By Patricia Mukhim
Where are we as a state? This is a question every self respecting resident of Meghalaya ought to ask herself/himself. Everywhere we turn there is hopelessness and despair. The latest killjoy is the load-shedding. If only those who have loaded themselves by making money from power deals and power projects and who facilitated the evacuation of electricity to power junkies whose industries guzzle power like an ogre, could now be made to shed their loads, the public would feel a sense of some justice being done. When Dr Mukul Sangma became
chief minister the people of Meghalaya indeed had hopes of a turn-around in many of the things that had stagnated. Alas! Meghalaya’s CEO spends more time nursing his party to health than care about the state of affairs in his own turf. What a mess we have made of the power sector in our state! And all the while we had slipped into a comfort zone repeating like zombies that we have the “potential” (in fact potentialities is an overused word in Meghalaya) for generating 3000 MW of power. So why the hell are we not generating this power? Who is preventing us from doing so? Is it not because each of our politicians is self-centred and looking to promote only themselves and their kin at great cost to the State?
Looking at the depleting water in the Umiam Lake today makes you feel bitter and frustrated. When the catchments all around have turned into barren landscapes how can you have water filling up the lake? And why have the forests been shaved off? Because land is private and the attitude is, “I own my land; I can do what I want with it.” But like someone pointed out the other day, what one individual does to the environment affects several thousands of people. The air and water are not private properties. But the rich landlords/zamindars of Meghalaya believe they own the earth. So they continue to cut down forests and gorge out sand and stones from the earth as if there’s no tomorrow. And the state allows this licentiousness! It simply sits back and makes that lame excuse, “Land belongs to the people.” And now when the National Green tribunal (NGT) has banned one of the most destructive and extractive activities – coal mining the rat hole way – the Forest Minister has the gumption to suggest that it would ask the NGT to lift the ban “because livelihoods will suffer.” Whose livelihoods? The coal mafia? Is their greed not satiated yet? Is there a research on how many people actually benefit from coal mining? When the Supreme Court came up with the timber ban ruling in 1996, the same clamour was heard. A section of the media even cried hoarse that people were dying of hunger after logging was discontinued. But no one heard of those deaths. And people managed to find alternative livelihoods. To argue that mining must continue despite the havoc it has caused to the environment because livelihoods depend on this rapacious extraction of resources, is specious. I wish the Government would fight as hard for the poor and landless as it does for the coal mafia! But that would be asking for too much. The coal mafia own the Government; the poor and landless are dispensable nuisance.
And look at the Forest Department! All it seeks to do is expand its territorial jurisdiction by paying compensation even for land that already in the custody of a Government Department. How can land belonging to the Soil Conservation Department and has been Government property since the Assam Government days suddenly become private property one fine day? Where did the private owner emerge from? Who is he? Why is the former MLA of Umroi – Stanlywiss Rymbai the front man for the so-called land owner/owners? How did the Government departments (Forest, Finance, Planning, Law, Revenue)allow this daylight loot of public money of a whopping Rs 10 crore? We need to dig this up and should do so at the earliest. But I also wonder why the so-called RTI activists pick and choose their enemies. They are fixated on the New Shillong Township for some obscure, or perhaps not so obscure reasons. Large tracts of the NST are already privately owned. Do the activists claiming to fight for the disinherited even know this? It is easy to fight the Government; especially a Government with a soft underbelly but I would like to see this seemingly tenacious, radically Left-wing group fight the big sharks – the absentee landlords – who continue to buy up every vacant space from money that should have gone into making good roads, bringing potable water and creating livelihoods. I have a strong point of disagreement with the group on its use of the word “land-grabbing,” and their plea that cities should grow “organically” and all that ideologically argumentative stuff. So do we put on hold road construction but allow coal mining? Do we put a stop to growth of townships where more people would be able to buy at least a plot of land from the Government acquired acreage, considering that the prices put up by private real estate agents is over the top? There is need for office space, for shopping centres and other modern infrastructure including institutions of health and education etc. Should we put all these on hold because of some Left wing idea?
Let’s take a look at Tripura. The State is all set to sell 100 MW of electricity from the ONGC Tripura Power Company promoted 736.6 MW gas based project at Palatana, South Tripura. The Palatana project is one of the biggest in the Northeast and till date the only installation to be certified as green power project in the country. Tripura will also sell power to the power deficit states of North East India. Tripura is a Left ruled state but it’s chief minister, Manik Sarkar is pursuing the state’s objectives with a clear head. What have Congress-ruled states like Meghalaya, Manipur and Mizoram done? In Meghalaya we are unsure if we want open or closed borders with Bangladesh. How can a border of prosperity be at the same time a high security zone that needs to be fenced off? We would need to resolve this schizophrenia and decide what benefits us more – an adversarial Bangladesh or a Bangladesh that can be leveraged to promote high end tourism in Meghalaya? For this we need a Government with spine that has the audacity to ride over adverse opinion from a motley group of activists with a tunnel-vision who pick and choose their turfs.
Meghalaya’s problem is that its people have trusted the Congress party for far too long and this is the result of the nearly four decades of trust. We are creaking from every side and there is nothing we can claim to be our area of strength. Nothing at all! We have failed with Power (every year more hours of load shedding). We are a mess as far as roads and bridges are concerned. Our bridges collapse and kill. Our villages are yet to be connected to the road head despite fancy sounding schemes like the PMGSY which have been milked by politicians. The PHE is a catastrophe because the state is beholden to a certain electrical engineer who controls the Government. So residents of Shillong spend hours at public taps waiting for their turn to fill two buckets of water. All the PHE money from the Greater Shillong Water Supply Scheme has gone into private ventures. Health too is dismal. There are no medicines in the PHCs and Sub-Centres. The multi-crore equipments at Shillong Civil Hospital have remained unopened and unutilised for years. Their warrantee period must have expired by now. And we have a CM who is a medical doctor! What irony! The Forests and Environment Department had not been able to create a green park for health walkers within city limits. The only Park in Jaintia Hills (Syndai) is mired in controversy. Whereas in other states citizens are incentivised to grow at least two trees in their compounds, here the Forest Department works in a silo and does not talk to citizens except on June 5. The Tourism Department is a non-starter. They only put up ugly concrete buildings in villages with lush green surroundings and destroy the ambiance. Education is in a mess with scams galore that remain unresolved. I don’t want to name the other departments for it will then become and endless litany.
Both politicians and bureaucrats of Meghalaya have colluded to keep this state at subsistence level. Is there a way out of this mess? We could have changed governments but our people can be bought and so we stayed bought by the Congress Party. And now we have to wait until 2018 for any change. By then who knows what will happen. Poverty and militancy both would have grown exponentially. Talk of scenario building and you can only foresee gloom!
But perhaps we deserve this sort of government! Or do we? Whoever had a hand in toppling the MPA Government in 2009 (it was a government that meant well) must pay the price! People wanted to give a non-Congress Government a chance. Politicians did not want that. So we know who the real culprits are!