By FabianLyngdoh
The tribal societies are generally characterised as backward, particularly with regards to education and economic standing. The above conditions, together with the tribals’ consciousness of their territorial and cultural identities on the one hand, and their dependence upon the Indian political economy on the other hand, need to be taken into consideration as the socio-economic base-lines for economic planning concerning the tribal areas.
With due respect to the economists for their expertise on the subject, I would like to present some important issues for a bottom-up economic planning from a sociological point of view, which might be of importance in planning for the socio-economic development of the people of Meghalaya. So far, socio-economic planning was a top-down affair, super-imposed by strange ideas borrowed from Western models, though claim is made of a bottom-up approach with regard to implementation of the various schemes. Let us see some of the important issues which according to my perception are to be seriously taken into consideration.
Government agencies and NGOs had for so many years fed the people with the idea of improving their livelihoods by discarding their age-old farming practices and to adopt modern agricultural systems based on imported corporate seeds that have been genetically engineered, animal hybrids, chemical fertilizers and pesticides to increase productivity. But today there is a realisation that agricultural system based on artificial interferences with nature is not sustainable, but has only led to the loss of local seeds and animal breeds, and the depletion of local biodiversity, together with a deteriorated ecosystem and disoriented employment system.
The cry today is, ‘back to organic farming’, and the corporate world is again trying to patent and sell that idea to the farmers through the local governments as if indigenous peoples had never known natural resources management and organic farming! Considering various emerging national and international agenda, it seems that development initiative itself has become a lucrative business that is more profitable to the facilitators than to the beneficiaries. Seeing a huge sum of money from the Central Government or from international funding agencies for development initiatives, even the State Government wants to jump into the pool to stand as a nodal NGO through a committee of its serving bureaucrats and retired bureaucrats, while it fails miserably to deliver the normal and routine services and development initiatives through its normal departments.
The Khasis in the past had understood the concept of what is today called ‘micro finance’, and the profitability of cooperative economic activities. These traditional cooperatives were called ‘Bara-khynraw’ in Ri Bhoi region. Unfortunately, a foreign concept of ‘Self Help Group’ (SHG) accompanied by strange vocabularies and functional narratives had uprooted and displaced these well-integrated traditional groups.
As long as lucrative funding was available to the facilitating NGOs from the Government and International Agencies, it seemed that these modern Self Help Groups (SHGs) were really flourishing, and there was hope that these development models would naturally and automatically replicate themselves. But nothing concrete has been achieved on the ground. As we see today, the imported SHG model had uprooted the traditional ‘Bara Khynraw’ while at the same time has not been able to naturally replicate itself. On the other hand, a majority of these SHGs have either become dysfunctional, or have become bankrupt, and members have become insolvent defaulters.
We have seen that a few selected SHGs from each region which somehow managed to remain intact as show-pieces are being called upon again and again to be represented as models of success in Government and NGOs’ to satisfy the requirement of funding agencies, while all the rest have failed. These are the development models that are being implemented! Development facilitators are ultimately answerable to the people and the economy, not to the funding agencies.
It is true that lots of change had taken place, and with the present level of population and the standard of living, there is a need for improved economic infra-structures. However, improvement of local economic infrastructures should not necessarily come from foreign technologies under the control of commercial corporations. To be productive and sustainable, such improvements should evolve within the local socio-economic and cultural system.
Some of the first-timer MLAs have been able to garner the support of the educated unemployed youth on the promise of instant employment to every one when they are elected by employing the oft quoted phrase, ‘ban pynioh kam ioh jam’. But what most of the educated youth expect are salaried jobs, especially in the Government establishments. Hence without an effective investment in the infrastructural strength of the prevalent system of economic production, these representatives would have in their hands a huge and impossible task to perform in order to meet the expectation of those who voted them on false promises.
Economically speaking, unemployment arises when the population far exceeds the capacity of natural resources to sustain, or when the number of job seekers far exceeds the opportunity for employment within an economy or a sub-economy.In Meghalaya there is no true unemployment problem from the economic point of view, but there is under-employment of resources and opportunities, which has brought about unemployment. I dare say that if Bangladeshis are allowed to enter freely into the Khasi and Jaintia Hills, they would in no time create employments for themselves, and hire local people as their workers. So, the problem lies not with the lack of employment, but with the lack skills and facilities for exploiting resources and opportunities profitably and sustainably.
Today, an increasing number of educated persons are left unemployed. This reflects on the irrelevance of the present type of education for the economic production prevalent in the society. The economic production system cannot be expected to adapt to the type of education imparted. In reality it is the prevalent system of economic production that determines the type of education and training that should be imparted to the youth who aspire for employment. Hence, there is a need to reorient the educational system towards employment opportunities within the prevalent system of economic production.
While it is true that all possible efforts should be made to improve production of every commodity, it is impossible for the State to be self sufficient in anything. No society in the world today is self sufficient in anything. What is required is to make the people self-sufficient in the means of exchange rather than aiming to make them self sufficient in anything. According to available documents, North East India is considered as one of the hot spot of fresh water fish biodiversity in the world and harbours about 274 fish species. Some of these species are rare and endemic to only this region. A good number of such indigenous fishes may have ornamental value and hence, could be made into valuable export items that may attract hobbyists around the world.
In the field of modern tourism, North East India is said to be a goldmine,as it lies in the South East Asia region where tourism activity is predicted to grow more than 6.5 per cent per year. Tourism could be the largest foreign exchange earning source for the people of Meghalaya too. The State has no major industries, but has been bestowed with natural beauty, unique biodiversity and pleasant climate. Hence, the best approach for Meghalaya lies with eco and cultural tourism which involves travelling to relatively undisturbed natural areas with the specific objectives of studying, admiring and enjoying natural beauty, wild plants and animals, as well as the unique historical and cultural aspects of the State.
It is time for the Government to stop playing agent for infiltrating the local production system with the Western World’s corporate ideas that interfere with the local biodiversity and indigenous seeds. What the Government can do is to financially assist the farmers in land development and reclamation, watershed management, capital investment and market linkages, but leave them with their own technologies and methods that suit them. What the people actually need is to rediscover their own indigenous knowledge and practices that have been experimented in the lap of nature and applied in the fields for thousands of years.
Study should be made on the types of economic activities that people at the grassroots are engaging in and they should be assisted to strengthen their natural occupations, and not to unnecessarily convince them to plant roses in Israeli poly houses or any other strange things which had generally failed due to lack of commercial and cultural adaptabilities. So far, people in the villages survive on their own natural economic activities, not on the models of development introduced by the Government. Hence, an understanding of the nature of local natural resources, and the power of tradition and its hold in the society’s collective consciousness is necessary.