By Toki Blah
On 21st Jan 1972, I was a young man nervously waiting my UPSC exam results but all the same enthused and excited like everyone else, about future prospects in the new political dispensation for these hills, romantically then described as ‘a patch of beauty and a shining outpost of India’. On 21st Jan 2016 Meghalaya celebrated its 44th birthday, but on a very subdued note. Except for gaggles of politicians, babus and hapless captive participants called ‘school children’, no one else in the general public seemed bothered about the significance of the day. Actually for many it was just another day of struggle to simply survive; just another day of grind; just another day worrying how and where to get employment. It was a wretched way to celebrate a birthday. A most befitting manner however to commemorate the birth of a failed state!
Let’s try and define Meghalaya. Four decades ago ‘an abode of the clouds’ sounded so apt and poetic. Today ‘an abode for cloudy, woolly headed minds’ seems more appropriate, as the state is filled with confused citizens milling around in despondent bewilderment. In the 1950’s we were under Assam, culturally protected by the 6th Schedule. We decided we wanted something better and nothing else would suffice but full statehood. We then went on to form Govts. with our own elected representatives but decided to retain the Autonomous District Councils (ADCs) to protect us from ‘all evil’. ADCs were retained to serve as training schools for future MLAs and in the twinkling of a political eye, an institution to protect indigenous identity and culture, got converted into a training institute for aspiring MLAs! Today those chickens have come home to roost. We have our own elected Govt empowered by the 7th Schedule to make laws on more than 113 subjects ranging from Public Health, Agriculture, Industries, taxation, Local Government, Economic and social planning, Education, Electricity etc. On the other hand we have the ADCs with powers under the 6th Schedule to make laws on only 10 subjects. Believe it or not but there are self appointed saviours of the Jaitbynriew rooting for supremacy of the ADCs over the State Govt! Is this a classical case of throwing pearls before swine? If this is not superb undiluted confusion, then what is?
Next lets try and have a social audit on what Meghalaya has achieved in the last 44 years. Social auditing is not so much about facts and figures; data and statistics but more about public impressions on the impact policy and governance has had. Of the most important indicators is the impact on health and education; livelihoods and employment and most important of all, impact on the wellbeing of society and its citizens (the mandate incidentally for both State Govt and ADCs). Time to do a social audit by asking the common man’s impression on the last 44 years. Most will unhesitatingly declare that nothing has happened. Either they’re not aware of any developmental benefits or they’re not impressed. Everyone however bewails the corruption that has taken place during the last four decades. 44 years of self rule and common citizens walk around convinced that corruption and politics is one and the same. It’s the bitter icing on the state’s 44th birthday cake. A damming verdict on all its leaders, its governing institutions and the governance system we have imposed upon ourselves.
Problem is when we speak of governance, Meghalaya has yet to make up its mind whether it means “to govern by tradition” or “to govern by the Constitution”. An infantile debate on whether the 6th Schedule or the Constitution is supreme reigns uppermost in minds of people who should know better. Misleading statements are given and the common man is totally confused. Now champions of tradition are ready to move for Supreme court intervention on the matter. Here a word of caution would be in order. We must accept that legal and judicial priorities have shifted in the last half century. Focus today is more on upholding the Right to wellbeing; the Right to decent existence; the Right to Justice for all. Tradition, custom and 73rd Amendment exemption can no longer be used as an excuse to circumvent the above priorities. Moving the Supreme court might therefore be a big mistake. It might just end up in the imposition of the Panchayat Raj regime on these Schedule areas – an outcome nobody wants. The paradox here cannot be missed –the champions of tradition might just end up finishing off tradition completely! Ignorant arrogance can be so tragic.
So has Meghalaya, as a State, failed us? It is obvious that Meghalaya and its people suffer from some major flaws. The first is our failure to connect or associate the modern state and its system of governance with our own wellbeing. Meghalaya is a state driven more by nostalgia for the misty mythical past than any practical vision for development of the present or the future. We worship traditions “from time immemorial” (ki ritit ki dustur na mynbarim). The people of Meghalaya are a very practical lot. They shun away from speaking about the future for they believe it doesn’t exist. So no point worrying about it. The past is more comfortable to discuss, so why not simply live in it? According to Wikipedia one characteristic that a political leader ought to possess is the ‘ability to visualise the future’. Many ‘future blind’ Meghalayan politicians think this is sheer bunkum. Only the past with its tradition can bring in votes, so why bother. Unfortunately such prehistoric mindsets are predominant in the highest echelons of both the ruling and the opposition. Those who speak about tomorrow are ruthlessly suppressed or sidelined.
The second flaw seems to be common to all – the reluctance of the Meghalayan electorate to elect effective leaders. It actually springs from the inability to differentiate between Service oriented politics(Where power through an elected office is used to promote governance and wellbeing of society) from business oriented politics (where an elected office is used to generate profit for self and family). The Meghalayan voter has the inclination to opt for those who are willing to pay for votes. So we end up with MLAs, MPs and ministers with a hidden agenda – to recover investments by converting the public exchequer into a private piggy bank of their own! Politics in Meghalaya, with a few exceptions here and there, is about winning; attaining power and using power to make money. Party bosses and election managers have a quaint term for such perversion. They call it the winability factor; its all that matters and it usually determines who gets the party ticket. No one has ever challenged this vulgar practice that has denied Meghalaya its fair share of effective and dynamic political leadership. In the last 44 years the quality of political leadership has steadily declined and power hungry political parties, both national and regional, appear to be least bothered.
The third flaw flows from the first and the second. We have managed to effectively establish a visionless political leadership. In the absence of a vision for the future, our politicians simply proceed by rule of thumb – a childish belief in ‘the voice of the people’ (ha ka sur u paidbah). In most cases this ‘voice’ is actually the voice of a few drunks mobilised at public meetings at the parking lot in Motphran or at student’s field. Demagogues devoid of vision become leaders and get elected to office. Once there they just don’t know what to do next. They flounder; they hem and haw; unable to give directions or to lead. They usually end up leading from the rear and in the last four decades we have become experts in extolling the virtues for this distorted style of leadership.
Lastly in this frantic race to attain power by means fair or foul, we lost the most fundamental ingredient of democracy, the skill to debate; to dialogue; to talk to one another, to argue with reason and logic; of engaging one another. Political and NGO leaders have somehow come to the conclusion that to discuss or debate issues is a sign of weakness. Instead opposing for opposition’s sake is the order of the day. Confrontation is the weapon of choice since it requires no logic; no reason; no rationale. Raw emotion plus the ability to spout nonsense are the only elements required. We see this happening all around us with increasing frequency. Of alarm is that it has started spreading to the once staid, sober and decorous traditional institutions, the pride of our society. Dorbars and their representatives have now allowed themselves to be polluted by the malady of party politics. Logic and reason (ka nia ka jutang) discarded with contempt. Our very culture and grassroot democratic systems of governance have been contaminated and soiled. Sadly it’s the inheritance we are handing down to our children simply because the future is irrelevant and unimportant to this generation’s scheme of things!
Author is President of ICARE