SHILLONG: Four months since PM’s “Janata Curfew” in late March this year, the common people of Meghalaya, who have been at the mercy of State Government in the fight against COVID pandemic, have begun to murmur about the strategies and administrative action plans notified ad nauseam that directly affect the common person.
More critical question is how does the government make decisions which are basically top down? Who gives the administration the information it needs to take far-reaching decisions like lockdown during this pandemic?
With most MLAs maintaining a stoic silence and the senior honchos in the secretariat devoid of first-hand knowledge of the ground realities, these questions assume significance.
These posers must be supplemented with another question: Who are the public servants most in touch with ground realities and in close touch with people?
The answer naturally is the Block Development Officer (BDO).
But is the BDO part of the State Disaster Response Team? Perhaps, but the hierarchy in the services is so entrenched that a BDO will hardly open his/her mouth in front of senior officers. The fact is that even the district administration does not get enough feedback to be able to take realistic decisions.
Add to it the inconsistency in government’s utterances and actions. Recently, it was proclaimed that lockdown would never be invoked. The revised strategy was to go for “micro-management” of the COVID battle. But suddenly, there has been a complete u-turn. The people of Greater Shillong have been subjected to a three-day lockdown, and there are already talks about more in the offing.
Yet decisions on Lockdown are taken without ever listening to the most disempowered people eking out a living daily and for whom a single day’s loss of labour means considerable hardship.
When a vendor was asked what she thought of the proposal to impose a lockdown for another two weeks, she retorted, “Does the Government ever ask us? Who does the Government listen to? They are the rich and powerful who can survive for months without going out of their homes. Why would they care for us?”
Take the case of this woman cleaner who sweeps and swabs a particular public sector undertaking as a daily labourer. Her husband is a taxi driver and she has two adolescent children both studying, one in Class VIII, the other in Class VI. The lockdown saw her and her husband both confined to their home. They have no savings and have to rely on charity.
But even that is dwindling now that the pandemic-induced lockdown has crossed the fourth month.
Meghalaya has a huge population of daily labourers and not all of them benefit from Government largesse because they don’t have the required documents. A day’s loss of work could mean untold hardship for the family and the mouths that are to be fed.
The new makeshift markets that have sprung up in 7th Mile Upper Shillong, Nongmynsong, Lad Smit by the roadside all the way to Upper Shillong beginning at Lummawbah, have women vendors and quite a good number of them are single parents. One day of lockdown is a grievous loss of income for them. Three days could mean penury.
These decisions indeed are baffling because a lockdown, as experts have been saying, can only slow down the infection but cannot stop it. But the blow to the economy is phenomenal.
Recently former Union Home Secretary, GK Pillai, while commenting on the workload of government officials due to the COVID-19 crisis said, “Part of the reason for the overwork is that the senior administrators do not think things through before issuing orders. That is why there were as many as 4,800 orders issued by MHA on how to handle the pandemic. Each one modifying parts of earlier orders. In the field, they are unable to cope with these rapid changes and this leads to confusion and more clarifications.”
Pillai further added, “Government needs to take civil society into confidence and the deluge of propaganda and statistics and experts have not helped.
When asked why the government at the centre and the states don’t lend themselves to correction, Pillai said “Many of the clarifications came on feedback, but they did not learn any lessons and continued to issue fresh orders without consultation, resulting in further problems.”
Observers say that if there is one lesson that COVID should teach those at the helm, it is to consult those at the lowest rung of the economic ladder before imposing another lockdown.
The top rung of the administration needs to listen to the BDO and his/her team. That would make COVID governance more realistic and decision making bottom up rather than top down.