Patricia Mukhim
Journalists are supposed to be able to read the mood of the people prior to the elections and to interpret that into electoral wins or losses. I think people give us more credit than is due to us. As media persons though, this is the time for us to grill all candidates, including the ones who can’t read or write Khasi or English as to their “idea” of Meghalaya as it should be in 2023 and beyond. We should be asking the sitting MLAs what they have done in the last five years rather than us publishing their election rhetoric between now and February 27. The media should in fact get its act together and have a public forum where candidates are asked to answer questions from members of the public. It is our right to question them for they will be representing us and who wants to be taken down the dark alley of Alice in Wonderland, yet again.
Paul Lyngdoh the sitting MLA for instance has come up with an appeal to the people of his constituency and perhaps of Meghalaya to maximise results on Education, Economy and Environment and vowed to confront Corruption, Criminalisation and Cartelisation of governance. But the larger question is whether the UDP as a political party of long standing does have a document to share with the public on how it intends to realise the three E’s and also the three C’s. Crafting slogans is easy enough for those with a creative mind. But how to operationalise things on the ground is what requires a lot of planning, implementation and monitoring which MLAs and those in government don’t do very well. To my mind the biggest drawback of every political party is the vacuum in thinking. None of the political parties have a think-tank which comprises some dedicated souls from amongst its cadres to bring to the table the voices of the people and to take back to the people a message that their collaborative efforts are needed to implement every development programme. Let us not fool ourselves even for a moment by imagining that people today are ready to believe political parties and candidates. We are all looking at how best to use the respective candidates for our personal gain during these crucial weeks before the jamboree is over.
I was conversing with a colleague over the rise in the number of BPL families in some constituencies such as Shillong South and Pynthorumkhrah to name a few. Why has poverty risen by leaps and bounds in these constituencies? What is the socio-economic profile of these people? Are they kept at subsistence level so that they are easier to manipulate? What have the sitting MLAs done to ameliorate the pain and suffering of these people? Apart from trying to push people through the backdoor into government run institutions, can we have the name of one MLA or minister who has thought through on what are Meghalaya’s employment potentials outside the government sector? Has any MLA submitted a blueprint to the outgoing government on the employment policy it ought to adopt? I have not seen such a document and I don’t believe it exists. So what really are MLAs doing other than supervising the construction of roads and footpaths and trying to push the PHED to provide drinking water to their constituents? Have any of the sitting MLAs done a research to find out the gaps in the health care system of Meghalaya? Have any of them questioned why Meghalaya, Government despite having a NEIGHRIHMS with state of the art facilities for treatment of a range of diseases including cancer, still continues to send its employees and their relatives to Vellore, Apollo Mumbai, Apollo Chennai et al? Should government employees be the privileged class while others cannot even afford basic health care? Did we vote for a government so that the needs of the elite alone are looked after? As of 2016, Meghalaya has 68,280 employees and these and their family members only, out of the 30 lakh people of in the state are getting all the healthcare perks. Is this an equitable deal? The Meghalaya Health Insurance Scheme has far too many riders to be able to work for the poor. More than insurance, it is the primary and tertiary health care facilities which are the remit of the state to provide. Insurance makes health care expensive and benefits the health care providers in the private sector. So how can the health insurance model benefit more people in Meghalaya?
On Thursday the BJP released a document called “Chargesheet Against Congress which lists all the sins of omission and commission of the Congress government in Meghalaya, especially the Education Scam. Well, the Education Scam may seem like a huge malfeasance for some thinking citizens but the voters of East Shillong Constituency don’t care since not too many from that constituency were affected by the White Ink Scam and because the Courts have not pronounced judgement on the matter yet. People here continue to vote for what they get out of their MLAs and this is why we are where we are today. Rather than documenting the Congress scams and listing the areas they have failed why doesn’t the BJP come up with its own list of “to dos” in the next five years? Why doesn’t the BJP tell us how it will be different from the Congress with regular offenders like Sanbor Shullai in their fold? Can the BJP change peoples’ mindsets overnight? Can they plug the loopholes of corruption and nepotism when this same man sits at the high table? That’s something even the BJP cannot guarantee! So the Party should stop this rhetoric of change.
Coming to the NPP which seems to be concentrating on campaigning rather than addressing the media on insubstantial issues, one would like to ask this Party who its chief ministerial candidate is, because this looks like the Party that might form the next government with the BJP as a very junior partner. If the NPP+BJP combine still does not end up with the magic figure of 31+ then who else will join this conglomerate? In September last year the UDP had made a public statement that it would not treat the BJP as a pariah. Now it has changed its stance! The UDP will be the most embarrassed when it decides to take the next course of action after March 3, 2018.
Meanwhile the “national” parties will be unleashing their star campaigners in Meghalaya to brainwash us on what they can do better than the other. Right now all the big guns of the Modi cabinet have descended in Nagaland. It remains to be seen if their collective body weight will be able to convince the Nagas that the BJP and its ally the NDPP led by Neiphiu Rio is the Party to vote for in case the Nagas want a quick solution to their eternal problem. If you ask me we have seen too many of these political shenanigans to be able to take any of these political parties seriously. When the Congress bigwigs come all they will be talking about is how demonetisation, GST, beef ban and the works are the legacy of the Modi government that the people of Meghalaya would not want to see repeated here. (In any case demonetisation and GST has hurt all states including the BJP ruled ones). The BJP in its turn will wave the non-official charge sheet of scams it has documented and ask us to abandon the Congress. The UDP and HSPDP are neither here nor there. The PDF is just going on a Mukul-bashing spree. Oh why do “We the People,” have to suffer such ignominy and be treated like cretins that cannot read the signs of the times?