Editor,
The passage of the Citizenship Amendment Bill 2019 in the Lok Sabha on January 8 this year was the final nail in the coffin for the people of the Northeast. The purpose of the Bill was more inclined towards bringing in illegal Hindu migrants from neighbouring countries as a vote bank for the BJP. To make it more “acceptable” they put in other religious groups including Christians to camouflage their real intention. This is the worse form of communal politics which we have never experienced before. To top it all, the NPP a close ally of the BJP seems unperturbed by the developments. The UDP is nothing but a rubber stamp and feeds on whatever is thrown at it. We need political parties and politicians to put up a strong resistance to such communally driven policies that are detrimental to the local indigenous communities and the state as a whole.
Yours etc…
Dominic S.Wankhar
Shillong-3
Questions on the mining tragedy
Editor,
It is now past a month and new rescue techniques are being adopted every day with little success. The whole operation makes us wonder whether we have the experience required to tackle such mine accidents. Somebody had rightly remarked that India can send a spaceship to Mars but cannot handle a mine accident that has trapped 15 people inside since December 13. Other countries must be looking askance at our sheer incompetence to handle the rescue operations considering all kinds of media persons have visited the mining accident site. Since rat hole mining has been going on for a long time, should the state government not have a stock of measures ready to tackle such accidents? Can the state government be a just a disinterested onlooker? Have they not collected sufficient revenue from coal mining? Should the state government not have insisted on safety measures for the miners? Or has the state government decided to look the other way at all the malpractices as long as the money coming from the coal trade can continue to fund elections?
As reported by your newspaper the Citizens’ Report on the entire gamut of collusions and conspiracies related to the coal mining business in the state would put Bihar to shame. As an onlooker I find it appalling that the churches have not said a word on this mining tragedy. But of course they would have a lot to preach about corruption! Isn’t collusion by mine owners and government officials at different levels – the DMR, Transport and Police Departments symptoms of corruption most foul? And this rhetoric about coal mining being a livelihood for many needs to be backed by research. Mine owners are few compared to the larger population of the state and the ancillary businesses arising out of coal mining are also negligible. There is a priest who keeps writing letters to the editor in this newspaper. All he is bothered about is the lack of physical cleanliness of the city which he says has now spread to the rural areas. Why bother about external cleanliness when the soul is impure? I say this because most of the mine owners are members of different churches and they fund the churches generously. So are they absolved of their sins, including the sin of seeing 15 people enter the hole of death? The hypocrisy is too glaring and despicable.
I feel that Meghalaya is headed towards a rule of lawlessness and with each new government things are only getting many shades worse. I wonder what the youth of the state have to say about this or are they only concerned with the Citizenship Amendment Bill? Quo Vadis Meghalaya
Yours etc.,
Anthony Sawkmie,
Via email