By Patricia Mukhim
One critical subject not taught in any university is political management. People go to business school to learn business management; they study medicine to become doctors; nursing to become nurses; engineering to build and design infrastructure; they specialize in teaching methods so they can teach better. There are those who learn communications skills because they want to join a media company or a newspaper. Every group of professionals has to go through the grill and pass in the subject they have chosen before they can get a job in that particular profession. Politics is the only job that does not require a certificate. You don’t need any qualifications for a profession that touches the lives of millions. Politics is what decides policies and their implementation. Politicians are supposed to make laws but without really knowing how that law will impinge on those that will be bound by them.
The more one looks at Democracy and how it is panning out the more one feels that our freedom fighters and those who crafted the Constitution were perhaps steeped in idealism. They never envisaged that a time would come when politics would become a business, not a public service. They never imagined that politics would breed crony capitalism and that those supposed to make laws for public welfare would spend more time building their own nests from public funds. What has happened in Meghalaya in the past decades is exactly that. Those who have entered politics have made it a family business while the rest of the population is sinking into the morass of poverty. The NITI Aayog evaluation of districts says it all. Our healthcare system is dipping because not enough has been invested in health since the state was created. Early in the journey of our state we had a health scam; then a PHE scam. Then we were shocked. Now we are all too weary to even feel anger and dismay.
One realizes over time that striving for democracy is bone-wearying, agonizing, frustrating, cruel and even dangerous. Henrik Ibsen the Norwegian playwright and theatre director once said, “You should never have your best trousers on when you go out to fight for freedom and truth.” In effect this means that fighting for truth in a world of murky politics could get you dirty or hurt. This society does not seem to have the capacity to fight any more for the right reasons. The media exposes the ugly aspects of governance failure but people are unperturbed, almost as if it’s their fate to suffer the kind of government that we have today and the shoddy governance it provides. This reminds me of Thomas Jefferson the principal author of American Independence who once wrote to a friend, “I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing for God forbid if we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion.” Indeed, public anger and frustration must be rightfully expressed when the public see that they are being taken for granted and that their silence is seen as approval of all wrongdoing.
The recent movement under the banner “Ka Sur Ki Nong Mawlai” is an external manifestation of many things that have gone wrong in Meghalaya. It took the death of Cherister Thangkhiew for that brotherhood to emerge and for the group to demand justice for the deceased who was shot in cold blood before his two sons. It’s a cruel deed if one uses the human rights lenses to view this whole tragedy and one does not quite understand how a police force that is known to be benign even when it should be aggressive in handling law and order problems, has suddenly become trigger happy. This and other questions will nudge our consciousness for a long time.
There is a growing feeling today that the HNLC, a banned militant outfit, is gaining sympathy on account of the tragic August 13 incident. To shower sympathy to an outfit that Thangkhiew had left behind because he no longer found it tenable to take up arms against the state, would be a hugely misplaced collective emotion. As a people who have seen the worst spectacle of militancy since 1996 up to 2001; the extortion, the ruthless killings, the kidnappings and the sense of fear that the outfit created which led to a stagnation of the economy, we cannot get carried away by emotions, to the point of supporting the outfit at this juncture.
This anger should in fact be directed at those holding the reins of political power and promoting the grab-what-you-can culture. We must focus on the here and now instead of going into the past and raking up the Instrument of Accession yet again and diverting people’s attention from the present which must be urgently addressed. There is an attempt to create an ethnic ghetto out of the August 13 incident and all manner of views are coming out of the woodwork. This is where the Khasi fault-lines lie. It is important for Khasi society to hold the mirror to itself and to have the honesty to analyse those fault-lines. Where do we draw our intellectual breath from when the scholars we have produced don’t teach us to challenge stinking thinking and to get out of the ghetto to breathe the fresh air of new and progressive ideas? Why do we want the younger generation to become slaves of putrid ideas of the past that we use only before elections?
Someone the other day rightly pointed out that the leaders of the statehood movement representing the Khasi, Jaintia and Garo people demanded statehood without even a vision for what they want that state to be. They did not have an economic roadmap and nor did they care to negotiate the borders right then by consulting the Syiems, Dollois and the Maharis. When the state was created the only interest was elections and it has been so ever since – its politics that dominates the consciousness not just of the political leadership but also of the ordinary citizen. We are bereft of social leadership and yet it is society that needs healing and leadership at this critical juncture. Why is the Khasi society unable to produce a social leader or leaders who can give us hope. Let’s face it – the church as an institution has failed to provide leadership at critical junctures. Except for a few rare voices like Albert Thyrniang’s or HH Mohrmen’s, the others don’t dare offend their constituents, some among whom might be political leaders. Writers are not expected to write as a representative of a group in order to reaffirm the self- esteem of the group. Writers are supposed to push us to question politics, governance, society and every human institution. Free speech has to rest on shared morality and must escape the tyranny of local conformism.
And lest we overlook one aspect of governance which is not possible without the shared responsibility of the powerful bureaucracy, let us also question why most bureaucrats prefer to look the other way in the face of blatant corruption in the system. Why are they reticent about answering questions from the media? Who or what are they protecting? Should the bureaucracy not be as concerned about the rule of law? As media-persons we ask questions on behalf of the public and not because of our personal curiosities. While most bureaucrats are responsive (perhaps because they have nothing to hide) there are those that are outright disdainful of the media. Or have they forgotten that they are “public servants?”
Such is the arrogance of power!