By Michael Makri
The recent shuffling of ministerial posts by the Chief Minister and the various allegations brought about by the opposition party on various issues are not going to bring out masses of the poor to take sides. To them, the turmoil is a power struggle within the leadership class and it distracts from the central issue in our society – poverty and inequalities.
There is an elephant in the room and the ‘competing powers’ are too preoccupied with the part of the truth in front of them to see the reality of the whole. In the process, many matters of more urgent priority to the poor are being neglected; the latest being the rising crime rates in the state, which still happen despite the fact that the police department are doing all what they could.
The 2013 election put the oldest and the most experienced political party at the helm of government, with the promise to make the big decisions for the big changes that the people really want. To the poor, it was the dawning of a new day. That new day remains a promise. The task now is no less important – liberation from the yoke of poverty that will make democracy more meaningful to the citizen especially the poor. It is not only guns that kill. Poverty kills. It is slow death from hunger; from diseases that we thought no longer existed, from the loneliness of a life with an empty future. It is also the dying of dignity. Three years since that election, where are we on that promise? If a survey is conducted, no doubt the family of those in government offices will show that the rate of poverty went down. But, taking the State as a whole, our poverty scale has risen.
Inequality has not changed since decades. The top one percent of families has an income equal to the income of the bottom 99 percent. Studies show that there is very little of a middle class in the State. This means that most of the 99 percent are also poor. I have not seen reports of our State economic growth although our CM is constantly on foreign trips. History has not been kind to our poor, has it? We are a state of two worlds. The world of the few, with gated areas, with access to superior education, a health care system enjoyed by first world citizens, private multistoried housing and leisure areas, and the money to control our politics and policies; and the world of the majority, with urban sheds and rural huts, inferior public schools, playgrounds that double as public streets and highways, poorly equipped and poorly manned public-health centers and marginal access to public office.
What is worse, our society is still feudalistic, dominated by a leadership class that rotates among themselves the steering of power through changes in administration. This one percent of families makes the laws, dispense justice, and implement programs according to their whims and fancy. The good people among them go to church, participate in community projects and donate to charities. They sincerely think that using their power and influence to advance self-interest is part of the dynamics of democracy. Sadly, however, they miss the point. There is nothing wrong with wealth and power, and special connections, but there is something very wrong about using them to worsen the already gaping inequalities or to deny or delay justice to the 99 percent in society. That is the root of our problem. And we know this must change. The widespread perception that real power is not with the people is enough for them to distrust government and make it even harder to govern. We encounter that phenomenon every day. People engage in corruption because everybody else does it. People violate simple traffic rules because no one is obeying them anyway. And we know this must change.
We can cut away the branches of a tree of evil but it will keep on growing until we strike at its roots. Every political party has an agenda for change – growth with equity, an inclusive growth. But, as far as my knowledge goes, none of them have produced the desired results. Is this because no administration has the political will to implement these agendas or because these agendas do not strike at the roots but only at the branches? The poor might have no platforms to express themselves either in the Assemblies or in Press Clubs like the one percent is doing it. But for those having human feelings, their conditions for survival should be the only platform. It is true that few programs for the poor have been initiated by the CM. But the poor are saying, the programs are not reaching them, or improving their lives. Then, what is the point of the fisheries scheme or the various other schemes?
Are the one percent rich and the powerful willing to accept the challenges of change? The challenge to speak out on specific cases simply because justice demands it! The challenge to disallow projects that ‘socialize costs and privatize benefits,’ (as Paul Krugman, would call it) such as mining and deforestation the biggest problem cited in Jaintia Hills, Khasi Hills and Garo Hills – where social divisions through the wrong use of money is created. The challenge to Church, business and political leaders to commit their social power and political capital to promote the agenda of the poor, even when it is against their own interests! And finally the challenge of a vision of a society finally rid of feudalism.
These are difficult demands that the poor ask of those who have the wealth and the power to reduce their greed and consumerism for the common good. But that is what is needed to help destroy the roots that feed the branches that kill rather than sustain life. The stakes are high. We are engaged not only in fighting poverty but also in saving our State’s democracy. And until the two worlds around us become one; until we do away with the contradictions in our society, and in the words of Michael Sandel in his book, ‘Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?’ Until there is a larger purpose to what we do, when citizens finally bring the habits of the heart to public life and find a way to cultivate civic virtue, we cannot speak of unity and of ourselves as one State.