Patricia Mukhim
This country had witnessed how the fatal conceit of the Prime Minister in 2020 when a 21-day lockdown was announced on the evening of March 24, 2020 at about 8 pm, leaving the citizens with just four hours to decide their next course of action in an eco-system bedevilled by paranoia. Citizens were shell-shocked and scampering. Many did not have enough supplies in their kitchen to manage for the next 21 days. Others working in different parts of the country and with no assurance of how to meet their financial needs felt they could have left for their homes if they were given at least 48 hours notice. The pandemic was claiming lives even then. What followed was the catastrophic migrant exodus. Millions braved the lockdown and travelled back home; some of them literally walking and cycling and dying on the way. It was calamitous to say the least but it also demonstrated governance steeped in hubris where those sitting around the PM at the time of taking that fatal decision had no voice to warn him of the disastrous consequences or they didn’t envision the tragic results of such a knee-jerk decision. Both reflect the signs of a failed governance module.
No one in their right minds imagined that such a reactive decision would be repeated ever. Indeed, the Prime Minister is now wary of calling a national lockdown despite the spiralling Covid cases; the complete collapse of the healthcare system in the country’s capital and the monumental failure of the government to manage the oxygen needs of Covid patients. Then we have the images of funeral pyres burning round the clock leaving behind the ugly stench of the death of helpless humans which coincides with the death of conscience of the rulers mandated to govern this country.
And even as we were slowly but painfully assimilating the tragedy unfolding in different parts of the country, the Meghalaya Government repeated the very same blunder committed by the Prime Minister in 2020 by announcing a total lockdown in East Khasi Hills on May 5 with a deadline of 8 pm. The announcement, akin to a lightning struck at 3 pm. News travels fast in this age of social media revolution. The WhatsApp University got into action and an hour later everyone ventured out to the streets to buy their stock of meat, vegetables, fish and dry rations. It was a mad scramble. Every small and big market was swarming with buyers who literally bought up everything they saw at prices higher than the normal and not daring to squeak. It was the seller’s market all the way. If anyone was cantankerous and asked questions they would be shunted out and the next customer served. That’s the rule of the market and it’s not very different from the rule of the jungle – only here its survival of the richest!
But worse, this sort of suddenness is quite capable of shocking the daylights out of even the most sanguine person, paranoid as we are about the growing Covid numbers and deaths. This shock treatment is unparalled in its ability to cause the very opposite of what the government was preaching, namely social distancing. Here it was a body to body jostling in shops and vegetable stalls. What could have gone wrong if the lockdown had been imposed on Friday, thereby giving citizens 48 hours of grace period? Panic buying could have been avoided and physical distancing would not have been blatantly violated. Some people likened the crowd in Shillong yesterday to the Kumbh mela in Haridwar. Of course the decision-makers who hardly move out to the streets to see how life is lived by the ordinary citizens are not expected to know the outcome of their hasty decision until the next day when the media brings it to their notice.
At this juncture it would be fair to know how the Government arrived at this tactless decision. Who pushed the panic button? Was it the medical professionals in the State-level Covid Expert Team; the hapless politicians who don’t think beyond their noses or the bureaucracy which is out of sync with ground realities? Granted that the pandemic is a disaster that must be managed but managing a disaster cannot be worse than the disaster itself – in other words the medicine being worse than the ailment.
Someone has rightly observed, “If you can’t recognize failure, you can’t correct it.” What happened on May 5 was a repeat of March 24, 2020 – a national misfortune which we all thought we had left behind until we had a repeat performance in our own state. The Government notification that came two hours after the announcement, laid out the details but WhatsApp does not wait for details. The notification says that designated shops in different localities would be kept open for essentials. But by the time this news arrived everyone had got what they thought they needed to stock their larders just in case a national lockdown too comes like a bolt from the blue. This incident only means that we in Meghalaya didn’t think the national lockdown announced so suddenly was an epic failure. But who in the government is responsible for failure to take decisions based on hard ground realities?
The decision for the sudden total lockdown can be safely guessed, was because of the rising cases and therefore the fear of running out of hospital beds because, ostensibly 60% of available beds are occupied. Second, is the fear that government may find itself overwhelmed just as governments in other states have been. That’s understandable. What’s not understood is the timing and the suddenness of it all. These sudden reactions to a crisis tend to create a panicked citizenry when that’s the last thing we want in this already highly strung environment.
One issue that plagues all governments is the propensity of bureaucracy to tread cautiously and err on the side of caution. As a result they prefer to take tried and tested steps and resist the idea of public feedback. But without feedback how does government (read bureaucracy) know if they’re doing the right thing? In the book “Reinventing Government” by David Osborne and Ted Gaebler the authors speak of pulling ownership out of the bureaucracy, into the community. The authors observe that client-hood is a problem that emerged only after the industrial economy matured. Before 1900 what little controls existed over neighbourhoods, health, education etc., lay primarily with local communities because so many products and services, whether public or private were produced or sold locally. It was only with the emergence of an industrial economy that professionals and bureaucrats were hired to do what families, neighbourhoods, churches and voluntary associations had done.
The authors in their study found that (a) communities have more commitment to their members than service delivery systems to their clients (b) communities understand their problems better than service professionals (c) professionals and bureaucracies deliver services; communities solve problems. Also they found that while Institutions and professionals offer “service” communities offer “care.” Care is different from service; care is the human warmth of a genuine companion; care is the support of loved ones as a family copes with tragedy, care is the gentle hand of a helper when one is bedridden.
The authors propose something we in Meghalaya can never imagine – A Community-Owned Government. Here it is the case of the government owning us and therefore taking far reaching decisions for all of us without as much as a “community consultation.” Osborne and Gaebler also find that communities are more flexible and creative than bureaucracies and communities are cheaper than service professionals. Also the communities enforce standards of behaviour more effectively than bureaucracies and service professionals. And while communities focus on their existing capacities; service systems focus on deficiencies and what resources are needed to remove those deficiencies.
Osborne and Gaebler conclude therefore that while in a democracy it is said that people own the government, few citizens of any democracy feel they own or control their governments. That’s because other than during the elections no one really cares to really consult them. And the bureaucracy is even less connected to the community. In fact some are so distant from the people’s problems that it makes them unfit to take far-reaching decisions that affect the public adversely. This is why we need local governance institutions to take our voices on board before any decisions are taken on our behalf. Why should we the people not be consulted when decisions are taken? Why are we considered dimwits incapable of thinking of our own welfare? Why?