failed or failing state. Eight of these indicators are particularly pertinent for Meghalaya. They are the following:
1.mounting demographic pressures
2. rising criminalisation/ delegitimisation of the State
3.presence of widespread vengeance-seeking groups
4.uneven economic development where benefits go mainly to a selected few
5.rising corruption at all levels.
6.human rights abuses and the gradual emergence of ‘ a state within a state”
7. subtle interventions of political agents for party gains
8.deterioration of public services.
When looking at our own communities, we cannot but face the pervading corruption in Meghalaya, the growing disparity between the rich and the poor especially in the coal mining, limestone and stone quarrying areas, the constant attempts to delegitimise a democr-atically elected Govern-ment, the politic-isation of development schemes and the rising drug addiction amongst our young people. These are issues that all of us (politicians, civil servants, traditional leaders, pressure groups, women’s groups, civil society, the corporate sector, church and social leaders, journalists and members of the academia) need to individually and collect-ively take an honest and thoughtful New Year review for the sake of our future generations.
Despite this encircling gloom, it is very heartening that in Meghalaya, there are many motivated young people who are still looking forward to a future of peace and well being – a future of self-determined development based on our respective indigenous values that we have developed through centuries of respectful interaction with Mother Nature. I am encouraged to see young entrepreneurs – rural development innov-ators, creative chefs, fashion designers, tho-ughtful architects, prom-oters of adventure sports all silently building their own future and the livelihood of others with a passion that is based on the wonders of our traditional food, our unique landscape and the willingness to learn from the best practices of others. Let us give them a chance to ‘increase their tribe’. NESFAS, the organization that I chair is precisely trying to help young people to be connected to their land and to usher in Meghalaya a new development paradigm – a development that is brewed in our traditional pot, a development with our unique and evolving identity, a development that is inherently good, clean to the environment and fair to all.
We may not know everything about the future we want but we know enough to comprehend that that if we continue with business as usual, we too could easily fall into this dark hole of being a “Failing State”. Therefore, as gentle inhabitants of this beautiful State let us firstly empower the Government and its institutions such as the District Administration to fulfill their obligations to defend and respect the development and security rights of all especially of the poor, the needy, women and all those who are often left at the margins.
Secondly, let us all work for a wider ‘ownership’ of decisions, processes and projects that affect our lives. To move towards this participatory goal, we must promote responsible, clean and fair social audits by citizens’ jury. We must proactively seek for accountability of all public servants so that all stakeholders can hold institutions, professionals and policymakers answerable to the people for their acts of commissions and omissions.
As we enter into 2014, let us draw the lessons of our own failures so far. Let the unfortunate experiences of the ‘Failed States’ of the last two decades be our warning beacons on our road to the achievement of our dreams. Let us also create space for diplomacy, dialogues and negotiations and the rule of law so that we are helped to make the big choices for all people and especially for our own “jaidbynriew”.
(The writer is the former Assistant President of IFAD, Rome, Chair of the Meghalaya Water Foun-dation, Chair of NESFAS, Shilling, Coordinator of The Indigenous Partnership, Rome as well as a Board Member of several international organizations).