By H H Mohrmen
The debate on the subject whether the district councils are still relevant in the state of Meghalaya has been in the public domain for a while. In fact the same question was asked the first time after Meghalaya was carved out as a separate state from Assam. But the question was not taken seriously till M. Syiem filed a PIL in the Hon’ble High Court to question if the tribals of Meghalaya still need the autonomous district councils to protect their rights, customs and traditions when we already have our own state.
It is sheer coincidence that this article was written on the first death Anniversary of late Promiwell Lyngdoh a man who had lived and work in the two District Councils. His first appointment was as a clerk in the United Khasi Jaintia Hills District Council, Shillong and later when the Jaintia Hills Autonomous District Council was instituted he opted to work as a staff at the JHADC Jowai till he retired as the principal secretary of the council. In a way he saw the building of JHADC from its initial stage till he retired as the chief bureaucratic functionary of the council.
It is important to mention him here not only because he is my mentor, but I have learned so much about the ADCs from him. So, when the debate about the relevance of the ADCs started after the PIL, it reminded me of the last discussion I had with him about the ADCs. On that particular incident when I asked him what was his opinion about present days ADCs (particularly the JHADC), with a heavy heart he said in Pnar (ka district council katni da khia dei khlieh ïei tre). In English it means the ADCs are now in a precarious situation where the head is heavier than the feet.
This is a loaded statement from a true bureaucrat, a man who never spoke poorly about the institution which he had served his whole lifetime. The sign that the ADCs in the state had failed started to appear the day the state government took over the subject of Lower Primary school education from them. L.P. School education was the subject of the District Councils as per the Sixth Schedule but it was the L.P. school teachers in the entire state who had moved the first no-confidence motion against the ADCs, but we all failed to realize to gravity of the situation then. The main reason for the L.P. School teachers protest against the ADCs which later also compelled them to demand that the state government take over Lower Primary education from the ADCs, was because of misappropriation of funds meant for teachers’ salaries.
Then there is no end to allegations of corruption particularly in the JHADC and every Comptroller and Auditor General’s (CAG) report has always had adverse remarks about financial management or rather financial mismanagement in the ADC. To make matters worse the council has never put the CAG observations for debate in the house. The report was conveniently ignored by the Councils. And now we even have corruption cases against former CEM of the JHADC pending in the court.
It also reminds me of an amusing story that P Lyngdoh told me when the JHADC decided to contest the Supreme Court order banning the logging of trees and exporting of timber from the region in 1996. A dutiful bureaucrat that he was, he went to assist the CEM of JHADC to Delhi. When the battery of lawyers that the Council hired tried to justify that the forests in Jaintia hills were still intact and that the district still has a large area under forest cover, the opposite parties exhibited a remote-sensing map which was taken at different points of time and which showed the drastic decline of forest cover in the district. When the opposite party came up with convincing evidence, he jokingly said that they had no other option but to pack their baggage and take the next flight to Guwahati. We all know that only a small part of the reserve forest in the State is under the purview of the State Forest Department while a large part of the forests are under the jurisdiction of the District Council. So when the apex court intervened to protect the forest from timber contractors, it was because forested area in the State had dwindled considerably. Hence protecting the forests is again one area that the ADCs had failed us. It continues even now despite the Court’s intervention. The respective ADCs have time and again failed the people on their mandate to protect our forests and rivers in the state. Except for the recent bill on the traditional heads, the ADCs have done precious little in protecting the culture and tradition of the people.
Financial mismanagement, protecting forests, rivers and culture and traditions are not the only issues where the ADCs have failed us. Even recruitment of staff in the Council very often than not is unfair and nepotistic. Recruitments in the ADCs are made surreptitiously. Rarely would the EC constitute selection committees to appoint staff to the Councils. Even when selection committees were constituted only candidates related to the members were selected for appointment. Nepotism is rampant in the ADCs and till very recently there were still irregular appointments in the JHADC.
In the last ADC election I interviewed few candidates in Jaintia hills and asked them why they wanted to contest in the election. The common answer was – to be able to help people and bring some development to the area. Very few talked about protecting tribal cultures and tradition and still fewer talk about bringing laws and legislations to strengthen tribal culture and traditions. Of those interviewed none had even read the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution. Hence the ADCs have lost their meaning and now they are becoming mere political springboards – an opportunity for MDCs to leapfrog to becoming an MLA in the next election to the legislative assembly.
However, the question is – can we only blame the MDCs for the kind of ADCs that we have now? The onus is also upon us the electorate to elect our leaders and we have ourselves to blame for electing the kind of MDCs that we have now. In a democracy the public can only get the kind of representatives they deserve. We have no other excuse but to blame ourselves for the kind of Councils we have today.
It has now become a trend in the community where we have this tendency of using the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution only to serve our selfish interests. We have claimed that our land rights allow us to do anything with our forests in the nineties when the Supreme Court ordered timber ban in the region. We again repeated that same mistake for more than four decades when we claim that we have every right to mine any minerals in the state without forest clearance of mining leases. Now after the NGT and High Court ban on various kinds of quarrying and mining, we plan to invoke paragraph 12 A (b) of the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution to do away with any national laws from the state. Is it not true then that the ADCs and the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution are being abused only for the interest of the selected few?
The final question is – do we still need the ADCs now? If we say the ADCs are important to protect our tribal culture and traditions then the next question is, protect from what? Who is going to exploit us, when we are the majority in our own State? Why do we need protection when we already have a State of our own in which majority of the legislators are those belong to our own communities. And the next set of questions are – what are ADCs or what have they become now? Isn’t it true that in the present day context the ADCs are merely a symbol of an institution which was mandated to protect the unique tribal culture and traditions? Whether the institutions have been able to fulfill that mandate or not is another question, but one thing is certain that tribal culture will remain or disappear with or without the ADCs. The ADCs are therefore becoming redundant except for the nostalgia that they are associated with. And if at all we still want to keep the institutions it is because it has now become a mere community heirloom that the general population wishes to keep for posterity.