By Paramjit Bakhshi
Any sensible driver knows that to drive successfully, you have to look mostly through the windshield and only rarely at the rear view mirror. However if you are steering a stationary vehicle you can keep gazing at the rear view mirror rather than in front because you are not going anywhere. This is what is happening in Meghalaya: we are not going anywhere and so keep harping on the past. It is sad, and even more so, because what we are sitting on is a Ferrari and people driving Maruti 800s are zipping past us. To be specific, compared to most states in the country Meghalaya’s engine has stalled. This is true no matter in which direction we look.
We wake up to this fact only when reality hits us in the face. Today there is a hue and cry about the power crisis. Soon this will become as normal a feature as the poisoned streams of Jaintia Hills, or the daily traffic snarl in the city. Our knee jerk reaction is to take the moral high ground and blame it all on someone else- the politicians, the bureaucrats or the central government. But let us be honest and introspect. Have we ever had a vision of where we have wanted the state to go? I don’t think so. In the last thirty years or so beginning with 1979 the only consistent agenda has been the one directed at outsiders. Ours has truly been an agenda of opposition and we have resisted any change whether it is the railway line, hospitals, power plants, the abattoir or proper municipal waste management. To resist is fashionable in Meghalaya and many a people have made careers out of this populist tendency. Of course it is true that not every change needs to be embraced but to resist everything is also not a panacea for the problems confronting us all.
As a result this is what has happened.
We were the front runners in the region as far as education is concerned. We have many institutions which are a century old. People used to come here to study not just from the North East but also from abroad. I remember Thai students studying here when we were in college. Today we send hundreds to study outside. Whether it is at school or college level our institutions have just not kept up and have mostly stuck to the old curriculum. The one or two which have are just not enough to meet the challenges of modern employability. Even our pride in speaking good English is misplaced for the small minority of our students who do speak English do not get employed in high paid jobs but have joined the ranks of other North easterners in getting lowly paid jobs in the metros in the retail, BPO and hospitality sectors.
Our tourist attractions are similarly not generating any substantial revenue. We might boast of being the Scotland of the East but we have not developed tourism to even a tenth of its potential. Whether it is Wards Lake or Umiam or Cherrapunjee or Nartiang what we have to offer to tourists is pathetic. A not so scenic lake in blistering Ahmedabad has more visitors daily than we have at Wards Lake in a month because they have created entertainment facilities such as train and balloon rides, a mini golf course, battery powered scooters, boating, night lighting etc.
Having a salubrious climate we could have become regional leaders in providing healthcare. We are the doorway for states like Mizoram and Tripura as also for the Cachar district of Assam. Yet here also, not counting NEGHRIMS (which was also opposed initially) our medical infrastructure has remained much the same it was decades ago and our people travel routinely to Guwahati for medical care.
In every field we have been keen to stop change and have looked at anything not ethnic with suspicion. As a result no organizations of repute whether they be educational institutions, five star hotels, reputed medical organisations, or even business houses such as Tatas have set foot here. Instead we have attracted fly by night operators as industrialists, educationists (of CMJ variety) and business men who have circumvented every rule in the book under everybody’s apparent watchful eye and robbed the people and the exchequer. A la Don Quixote we have been tilting at windmills even as real monsters have slipped in with everybody’s connivance. As a result we have become master cynics and are suspicious of our own people too, whether they be politicians or NGOs or teachers or priests. In any gathering, in any discussion what becomes very apparent is that we have no faith in any individual, institution or organisation but worst of all we lack faith in ourselves.
But life demands faith. When a farmer plants his fields he does it with faith. Even if he sees his crop destroyed he has no option but to plant again for the next harvest. If he becomes cynical because of a few failures and refuses to till the land again he is finished as a farmer. A farmer understands this and that is why we get to eat. We on the other hand are cynical even without trying out anything for ourselves. We see only see Tripura as an example but refuse to be inspired by America, the flag bearer of change and multi ethnicity. If things have come to such a pass it is not because anything else but our own cynicism and our fearful minds.
I remember a story from the comic series, Archie. In this story Jughead takes Big Ethel out on a date to a baseball game. After being seated Jughead gets a soda to drink, and since she is scared of spoiling her new dress, she refuses his offer to get her one. Numerous times throughout the game she keeps telling Jughead that he is going to spoil her dress by spilling his soda on her. All Jughead’s pleas to relax and enjoy the game go in vain. So in frustration he deliberately spills soda on her and tells her since her fear has come true she can now relax. Is this the way things are going to end for us too. Perhaps they might if we keep focussing on the negatives. (Psychologists and spiritualists do tell us that.) Can’t we change our thinking and our mindset? Here is one thought from Ray Bradbury which should embolden us:
“If we listened to our intellect we never have a love affair. We’d never have a friendship. We’d never go into business, because we would be cynical. Well that’s nonsense. You have got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down, “
A certain amount of change is inevitable. It is better we look at it with hope rather than despair. It will be worthwhile for us, as the Nongrim Hills Dorbar has done, to change our mental signage from “Jingmaham” to “Welcome”. If not for the benefit of new people then at least for new ideas and new thinking. The old has been tried long enough and hasn’t worked well.
The writer can be contacted at [email protected].