By H H Mohrmen
There is at least one thing that Dr. Mukul Sangma has in common with the Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Both gentlemen are blessed with minds that produce bright ideas. Brilliant ideas seem to flow like lava from the volcanic mountain of their minds. But the question is whether these ideas are workable. Or are they going to survive the five year term and more importantly how much impact will the schemes have on the people?
Let us start from the top, the Clean India Campaign. It was like an earthquake that rocked the nation. The whole nation, led from the front by the PM took to sweeping their respective localities, offices and educational institutions et al. On the day, I also received SMSs from my good friends which broadly says that they had taken an oath not to litter but to throw rubbish in the bin and that I should take this oath and forward the SMS to others. I have two reasons not to forward the message. I have stopped littering a long time ago and in fact I tried to instill the habit in my children too. Secondly, if I have to make a promise it is to go a step further and promise to pick all the garbage I find on my way and drop them in the nearby rubbish bin.
Coming back to the Swacch Bharat Campaign, I can’t help but think of the obvious challenges towards making the mission a success. In many villages of our State people still defecate in the open because they don’t have a toilet and even those who have toilets have an open pit or they would discharge their waste into the nearest drain. Then how can we make our villages clean when we have hundreds of cows, sheep, goats and pigs loitering around. And if a person travels from Shillong to Jowai and wants to ease himself, the only place are the backwoods, because there are no washrooms anywhere on the entire national highway; not even in the gas stations or tea stalls.
Teaching kids good cleanliness habits is a step in the right direction, but the question is how many schools in the villages have workable toilets? And we are not even asking how many schools have running water connected to the institutions. And dare we even ask how many villages have working government water supply to their villages. On paper almost all the villages get regular water supply to their villages every day, but the truth is many villages have never ever benefited from government water supply and even if they receive water it is very irregular. Clean India is obviously a challenge and the plan to clean India by Gandhiji’s 150th birth anniversary is a job of Himalayan magnitude.
The Hon’ble Prime Minister in his effort to encourage citizens of the entire country to open a bank account introduced the Prime Minister’s Jan Dhan Yojna. But this is not a new idea; neither are the components in the scheme novel. Many banks already have a policy to insure account holders in their respective banks. Perhaps the only banks that are yet to offer similar benefits to their customers are regional and cooperative banks. Besides, all banks issue ATMs to their customers now. As for the Rs 5000 overdraft, a young branch manager of a certain bank put it very aptly in one of the financial literacy campaigns we organized in a village near Jowai. He said, ‘Don’t worry about the Rs 5000 overdraft; if your account is active and if your banking habit is healthy, I will provide you ten thousand or even fifty thousand rupees loan. It all depends on how you manage your money’ he added. Hence PMJD is like the old saying – old wine in a new bottle.’
The Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojana is another trick from the PM’s hat and I am personally in favour of this scheme. It sounds like a workable idea because it was billed to be ‘demand driven not supply driven’ and ‘bottoms up and not top-down planning’ for any kind of scheme. Any person with even a little involvement in rural development knows that government schemes fail because the community has no sense of ownership of the project. The reason is because the communities were not involved in the planning. Even the execution of the project is done by government agencies. It’s the babus in Delhi or Shillong that do all the planning and decide what the villages need and the contractors complete the job. The community on the other hand has nothing to do with the schemes.
Dr Mukul Sangma too is not far behind in coming up with brilliant ideas, but some of his ideas died and failed to take off and some are yet to have any impact on the people. For reasons best known to the government the proposed hydro electric projects in various parts of the state are yet to take off. The idea was mulled more than five years ago when Dr Sangma was not even the Chief Minister but it seems the projects are now hanging fire.
The Meghalaya Integrated Information System (MIIS) is a dying project. When the project was launched it was said that Meghalaya was the first state to introduce State- of- the- art and top-notch information system for the benefit of the people. But now the sounds of the loud speakers have fallen silent and the electronic LED board displays the same information again and again. Oftentimes the boards are out of order.
Another of Dr Sangma’s pet projct is the Meghalaya Integrated Basin Development Program; this too is yet to have any impact on the entrepreneurs. Basin as it is known in the village has sent many people for training in poultry, piggery and even bee-keeping, but when the trained entrepreneurs approach the banks for loan to start their businesses, many banks refuse to sanction their projects. This happens, despite the fact that the banks have a very low CD ratio in the district like West Jaintia hills. Now it is the responsibility of the government to come up with policies to link the trained entrepreneurs to the banks. Only bank linkage can help the entrepreneurs in the villages start their business. It is quite some years now since the Integrated Basin Development Program was launched. One hopes that Basin will not merely become ‘ka dabor’ as some of its critics have predicted but would bear fruit and help generate economic activity that will help entrepreneurs earn their livelihoods.
Of late the idea that has got Dr Sangma carried away is organic farming. This again is not a new idea because our farming system has been organic since time immemorial. It was the Government that introduced our farmers to chemical fertilizers and pesticides, but now the thrust is to go back to basics. This reversal will take some time and hopefully it will not put Agriculture in Meghalaya in a perpetual reverse gear.
The only income generating activities of the people here that is still organic is bee-keeping because farmers who are involved in bee-keeping (at least in the villages we work in) are still using the traditional methods. In a brief interaction with the locals we found that it is a good livelihood activity which can help supplement the income of the farmers. We also learned that bee-keepers in the villages have three major problems. Till now they were selling the honey raw without any kind of packaging and the farmers in the villages were producing about 200 kilograms per season. Secondly there is the problem of separating the queen bees when they simply throw away the honey comb which can be converted to wax. Thirdly, in spite of the fact that farmers of Moosakhia village have been involved in bee keeping since time immemorial they are yet to be included in the api- culture mission of the Government.
One hopes that leaders with bright ideas can convert those to workable schemes which would ultimately benefit the people. Government should also encourage people to continue with their traditions unless the same are considered to be detrimental to the farmers and the stuff they produce. One also hopes that Government would reach out to the deserving who are really involved in the business and supplement what they already have.