By Teiborlang T.Kharsyntiew
In less than a year, Meghalaya will celebrate fifty years of statehood. While the government has started to plan the itineraries for this celebration, the question remains – are we to celebrate or reflect on what the state has achieved in these 50 years. Today, Meghalaya is a rusted and broken engine were a minority class of elite power brokers, politicians, contractors, and coal barons, flying business class are trying to convince the poor and the wretched that the engine of development is running and we are in for a ‘golden’ era. Who are we trying to sell this mendacity to? It is a fact that for the last several decades there has been a complete breakdown in the machinery of governance in Meghalaya. For example, for the last decade and a half, a simple act of travelling from point A to point B is today held hostage by an incessant traffic jam. The dilapidation of the public transport system led the traffic police department to manage the traffic at their whims and fancies where ‘one way’ and ‘no entry’ are often implemented, changed, or interchanged without any rationale but a recipe for disaster.
The government may have invited national and international experts to solve this mess, but the fact is: any plan of decongesting the city’s traffic will mean nothing without first fixing the responsibility of the mismanagement of the Shillong Public Transport Service buses and taxis; the way it was tendered, operated and junked at the expense of tax payers’ money. Similarly, the absence of school buses for most schools or the flagrant misuse of official vehicles for personal errands, are questions of ethics and responsibility that need to be addressed. As Utpal Kumar De and Gitumoni Rajbongshi of the Department of Economics, NEHU found out in their study on the impact of Traffic Congestion in Shillong, everyone knows, from patients rushing to the hospital to anyone rushing to catch a flight or a train, deliver food, official work, a miasma of traffic jams is translated to the loss of lives, loss of man-hours and productivity that ruin the state’s economy.
Another issue that illustrates our broken system is our education system. Shockingly, till date Meghalaya has only one state-sponsored university-the Captain Williamson A. Sangma technical university. But even this University does not do justice to the name of Captain Williamson A. Sangma when it is shrouded in mystery as no information or a webpage is available to inform us about its status. This also shows the frivolous attitude of every government when it comes to education. In almost fifty years, we are yet to see the light of a state-sponsored medical college, research institute, center of excellence, or a state university other than the technical university. While private schools, colleges, and universities are mushrooming in the state, government schools and aided schools and colleges are left high and dry. It is disheartening that now and then, school teachershave to beg and protest for their salary, or advertised faculty post in colleges are subject to whispers of delay, nepotism, and underhand appointments.
Out of the many private universities that set up shop in the state, few fly-by-night universities continue to operate and fleece both students and teachers disregarding institutional rules and ethics. The fact that these universities blatantly continue to violate all norms begs the question as to who they are being patronized by? We all know how teachers in most private schools, colleges, and universities are being exploited with a bare minimum wage that eludes human dignity and labour rights. For most teachers teaching in private colleges, running between colleges to supplement their income is a regular sight. While the presence of private educational institutes and universities allows for healthy competition in the education sector, the question remains whether the majority of our students can afford to pay the high cost of private education when about 12 percent of the state’s population are still living below the poverty line and three fourths of the population are landless. To the children from this section of the population or even those who are just above the poverty line, the choice is either to drop out or continue their education at a certain financial and personal sacrifice. Perhaps none of our policy makers or even pressure groups- will bleed at this except for an occasional noise of reforming our education system without much conviction. For the rich, powerful, and well-connected the grim state of education will not itch them. Their children will be guaranteed admission in ‘public-funded state government schools’ or elite private schools in the city, or better still in private expensive schools, colleges, and universities elsewhere in India and abroad. There is nothing at stake for them or generations after them. It would be interesting to conduct a study among college teachers and bureaucrats and find out how many of them are sending their children to study outside the state. And how many of our millionaires and billionaires have invested back in the community through the establishment of schools, colleges, and universities? Perhaps this exercise will provide a few of the answers to the state of our education system.
Meghalaya which once boasted as being the destination for students not only from Northeastern states but from other parts of India and abroad to pursue their study is no longer the destination. We are archaic! If parents from outside send their kids to study here, perhaps, it is because they were once students in one of our school and colleges and carry good memories of not only good quality education but of a welcoming and peaceful state that embraces all. Today, as most states like Nagaland, Manipur, Assam, Sikkim, Mizoram are well connected with other cities in India by train and air, neither geographical proximity nor emotional attachment will hold. Quality education, a peaceful environment, and unrestricted entry are what most parents will contemplate before sending their child to study away from their hometown. No parent would like to send their child to study in a city that does not provide quality education, assuming that quality education is available in that city. But if safety is of concern, or children are required to take a permit every time they come to visit we might as well forget the beauty and value that students will learn while studying in a multicultural and diverse classroom.
Nothing empowers and enriches children and young adults more than a lived experience of being together, observing, and learning other cultures inside and outside the classroom. Students are the best ambassadors and well-wishers. No matter how much we talk about tourism, successive governments fail to recognize that the presence of quality educational institutions (not just in Shillong) is one aspect of any tourism policy.
Talking about tourism, so much for the attempt to attract high-end tourists! Meghalaya, indeed, did witness an increasing flow of tourists over the last few years but how many of these are high-end. The dream of attracting high-end tourist is ironic when after 30 years a five-star hotel at the heart of the city is an eyesore that is still under construction; when rampant and illegal mining has poisoned water aquifers and river systems and endangered the survival of subterranean caves system; when load shedding and traffic jams are today memes and jokes. The dream of attracting high-end tourists is but a self-deception of living in cloud cuckoo land. So which high-end tourist are we fooling? A stop at any tourist site will be met with all sorts of garbage. Even the cleanest village cannot escape the filth and garbage strewn around in corners away from the public eye. Along with the encroachment of streams and river banks and a failed garbage disposal system, our streams and river banks are being encroached, mutilated, and choked with garbage. The hullabaloo of the banning of plastic bags and styrofoam is a brutal joke when every corner of the city, town, and villages are inundated with the sight of disposable styrofoam, plastic bags, and packets.
Today, any attempt to ban these items is defeated. Instead, there is a digression. The plastic we are told can be turned into wealth if we collect and sell them to the cement industry and turn them into fuel for producing clinkers in the cement industry. In other words, it implies that there is no need to ban plastic but we can keep polluting and then pick a few kilos of them and sell them to another polluting industry. Such is the irony of tackling pollution that no wonder in the Swachh Survekshan 2020, annual cleanliness survey of the country carried out by the Central Government, Shillong ranked among the top 10 dirtiest cities of the country under the category of the population below 10 lakhs.
How are we going to get out of this mess? There is hope. But for now, we are in limbo. We are in limbo because pressure groups, opposition parties, and even the ruling government are in a political game of one-upmanship. It is easier to blame than to take responsibility. Or better, the adage “if you can’t beat them, join them”. This is what happens to interminable debates on the ILP. We have failed to see beyond the ILP and think of other ways and means of balancing between the need to protect the indigenous and welcome others. Instead of finding the real reasons – besides the obvious- of why the demand for ILP keeps recurring, everyone is in a game of one-upmanship and electoral politics. Political parties that are in government and opposition jump on the bandwagon in support of the chorus. The reason: when there is little or no achievement to show; when governance is stalled because election and party funds come before the welfare of the citizen; when leaders of the many pressure groups are eyeing to contest the next election what we get are incessant bombardments of terminologies like ‘us’ vs ‘others’ and ‘insider’ vs ‘outsiders’ and less on issues of the economy, unemployment, health, education, environment, crime, and violence. We might deny all we can, but the murder and attack on labourers in South West Khasi Hills on February 24 is an outcome of our leaders’ failure to see a larger picture of the toxicity of the politics of ‘insider’-‘outsider’ that is at the core of the ILP. Enough of feeding us with optics of awards and achievements and public relations advertisement on social media that we live in a hunky-dory state. Yes, we ought to celebrate our statehood; but to celebrate we also must start reflecting on where we have failed and what we can be.
(The writer is Assistant Professor, Centre for European Studies, School of International Studies
JNU, Email: [email protected])