By Fabian Lyngdoh
The concept of ‘Indigenous Peoples’ Rights’ implies the need to protect marginalised indigenous peoples from exploitation and oppression by other numerically, culturally and economically dominant peoples within a wider political system; but it does not mean providing absolute ethnic freedom to any tribe, even to the extent of destroying the eco-system, massacring and cutting each other’s head, denying the basic human rights to the poor and the weak within their own community, and resorting to criminal activities in the name of safeguarding indigeneity and tradition.
The leaders of the Indian Freedom Movement were reluctant to support the British Government in the Second World War, but leaders in the Khasi Hills supported wholeheartedly because they preferred to remain under the British rule than under the rule of independent India. There was little enthusiasm in the Freedom Movement in the Khasi Hills. It is said that experience in trade and social relations with the neighbouring people of the plains brought apprehension in the minds of the people that life in independent India without the protection of the British rule might lead the tribe to being culturally and economically overwhelmed by the more advanced people of the plains. Hence, when India achieved independence, the Khasi chiefs aspired for independent himas, or at least as British Protectorates. Even today, majority of the Khasis seem reluctant to identify themselves as citizens of India.
Autonomy of any ethnic community is meaningful only if it is also economically self sufficient. There is no rationale for the autonomy of any ethnic community which is economically dependent on others. Primitive independence of tribes was possible only because of their self sufficiency in subsistence living. They were able to grow or gather their own food; to weave their own clothes or walk about contentedly semi-naked on their thickened soles that knew no thorns; to concoct their own medicines and defend themselves and their territories with their own crude weapons. But with the present level of population and the standard of living, the economy of Meghalaya would not be able to provide even for the subsistence living of the people without the Indian economy. Meghalaya depends on Central financial assistance, either through grants or loans anywhere between 80% and 90% of the State resources. In addition, the ratio of direct grants to loan is 90:10, as compared with non special category states where it is 70:30. But Meghalaya still maintains substantial deficits, with the State debt/GDP ratio of 29.41% as in 2010-2011. No society can ever develop without economic surplus over subsistent requirement. But in the case of Meghalaya, the Government of India is the only source of surplus, as well as of major portion of resource for people’s subsistence requirement.
The Sixth Schedule was framed with three major considerations: to ensure the identity and autonomy of the socio-economic and political culture of the tribal people; to prevent them from economic and social exploitation; and to allow them to develop and administer themselves according to their own genius. It was probably assumed that the tribals with their own genius and natural resources would be economically self sufficient if there are no exploitations by outsiders; and with their sound customs and traditions they would develop into socially and politically just societies. But constitutional protection of ethnic autonomy has become only a way to economic dependence and a license to beg for special grants from the sweat of others. But political autonomy and economic dependence cannot go together perpetually.
The reality is that the tribals cannot become economically and politically self sufficient only with their own genius and natural resources even if there are no exploitations by outsiders; and they cannot develop into socially and politically just societies only with their customs and traditions. The economic infra-structure that sustains the Khasi society today is neither the subsistence shifting cultivation, nor the traditional clan-economy and the traditional relations of production, but it is the integration with the Indian national economy which provides the new economic infra-structure on which the society is sustained. Agriculture is no more only for subsistence living but also for sale in the market as surplus. Market centres like Iewduh are made economically viable not by the existence of traditional institutions, or by the customary animal sacrifices offered to the gods or goddesses, but because it is a corollary of urban civilization made possible under the operation of the national economy. Because of this integrated economy, even people who have never seen a paddy field can derive income from the industrial, commercial and service economy occasioned by the modern democratic set up and urban civilization. Majority of the inhabitants of Shillong and other semi-urban centres survive comfortably on the benefits provided by the overall Indian economy without any need to handle the spade (mohkhiew) to dig the earth.
Despite all the grants by the Central Government, there is high reliance on the government and semi-government institutions for employment due to the absence of diversified means of livelihood to meet the rising problem of unemployment. The number of persons employed in government jobs in Meghalaya had already become saturated at 72,808 in 2001-02, while the huge number of educated unemployed keeps increasing by the day. The size of the wage bill for this swollen state sector has already weighed heavily on the State’s resources. In addition to that, the extravagant monthly salaries paid for the luxuries of unproductive honourable political appointees has drained the scant surplus meant for the poor. Rampant corruption everywhere consumes the rest of the surplus, and the poor and the needy are left to cry in the wilderness.
People in the grassroots feel no urgency for the empowerment of traditional chiefs or the traditional land right of clans. They care not whether they are administered by the State Government or by the District Council, but they are desperately in need of their own economic empowerment. They are miserably in need of medical and educational facilities, (not only in Shillong!) but in other areas as well. They need jobs for their educated children; they need good drinking water, good roads, better irrigation for their farms, reliable and affordable electric supply for their mini industries, and they need good market facilities for their products. Whether such market facilities are run by the Khasis or non Khasis is immaterial as long as they can sell their products at good prices, to be able to feed their children as well as meet their medical and educational needs.
A certain pressure group leader said, “If the Government of India cannot provide financial grants for all our economic needs then leave us alone.” This is only a bragging and uncalculated statement. The tribes of North-East India would not be able to combine into a single society and a single independent state; and individually, the tribes would never be able to survive independently at all. If people of the Khasi and Jaintia Hills were not in India, then they would have been under Bangladesh, or under the Burmese rule, or the Chinese rule. A divinely protected paradise for the people of these hills is possible only in a dream. When India was partitioned in 1947, and when the idea of a British protectorate failed to materialise, the traditional chiefs and leaders of the Federation of Khasi States decided that independence was impossible without sea route for foreign trade; without ‘gold reserve’ to make their own currency, and without the resource to mobilise even a battalion of military force. So they decided that it is safer to join with the Indian Union than with Pakistan. If we say that India needs to retain the North-Eastern Region at any cost for security reasons, then the north-eastern tribes also need the Indian State for the same security reasons.
By all calculations, India is the safest country for the Khasis to be in, where constitutional protection is provided not only against exploitation, but for local autonomy and special economic assistance as well. But there is always a certain level of mutual give and take to be considered between the concept of Indigenous Peoples’ Rights and the fundamental human rights and human security of every Indian, Khasi or non Khasi alike within the same constitutional system. Absolute and exclusivist ethnic autonomy, in the name of ‘Indigenous Peoples’ Rights has no rationale to exist in a state of economic dependence.