By Avner Pariat
A “dkhar” friend made an interesting remark the other day about Khasi people. He manages a wholesale business because of which he is quite well-traveled, and he is of the opinion that among tribal people in India, Khasis must surely be one of the most well-off and socially mobile groups. I do not dispute this assertion entirely. Yes, on many fronts Khasis have surged ahead of the rest of their tribal brethren. Our progress into Modernity is now well over a hundred years while many tribes still need to play catch-up. The number of young professionals from within our community is now almost innumerable and it continues to grow on a yearly basis. Indices for development are much better in Meghalaya than other tribal majority states/areas. These are all nice things to gawp at and must rightly be sources of pride for future endeavour. However, the true reality about the economic scene is actually very depressing.
Yes, ostensibly tribal people, in this instance Khasis, can now tackle the world at large. There is no bar of entry for them anymore. They have all branches of government within their firm grasp for the most part. Every inch of government service has been captured. We can see that the working staff within the Secretariat is almost entirely tribal. The same is true for other avenues within the governmental system. Bengalis, and to an extent Assamese, who once dominated the ‘clerk’ and lower middle management positions during the Raj quickly lost them to the aspiring and newly competent Khasis. The final death knell came on the 21st of January 1972.
Anyway, this is one part of history whether we like it or not. The other side of the coin is the fact that Khasi people are not as fortunate as we like to imagine. It is nice for our egos to be stoked but truth be told, the vast majority of our people continue to fester in poverty and hardships which we have forgotten to address in our overall assessment. My “dkhar” friend also fell into this trap. The few families that we see flaunting their wealth openly are not the true reflections of the community. Young nitwit jerks in daddy’s BMW do not represent our community. They should in fact be thrown out and their ST certificates torn to shreds. But even these are far from “safe”, much of their wealth depends on their affiliations to politics not economy.
In Shillong, in a way, two types of economy can be discerned. There is the “tribal” economy and the “non-tribal” one. These are simplifications of course, but we can look at the differences in terms of banking as I have briefly observed them. The “tribal” economy revolves around different types of personal loans like “car” and “housing”. These loans aren’t about making back money, they are about using up savings and potential savings accrued over years of service. The “non-tribal” economy in contrast is mostly about servicing commercial loan demands. They are usually much, much larger amounts of money BUT they are meant for earning back cash. There is risk involved but there is also a decent percentage of gain. This is one of the reasons why non-tribals seem to own all the businesses especially large institutions. They risk investment and have access to the know-how about the banking system. They think about earning, not spending.
It is not that non-tribals are inherently better with money, this is a myth. They might have more experience because of their particular backgrounds but in this day and age, a “tribal” firm can hire non-tribal professionals if the need arises. The real reason for this bad state of affairs is because governments have maintained bad policy (or is it no policy?) when it comes to tribal businesses. Except if they belong to party people, of course. However, we all know that policy is not only for one party. Banks need to be brought in line by the state government. Enough with these silly loans that do not ensure a future only a fancy car or roof! Farmers, masons, carpenters, butchers need capital not just con-men close to politicians. We hardly have a middle-class and the only source of economic power that we, the tribals, have is tied up in land. The hyper commodification of it has had disastrous results in the last few decades and we are now worse for it. Land has become so costly only wealthier sections can now afford any within Shillong. If we continue to give up land/economic power to the banks in exchange for capital for home construction, is that not a threat to the power of the district councils which are supposed to protect the same? I am worried about the absence of any proper regulation in this regard. Is this a future which is sustainable and fair?
It is clear that based on our obsession with getting government jobs that (by extension) we are entirely dependent on Delhi (rural communities much less so but only slightly). This was a particular point of interest for old articles and pamphlets in the 1980s and 1990s. Writers in those days argued for this and that as they envisioned means of promoting self-subsistence among Khasi people but today hardly anything is discussed in this manner. It would seem that our erstwhile fiercely, independent spirit has been coaxed into becoming a cheap copy of itself within the regime of modern “development” politics. Yes, earlier opinion-makers might have written nationalistically with bias, they wrote for economic independence BECAUSE they didn’t want to be Delhi’s puppet. They might have had more pride than sense. Some of those thoughts were very Right wing and perhaps in a way contributed to the insurgencies of the past days. But we cannot deny that they longed to be truly liberated economically. Whether we remained within the Indian Union was an entirely different thing. Today, instead of thinking about how we can be economically strong, our leaders and their political cabals argue about who gets which contract. The priorities seem to have shifted considerably: from people to party.
Independence is a distant pipe-dream for most “tribal” businesses. Actually I should probably refrain from using this term because we don’t really have any. Nowadays we have tribal “heh spah” (big wealth) who latch onto franchises and in that sense, they aren’t really tribal at all. We need these sorts of businesses to an extent but we also need vibrant, local “home-grown” alternatives as well. The government is not doing all it can to resuscitate the “tribal” economy in the state. For all the big talk about being “self sufficient” by the executive officers, I wager not a single one of their politician bosses can be “self sufficient” without political backing and linkages. Their firms, companies would be torn apart if they dared venture into newer markets as close by as Guwahati. They are just in it for contracts, nothing more. They are not professionally managed and that’s why they are bound to collapse.
The government only seems to care about big players, the fabled “investors”, and the newer local entrants are left to their own devices. The older businesses grow fatter and more complacent. Many of these seem caught in a time-warp, harking back to the good old days when customers flocked endlessly into their shops. Take the different bakeries of Mawkhar constituency. They are among the oldest in the state. But even with the advent of new products from Assam and the increasing competition locally they refuse to re-invent themselves. The history of tribal business should not be one of complacency and wasted opportunity. Conrad Sangma needs to start being proactive on this front, otherwise he risks repeating the mistakes of the past.