The Chief Minister of Meghalaya and the sitting MLAs are on an inauguration spree. For the Chief Minister, If it’s not a foundation stone for a building then it’s a sub-division or some such thing. The question that needs to be asked is what are the time lines for the completion of those buildings? Let’s take a look at the few pending projects. At the top of the list is the Crowborough Hotel Project first constructed by the Meghalaya Tourism Development Corporation and later leased out to a private party. No questions are asked in the Assembly on this issue and therefore no answers are received. Hence the public is kept wondering when this 30-year project will be completed. Is it still good for occupation or is it now fit to be demolished? In fact a good, independent architect should be asked to evaluate the longevity of the building and to tell us exactly what the present status of the building is. We recall that the operators of local hotels who have the credibility, the finance and the know-how on hotel management had bid for this project but there was political pressure then to give it to a person with political clout but who knows zilch about the hotel business. Now, the second hotel – with a 5-star tag built on Government land by a private party on private-public partnership mode, in collaboration with noted hoteliers JW Marriot, has also run into financial mess.
The moral here is that Government should (a) stop doing business (b) private-public partnerships must be legally binding on both parties. The private party cannot make the Government liable for its inability to manage its finances.
The other long-pending project is the State Assembly building, tender for the design of which were called only recently. The old Assembly building was gutted in January 2001. This is now the 17th year but not much headway has been made. Hence merely inaugurating something is not enough; completing it is more important. Let’s not forget that several crores of public money has been spent on Crowborough and other half-finished projects. Meghalaya’s cardinal sin is in the time and cost overruns involved in almost all projects. Who is to be held accountable for such delays if not the Government?