If the Government was going to pass an Ordinance to empower the traditional institutions, traditional bodies and Headmen, it did not have to wait for a crisis point. The crisis arose in December last year after the High Court verdict stripping the headmen of their powers to issue official certificates to residents. It took five months for the Government to respond. After waiting for so long we would have expected the Ordinance to be an enlightened piece of document which would subsequently be endorsed by the legislature. Alas! the Ordinance is a perpetuation of a gender blind, anachronistic patriarchal practice which is incongruent to the times we live in. If this Ordinance is passed by the Assembly then Meghalaya will be travelling on reverse gear, extolling a tradition that does not recognise women as equals.
A reading of the Ordinance informs us that it a purely legalistic document crafted by a bureaucracy with a set mind and with no courage of conviction to chart out a radical course that could change the way we do politics in Meghalaya. This is a much-touted matrilineal society that imprisons its women in a social space where she is seen but not heard and where her role in that matrilineal society is seen from a very simplistic prism without the understanding of the gender constraints that she faces in the absence of sexual and reproductive rights, amongst others. Recent television debates on the Village Administration Bill have publicly exposed the attitudes that men continue to nurture about the capabilities of women. Men are either insecure about sharing political space with women or they are blinded by patriarchal biases, both of which are not acceptable in a modern democratic set-up. What the Government Ordinance has done is to simply release the headmen from the legal logjam they are in vis-à-vis the High Court order. Nothing new or innovative is added to the Ordinance. The Ordinance is silent on a very important issue which is the term of office of the Headmen/Chiefs etc., and the mode of their selection which is archaic and undemocratic. The Governor has given quick assent to the Ordinance even while the corrected Village Administration Bill cleared by the Khasi Hills Autonomous District Council on May 30 last is on its way to the his office for approval. This is an interesting political development since under Para 12 (A) of the Sixth Schedule a law enacted by the legislature supersedes that of the District Council. Both the Ordinance and the VAB are challenges that women who make up half of the population should not take lying down!
