By Abner Pariat
Why are people so afraid of being seen or noticed? We may claim to be individuals but actually most of the time we hide away from real individuality. We love to talk about our rights and yet many do not express their right to freedom of expression. Instead we assume identity based on products we purchase from the marketplace. As a friend recently pointed out, people often send in the most innocuous letters to Shillong Times and desperately urge that their names and address be withheld. I can understand this if you are an informant, supplying sensitive information, and you’re trying to avoid the detection of powerful people but writing about a burst pipe or growing crime rate hardly justifies the need for anonymity! It is quite hilarious but also sad.
In spite of better judgement, I am not afraid of the CM of Meghalaya or Paul Lyngdoh; neither am I afraid of Metbah Lyngdoh, Ampareen Lyngdoh nor any other MLA/MDC. I might be a little afraid of their bodyguards, for sure, but when it comes to these personas themselves, I don’t really feel any need to be reverential or fawning. When people stand for them, I sit down; when everyone rushes to shake their hands, I take the opportunity to rush to the toilet. I am tired of the fake respect that we heap on these government officials. I thought the days of the Raj were over! To paraphrase the hysterical George Carlin, they are public servants, the people pay them; they should be serving us glasses of water when we come through the door.
Dear god, how we suffer them! We, the people of Meghalaya and India, deserve a break from these boring empty vessels. Why do these MLAs feel the need to ruminate openly while addressing audiences? I don’t get it. Dear public servants, the audience is bored, please stop pretending to be Derrida and let us go home in peace. No one wants to waste one hour of their lives listening to your few thoughts and bad attempts at poetry.
But the main culprit that helps keep up this charade is the public itself. We have decided to worship these representatives simply because they are representatives! They might be useless and brainless, have no talent for administration but we don’t know anything better so we lie to ourselves about their real worth. You need to start being disrespectful to the corrupt. People, especially the young ones, have to stop being passive and start being more aggressive with government. I don’t mean that we must all agitate like pressure groups do but we need to start meeting our MLAs more regularly so that we can tell them what we need, what must be done. Not the other way around. People’s actual opinions are seldom considered when plans are drawn up. The lack of it is quite shocking. One of the main reasons for this must surely be because of the not-so-secret misanthropy, the fatalism of the bureaucracy/technocracy. Many of these types of public servants are divorced from the public. They don’t walk with the people, don’t buy their own groceries from Iewduh, don’t know what is happening in their shnongs but we, strangely enough, entrust planning to these people. I ask you then if these people have no faith in us, why should we have faith in them?