By Patricia Mukhim
It is no coincidence that darkness signifies doom and gloom. We have indeed entered an era of darkness in every sense of the term. No light at the end of the tunnel used to be a catch phrase. Now it seems so real. Nine hours of power cuts daily and more in some localities and we are expected to remain sanguine and not run down the MeECL or the Government. But what else do we expect in a State that has been run on ad-hocism for decades? Chief Ministers don’t think or can’t think. Thinking was a luxury they could not afford. Remember they had to be on guard all the time. They needed to watch their backs lest someone pulls their chair away and they land on their backsides, belly up. Maybe we deserve all this that’s happening. Isn’t it said that we get the Government we deserve? So do we deserve 9 hours and possibly more hours of load shedding as the rains play truant? This needs a considered reply, not a lazy, flippant answer like those made by the Chief Minister recently.
Yes let me remind the readers what the Chief Minister said. He said the Government cannot be blamed for MeECL’s failures. He lambasted the Opposition UDP for protesting publicly. How funny is that! The CEO of the MeECL is also the top bureaucrat of the Government. And yes, the Government is the prime share-holder in this Corporation. It has been bailing out and continues to bail out the MeECL each time it sinks into the quagmire. The MeECL is a Corporation in name only. Government does not want to let go because they want to meddle in its affairs. Privatization sounds good but neither politicians nor bureaucrats are eager to end the Licence-Permit Raj. No way!
I am aware that several sons and daughters of bureaucrats and the hangers-on of politicians have been appointed in the MeSEB which later morphed into the MeECL. The total staff strength of MeECL is somewhere in the range of 3800. The salary and pension liability of MeECL every month is roughly about Rs 14 crore. MeECL generates a revenue of Rs 32 crore every month. The balance amount of Rs 18 crore and more goes towards power purchase. MeECL buys power at a higher rate than it sells us consumers. Today the cost of power in Mumbai or Delhi is Rs 7 per unit. We are paying less than Rs 4 per unit. In a sense this is possible only because the Government under-writes the shortfall. But up to what point? Government cannot continue to absorb the losses incurred by MeECL by underwriting what we as consumers should have been paying. Nor can Government excuse the inefficiencies and lack of accountability in the MeECL. Why has Government succumbed to different pressures when trying to raise tariff? Its time to crack the whip!
Now as I see it, what is inherently wrong with MeECL is that it is not really a Corporation. Just because it has been split into three arms – the generation, transmission and distribution wings does not make it a corporate body. There are certain norms that a corporate entity has to follow. Firstly, it has to make profits or it is restructured to be able to make profit. Normally when a body is corporatized the first thing it does is to trim down its fat. Lean and mean is the motto. In other words it cuts the flab. This means that superfluous staff are let off. That’s called right-sizing! I don’t think this was a priority with MeECL. It is still run like a big, happy government department where the deficit is always pooled in by Government. In other words, public revenue which could, and should have been utilised for other developmental projects goes in to pay MeECL’s debts. Many other institutions that had to go in for drastic structural reforms did one thing. They retained the staff they needed and turned their posts into contractual ones. The dictum, “Perform or perish,” became the watchword. The Organisation is evaluated by external agencies to measure its output. So too the output of every staff is measured and those who don’t achieve the yardsticks set are fired. Simple! The Organisation is not a charity centre. No staff can be retained because he/she might be out on a limb. That’s how profit making organizations are run. Will MeECL ever reach this level of professionalism? Not in a hundred years unless Government allows its complete privatization. Some sensible officer had remarked that we should not be ashamed of saying we have failed in the power sector; failed in generation, distribution and transmission. So he asks, why don’t we just buy the power we need anyway? But then what happens to 3800 non-performing assets? So much for MeECL
Now that we have reached a crisis point, everywhere there are excuses. The CM says many of the non-performing institutions would be disbanded. He named a few but he did not name those where politicians are accommodated and which they run like their private companies. Take the Meghalaya Tourism Development Corporation or the Meghalaya Government Construction Corporation. The latter is literally controlled by a political mafia. The former is used to accommodate the kith and kin of politicians, including over-aged ones. Then we have the State Planning Board. No one knows what is being planned there. Have they come up with a single innovative plan for Meghalaya? Don’t they see the environmental destruction all around? Don’t they know that most of our catchments have dried up due to rapid deforestation? Don’t they know that Meghalaya is headed for acute water crisis? So what are they talking about in the Planning Board if these issues of life and death are left untouched? There are too many vested interests looking for sinecure posts, interested in a car with a red beacon who don’t understand the basic idea of what it is to plan for the state. We have tolerated these indiscretions for decades. Do we have the luxury of disbanding them now?
Should the Planning Board not have asked for a white paper on the MeECL, including the much celebrated Leshka project? Don’t they feel the responsibility to do so? Don’t they owe it to their constituents?
Also what is very disturbing to the eyes of any traveler in Meghalaya is the existence of so many saw mills. These saw mills had vanished after the Supreme Court directive banning the cutting and sale of timber for 10 years since 1996. After 2006, when the ban was lifted the SC had directed the State Forest Departments to insist on working plans and working schemes in case timber is to be cut. For a while we heard murmurs about that. The District Councils engaged a retired honcho of the Forest Department to actually make their forest plans and schemes. Now no one really cares and no one is monitoring the onslaught on forests. Why? Because of the stupid excuse that, “land belongs to the people.” How is it that the SC ban worked even in these private lands? Actually it is the collusion between the Forest Department, the District Councils and the timber mafia that has turned our environment into a barren wasteland.
Today while returning home I saw a truck with trees the girth of an unhealthy two-year old child’s waist. The truck was backing into a saw mill right in the heart of the city. On the body of the truck was emblazoned this slogan, “When injustice is law, rebellion is duty.” How inappropriate for a truck that’s carrying what is the destruction of ours and our children’s future. But why blame the truck for carrying contraband? After all it is livelihood! In fact the Department of Environment and Forests, headed by a Minister who is over-zealous about brazenly obfuscating malfeasance in his Department and trying saving his official’s back is also due for greater scrutiny.