Patricia Mukhim
In the MDA government there is clear division of responsibilities. Like those playing basket ball, Chief Minister Conrad Sangma is the scorer and his deputy Prestone Tynsong is the one who staves off all opponents so that Conrad can shoot and score. Hence each time the maverick Mr Tynsong who increasingly resembles his mentor of yore, Mr BB Lyngdoh, is asked questions he deflects them back at the questioner. If the question is – “Will the Government investigate the allegations of illegal mining and transportation of coal, Tynsong’s ambivalent response is, “Those who make allegations should come up with evidence.” What a convoluted argument! Will Mr Tynsong reply then as to what is the role of the police if the citizen has to do his/her own investigation into every malfeasance and also gather evidence? Also there seems to be a misconstruction here about the role of the media. The media reports wrongdoing and the responsibility of a responsive government is to take cognisance of what the media says and investigate such wrongdoing. A government on the defensive can only means it knows there is transgression and is trying to bury it alive.
Tynsong also has very little understanding of democratic tenets. When Angela Rangad of TUR questioned why the Meghalaya Right to Public Service Bill was not put up in the public domain for consultation so that the Bill has contributions from civil society, which is the sine-qua-non of democracy, Tynsong questioned her credentials. You cannot wish away civil society because they represent collective voices. If democracy is a government of, by and for the people then the MDA government which is elected by the people has a responsibility to listen to all kinds of voices, including uncomfortable ones. Perhaps Mr Tynsong needs to jerk his memory and remind himself that Meghalaya is still a democracy and not yet a kingdom, although we are soon getting there.
Incidentally, those in the government tend to forget that they are to serve 3 million plus people, the large majority of whom are poor. Since the pandemic, poverty has exacerbated. You really have to walk around and not be driving in an SUV to understand that our own people are today facing stark poverty – it includes the poverty of food, poverty of voice, poverty of thought, poverty of land, poverty of health care, poverty of not having even the bare necessities of life. But of course those in the government don’t know poverty except for spelling it. And who dare tell the bloated that hunger is the ultimate siege within. When there is poverty of voice there is a complete sense of helplessness and victimhood. The government then treats such people as beneficiaries of its patronage. Because of the poverty of thought, people don’t even use reason while voting. The single mother with four kids is only too grateful to the politician who gives her Rs 5000 two days before voting because it would have taken her a whole month to earn that amount. Such is the reality of life in Meghalaya today. By whatever yardstick you might want to measure economic development, we are not making any headway. So the certification that the State got recently for being the best governed small state is, to me, an optical illusion.
Mr Tynsong and other ministers need to understand that criticism of the government is the responsibility of the media and of citizens. To believe in conspiracy theories that critics are trying to topple the government and is using the media is infantile. Someone has rightly said that only the insecure see a conspiracy in everything. The media here does not get used; nor does media allow opposition politicians to fire the gun from their shoulders nor to plant juicy gossip. We have been around long enough to know who is pulling a fast one. The BJP tried to corner the Government on the GHADC scam; a misconduct that is not even hidden considering that over a thousand employees have not been paid for over two years. But perhaps the BJP’s internal machinations have sent this scam into the dungeons for now. The BJP has gone silent, thereby falsifying what their pradhan sewak, Narendra Modi has been mouthing all along about short-circuiting corruption. One is not privy to what senior BJP member, AL Hek conferred with the bigwigs of the Party in Delhi but the silence of the BJP is ominous. They were the only Party that really took on the Government. Others like the UDP have been wishy-washy, although their ministers hold some important portfolios, albeit not the lucrative ones. In fact Education is a tough call and has to do directly with teachers’ salaries, and, although the present minister is steering the ship in the right direction, the sea is rough and one has no idea where the ship will dock in 2022, especially with the National Education Policy, 2020, which will require substantial resources. Mr Rymbui the Education Minister is passionate. Alas, passion needs the momentum of cash.
Normally governments come up with a mid-term balance sheet. The MDA has not yet done so although it will soon be crossing its third year in office. By 2022 December the constituents of the MDA will have to come out with a profit and loss account. Following the impact of the pandemic there may not be too many moneybags around to fund elections. And when a moneybag tells a politician he only has a wallet; the politician is in deep electoral trouble.
By the time the MDA Government reaches its life span, nay a marriage of five years, a lot of stress would have accumulated which would be like cascading dominoes. By then the ego of every politician in the ruling party would have stopped spinning off its axis and a perverse humility would have set in. At that point Mr Tynsong cannot ask civil society groups for their pedigree before they can ask questions. By then every question must be answered and impudence will get short shrift. Voters will not tolerate impudence or wisecracks. They want to know if you have made the roads and bridges promised; constructed and made functional the health care centres; reduced the infant and maternal mortality and assisted farmers who are the backbone of Meghalaya’s economy. Sadly the focus has been on limestone and coal; one is sold legally; the other through illicit trade and both at great cost to the environment.
And worse of all is that every aspiring politician, especially those who have sat on the power seat for five years will have to contend with the new drug – social media and its unending cacophony. In Nagaland a group has created a Facebook page where you can lampoon ruling party politicians. It’s quite a fun page but it gives one the sense of what people actually think of the elected who live in a make-believe world of invincibility.
To add to the melee of 2023, there will be new faces – the faces that have spread dystopia and xenophobia all because they too want to be up there where it matters. They will preach unrealistic policy proposals such as “no railways,” but with no alternatives. They will not have a white paper on the economy, on education and health because they would not even have thought of these weighty issues. They will pick and choose issues that will trigger emotional and ideological polarisation.
Meanwhile, as media persons we must also plead guilty of making our main stories those where decision makers are creating events but we don’t ask people how they perceive these events. So there’s a lot of soul-searching to do too on our part.
Meanwhile, we trundle on aimlessly in an illusory world with the pandemic being the only real thing that scares the hell out of us.