By H H Mohrmen
Now that the noise has died down and the campaigns and the rallies are over, it is time to take-stock and to try and understand if elections in the state really help to improve democracy and ensure good representatives are elected or have they merely become a tamasha? We are not only going to learn an awesome lot from this election, but the elections to the two Autonomous District Councils, 2019 are also crucial because they are going to be the last election to the Councils as we know them. Hence they obviously have much to teach us.
The first lesson is that contesting elections is now an expensive proposition. Even an election to the membership to the Autonomous District Council is becoming expensive, at least in the Jaiñtia hills because there is a spending spree everywhere. Apart from the usual expenditure which includes such thing as candidates having to pay for hiring sound systems and decoration of meeting venues, now candidates even to provide tea during the meetings organised throughout the campaign period.
The above expenditures are at least accountable, however, the larger expenditure is on the conveyance when candidates have to hire vehicles to ferry people to and from meetings and rallies. The expenditure is quite enormous because nothing comes free these days especially during the elections. Ninety percent of the vehicles which attend the rallies and campaigns are paid for and surprisingly the candidates have to pay even for private vehicles joining the cavalcade. The enforcing agencies will find it difficult to detect this activity of the candidates because of the restriction of numbers of vehicles which can bear flags. Although there are vehicles carrying people to and fro during the election campaign period but because they do not carry flags, the government cannot possibly arrest them.
One may ask why the need to ferry people to attend the different meetings of their respective candidates. Well, the sole objective of this activity is to influence undecided voters. In Jaiñtia Hills one would hear people predict about the prospect of the candidate winning from the number of vehicles he can bring to the different meetings and rallies. The more people and more vehicles one can bring the brighter the chance the candidate has to win the election.
Candidates not only have to pay for conveyance of the people to attend meetings and rallies, but everyday voters are even paid for attending the meetings or rallies of the candidate they support wherever they are held. The voters are paid on a daily basis and the rate varies from place to place, but the sad fact is that the candidates or his supporters provide not only food but even free drinks for the people who join the meetings.
This year unlike the last elections to the Legislative Assembly, from videos doing the rounds on social media, there are cases not only of women being in an inebriated condition, but also of them exchanging blows and the crowd instead of trying to disengage them were seen cheering and egging them on to fight each other. This is the sad state of affairs that we are in where men and women especially farmers and daily wage earners, throughout the campaign period, stopped attending to their chores altogether.
Compared to the Legislative Assembly elections and the constituencies under KHADC, the MDC constituencies in Jaiñtia hills are smaller. In spite of that, the expenditure that the candidates have to incur is considerably much higher than their counterparts in the Khasi hills. It is now also obvious that every serious contender to any public office will have to shell out huge amounts of money only to contest the election. Based on this fact, it is only natural that even for the office of Member to the District Council, the contestants have to have a big bank balance.
The way the election spending is happening one cannot help but ask why are contenders willing to spend so much money only to get elected as members of the ADC? Is it the status? Or is it something else because from experience it is found that the function of the JHADC leaves much to be desired. One may ask what exactly the function of the ADC is. What have they done to protect the rivers and forests in the scheduled areas?
If the function of the ADC is merely to protect the culture and traditions of the indigenous people, then why is there this spending spree during elections? Another question that needs to be asked is what have the MDCs particularly those of the JHADC done in the last 2014-2019 council? What have they done to protect and promote the languages of the area? What have they done to protect the indigenous people for which the Council is mandated to protect? Obviously the Council has done precious little in the last tenure.
The people also have the right to know how many Bills were passed in the entire five year term and how much time the members spent debating these Bills in the august house. The readers will find it interesting to know that the Jaiñtia Hills Autonomous District Council in particular has spent very little time debating issues in the different sessions of the Council in the last five years. The readers will also be surprised to know that in the last term of the JHADC, the different sessions and in fact even the budget session, did not last not even for two hours. Yes the entire budget session did not last for even a few hours. The question arises therefore that if there are no issues to debate then are the ADCs still relevant? Some have rightly pointed out that it looks like the dorbar shnongs have more agenda to discuss than the JHADC because their meeting will definitely last more than three hours.
The other major issue which is affecting the ADCs is defection because of the absence of the anti- defection mechanism in the Council. Hence members switch allegiance at their own whims and fancies. This has led to the frequent change of Chief Executive Members and the Executive Committee. Another pertinent question that one may ask is how many CEMs did we have in the last five- year term? The frequent change of CEM and ECs has also affected the functioning of the Council as a whole.
In the Khasi Pnar context when candidates visit their respective constituencies to campaign, they request the voters to elect them as their ‘Nongïalam’ which literarily means leader, but how can we get true leaders when in the process, he or she is literarily buying his or her way to the House? The Khasi Pnar people also have another term which they use for the political leaders and that is u/ka ‘nong-mihkhmat,’ but what does ‘mihkhmat’ exactly mean? In true sense of the term, it just means to show one’s face. For instance when a person visits a bereaved family, he/she goes to show his/her face or ‘mihkhmat,’ on his/her own behalf or on behalf of the family. Or when one joins the family in times of joy, one attends the same to also represent or ‘mihkhmat’ one’s family in the meeting or the occasion. Is this the kind of leadership we want?
There is now a blame game as to who should be held accountable for the sad state of affairs that we are in now. Should we blame the politicians for bribing the voters or are we the voters to be blamed for expecting largesse from the candidates. We are really in the, ‘which came first, the egg or the chicken situation,’ because the voters also take advantage of the situation and milk their candidates as much as they can because after the campaign period they would have disappeared altogether all pursing their own businesses even while voters are left high and dry.