The amendment to the Sixth Schedule gives an opportunity to the State of Meghalaya to take advantage of direct funding to grass-roots institutions which, of course, have to be elected bodies along the lines of the 73rd and 74th Amendment Acts. The Dorbar Shnong which have, for a long time been hailed as ‘traditional institutions’ inherited from a hoary past are increasingly failing to deal with civic governance as they do not have the resources. They receive no state funding and rely on contributions from the residents. The tenets of governance that worked at a time when communities were small and self-contained can no longer cope with the demands of modern governance. One key factor that is missed in discussions about the Dorbar Shnong is that their members who actually have a full-time job to carry out and require the assistance of several government departments, are voluntary workers. They give a sizeable amount of their time dealing with the needs of thousands of residents apart from managing the civic needs of the localities.
Another grey area in the functioning of traditional institutions is the absence of a standard operation model a common Constitution which guides their functions. Each Dorbar has its own Constitution; its own manner of conduct rules and at times, these clash with modern jurisprudence and modern governance models. No two Dorbar Shnong have the same Constitution. Hence what is allowed in one Dorbar may not be allowed in another. The fact that the Meghalaya High Court had to censure a particular Dorbar Shnong for excommunicating a person/persons that had grievances against the Dorbar indicates the extent of arbitrariness and propensity to work outside the norms of the Indian Constitution – a document that has been meticulously framed to meet the governance needs of this vast and diverse country. In an enlightened democracy it is not possible to allow an institution which adopts a model of governance based on an oligarchy to continue to flourish.
India and its states have to necessarily follow a set of laws laid down by the Indian Constitution, especially since that same Constitution is being amended from time to time to meet the needs of its constituents in coping with the complexities of governance in the 21st century. No society can live in the past and be guided by norms of behaviour that date back to a time when the challenges of climate change, the need to rejuvenate rivers, conserve water sources and forests and a host of other community-led activities were not so acute. Governance must constantly reinvent itself.
