Patricia Mukhim
We are not a thinking, questioning community and we love rhetoric. I can’t understand why we swallow hook, line and sinker what politicians promise us on the eve of elections without demonstrating to us the paradigm they will follow to get that goal. It’s the same old guys saying the same old boring stuff! A WhatsAap status of a friend of mine says, “Shock me; say something intelligent.” I love this status because it challenges us to get out of the pedestrian stuff. These days when we pass through different localities in the evening we get to hear election lectures which are no different from those we heard twenty years ago. In these electoral platforms there is no space for raising questions. And the supporters of candidates actually sniff around to see that no agent provocateur is lurking nearby to spoil the broth for their candidate. If a potential trouble maker is around he or she is quickly but forcefully whisked out of the venue. One ray of hope is what happened recently at Jowai, where candidates came together on a common platform and were asked searching questions by a leading columnist, HH Mohrmen. This platform was put together by the Jaintia Journalists Union. It’s a pity that the journalistic fraternity in Shillong are unable to take up this challenge of putting candidates and political party honchos through the grill. However, one cannot blame anyone. Day after day journalists have been running from pillar to post attending press conferences at different political party headquarters. They hope to receive pearls of wisdom but all they get is a refined version of a cat-fight and no one is any the wiser after those press conferences.
Is this what democracy was meant to be? A whole nonsensical game of the pot calling the kettle black! Come on show us how you are going to change the fates of 65% of our young population. Show us what educational reforms you have in store to make our young people more questioning and more scientific in their approach to issues. Land or its availability will be the biggest challenge for Meghalaya. Do you have the courage of conviction to bring in land reforms in this cosy tribal state where the oft repeated rhetoric is, “Land belongs to the community?” Have you bothered to ask which section of the community owns that land? Yes, let’s hear which political party has the political spine to carry out a cadastral survey in Meghalaya if it comes to power. Why is the BJP obsessed with lifting the ban on coal mining? And why set a deadline of 180 days for that extractive, environmentally destructive activity? Why not set a deadline instead by which time the BJP will ensure that Meghalaya will have uninterrupted electricity supply? Or set a deadline when the BJP will ensure every household in Meghalaya will have potable drinking water? And then also show us how you propose to address the problem of hawkers who have overtaken every available footpath in town. Show us where you intend to locate or relocate these hawkers who have been demanding their rights for a long time now. Does any political party even care for them? Your local BJP state unit should have briefed you on these pressing problems staring Meghalaya in the face other than the rhetoric about roads and traffic jams.
Aren’t the issues above more important than lifting the ban on coal? And yes since the ban is imposed by the NGT and it cannot be lifted without a mining plan, should the BJP not have developed a shadow mining policy that it can share with the public? Why is the BJP so engrossed with an issue that benefits the coal mafia? Why is it silent on critical issues of bread and butter? Does the urbane leadership of the BJP know Meghalaya has the highest number of female headed households that wallow in poverty and that street children are on the rise? Does this feature in the BJP’s vision document? This facet of matrilineal Meghalaya is what needs to CHANGE. The reason I am addressing these questions to the BJP is because it keeps harping on CHANGE. The Congress is tried and tested and found wanting on many fronts here. The Congress is aware of all the problems listed above. It has allowed these psycho-social wounds to fester. The Congress has no vision on rehabilitating school and college drop-outs. These are the categories that require the collective commitment of all political parties but there is only silence on these fronts.
On Thursday, Nirmala Sitharaman the Union Defence Minister unfurled the BJP’s vision document. She categorically stated that India is now a power surplus state. If so why are we in Meghalaya power starved? Is it not the remit of the central government to enable the state governments to benefit from the country’s over-all development gains? If a BJP government does not, for some reason come to power in Meghalaya, will the state be deprived of what other BJP ruled states are enjoying? These are tough questions to ask and tougher to answer.
The BJP as a brand new party has to use several pairs of lenses to see things as they are and not as painted by the local Mandals. And yes, there are many in Meghalaya who have this morbid fear that the if the BJP comes to power in Meghalaya it will trample on our rights to Freedom of Religion and the right to choose own food from a menu of our choice. No one here wants their rights to celebrate Valentine’s Day, Christmas Day, Good Friday, Easter Sunday and any day that will be invented in the future and which people wish to celebrate, to be curtailed by a bunch of illogical loudmouths who believe this country is a mono-cultural monolith. No it isn’t and the earlier the Sangh Parivar, which is dictating terms to the BJP now, realises this stark reality the better it is for all concerned.
I must confess that in 2014 when the BJP came to power and Narendra Modi became Prime Minister, many of us had forgotten those fears of a Hindutva onslaught. We believed that Modi would single-mindedly pursue a development agenda and that he would rein in the fundamentalist elements of the Sangh Parivar. But the RSS and its ugly cousins did not waste any time in raising their ugly heads and then some BJP MPs would come up with one or other profanity against religious minorities. A country as vast and disparate as India is, cannot afford to have a political party with an exclusivist agenda ruling the country.
Prime Minister Modi must be aware that ever since he came to power and shortly before that there has been such a churn in the media world. Media persons are under coercion to fall in line or fall out with the ruling dispensation. The media today is sharply divided between that which is blatantly pro-government and some which have taken an independent stance and very few that are critical of the government. We are a democracy and the press is a key supporting pillar for that democracy to move on the right track. If this pillar crumbles because we have all decided to capitulate then democracy will shrivel and fade away and before we know it a totalitarian regime would have taken over.
I am sure that democracy is dear to the heart of every Indian. If it is then let us speak up without fear or favour. In doing so we are not saying we favour this or that political party because they have all fallen short of our expectations. In fact, today what we need more than ever is a political revolution that will throw up better alternatives. India deserves that alternative political-ideological model!