By Chitra Rajpal
The Meghalaya Autumn Assembly 2020 session, concluded in November, witnessed immense participation from politicians of the NPP-led Meghalaya Democratic Alliance (MDA) government as well as the Opposition. Somewhere in the heated debates, a political blame game emerged, which continues till date, despite many arguments being made on the floor of the house regarding key policy measures. At this point for the people of Meghalaya, one side does not seem better than the other. Hence, a greater burden lies on the legislators to deconstruct key political measures for the people and not just simply engage in a blame-game for easy political mileage.
The problem in Meghalaya’s political history so far has been that the Opposition usually tends to take a holier-than-thou stance despite knowing that many sitting legislators on their side of the House are also guilty of wrongdoing. In such circumstances, it is easy for a blame-game to get triggered as evidence is neither scarce nor hidden from the public. To be honest, a political back and forth helps no one. The informed audience already know the details; the middle class either have their opinions sealed or choose to remain apolitical, and the majority want amenities and developmental agendas. The small fraction which remains are politicians, who ensure that they create sufficient noise to manipulate public perceptions, helping them to stay in power. Thus, maturity in political discourse slowly erodes. It makes nothing more than headlines for media organisations, which also have economic reasons to run certain types of news.
For instance, the issues of coal mining have repeatedly made the morning headlines of the newspapers in the state. While it is the Conrad Sangma-led National People’s Party which has come under the radar now, for almost a decade it was the Congress who had played hide-and-seek on the matters at hand. A cursory glance over the Congress regime’s history is sufficient to bring out its tryst with coal mining, the extremely controversial Meghalaya Mines and Mineral Policy, 2012, being a case in point. The policy spearheaded under the leadership of Mukul Sangma would have given rat-hole mining legitimacy had the NGT not exercised its wisdom and stopped the policy in its tracks. These issues were covered extensively even then, but at no point can any average citizen of Meghalaya claim that despite media coverage on these issues, they were well informed to make political decisions. This is the way citizens are manipulated. In such a situation, given the fact that the opposition cannot come clean and the ruling government has to defend itself, public loses out on key discourses.
Taking the instance of coal mining, it is no secret that the practice has flourished in the state for over a century through the nexus of the mine owners, the bureaucrats, and the government. For almost a decade that the current opposition was in power in the state, this issue was pertinent. The state’s coal mining industry ever since has been making headlines for all the wrong reasons. In the past, several incidents of miners dying due to unscientific methods of mining have spurred the conscience of the entire country. For example, in 2012, 15 miners in the Garo hills succumbed to injuries when an illegal mine got flooded unexpectedly. The bodies of the miners were never recovered. A year later, through a probe conducted by the Jaintia Hills District Authority, 222 child miners were found being involved in rat-hole mining. Of these 222, 153 belonged to the local communities while the rest had come with their families from Nepal, Bangladesh, Assam, and Bihar.
It was only after sufficient noise was created by national dailies that legislators took the issue into cognizance and came out publicly with this. This is just one of the issues. The trumpet has been blowing on several issues and there is no solution for it as yet.
Now, what is the way forward? Again, taking the instance of mining, the NPP-led government must come up with a comprehensive mining policy and make it a point to break this nexus to solve a long pending concern, instead of using Congress’s blame-game tactic. The NPP, albeit a comparatively fresh party, has seen the leadership of seasoned politicians like Purno Sangma, who was known to make sound and highly informed interventions in national politics. The aim of the party hence should not be to continue with the ancient practice of pointing fingers but to make interventions which can help people move in a better direction with respect to state politics. That can be the only pertinent way forward not only for the health of politics of the state but also for policies for the people. Likewise, for the opposition, ultimately, the goal should be to critique policies and advance alternatives that are pro-people, irrespective of who is proposing them. In a developed democracy, the opposition should be mature enough to discuss the welfare value of the actions being taken by the government first, and discrediting the government second. Such an attitude is of paramount importance for constructive engagement. (The author is a public policy postgraduate student of National Law School, Bengaluru)
