By Patricia Mukhim
“Leaders are never insecure about training and mentoring other younger leaders. In fact, real leaders build the next generation of human capital which is a scarce commodity in this state. Leaders seek out young talent and engage with them so that they can take the baton forward. It is tiring to hear banal speeches that the youth are our future.”
Leadership is not about winning elections by paying money or various inducements to voters. How many of those who won the elections in 2018 did so without spending lakhs and crores of rupees? A person who wishes to serve the constituents, provides them a vision and leads them into achieving that vision. That is true leadership. Here in Meghalaya and a few other states too where greedy voters have subverted the very system of voting, we don’t have leaders. The very idea of a leader is massacred. Leaders are not self-serving; they are not there to enrich themselves while the voters sink into the rat-hole of poverty and destitution. The simple point is, that having money does not make one a leader. A wise electorate should first ask where that money has come from. Of course, that’s idealism; it’s asking for too much from a population softened by money once in five years. In fact, we deserve the Government we get and it serves us right when all indicators show that our kids are stunted and wasted and their cognitive abilities are such that they are defined as cretins.
Have we heard any leader in this Government ever regretting the poor scores that Meghalaya gets in terms of health care, education, nutrition and under-development? No. Every survey done of Meghalaya whether by NSSO or NITI Aayog has seen the state sliding down and our “mis-defined” leaders have never said a word. No explanations; no regrets as long their wealth acquisition programmes are not disrupted. And we the people continue to patronise these self-propagating ‘leaders’ for the once-in-five-year money we get which is not more than Rs 5000 -10,000. And we sell our souls to the highest bidder for the next five years while this person diverts all public funds to his/her private bank accounts. And let me say this out loud. No party, not even the holier-than-thou BJP is free from corruption in Meghalaya. Its leaders are all birds of a feather. It’s almost as if the BJP does not care a hoot about quality so long as it gets quantity.
The large majority that join politics do so for personal motives. In Meghalaya, it has become the fastest money-making route. Just go back to the antecedents of our politicians. They came from humble backgrounds with not much education. Look at where they are today in terms of wealth ranking. Most live in mansions and move around in the latest, most expensive cars from the Jeep, to the Audi to BMWs, Mercedes and what have you! And we the voters, including the rational and thinking population of the state don’t ever ask questions. We prefer not to burn our bridges; so we continue to flirt with these politicians just in case we need to use them at some point of time. And when it comes to writing, there are so few willing to stick their necks out except for the usual suspects who have no axes to grind.
Leaders are supposed to be strategists, not for themselves but for their people. They are to tell us the voters where we are as a state; why we are where we are and where we should be heading. But do these self-styled leaders ever have conversations with their constituents? Don’t they talk down to people? Don’t they treat them like doormats especially if they are poor and voiceless? We have seen it all and it is depressing.
And this is a state where people always but always vote for those that have been in pressure groups of one type or another. So far, we have not seen even one of such leaders of pressure groups showing spunk and dynamism in the Assembly. Their balloon-sized egos seem to have burst the moment they enter the Assembly where they remain quiet as a mouse and have to wait for the Chief Minister to answer questions on their behalf in the House. How can people with no intellectual and social capital call themselves leaders? Can these leaders we have elected today barring four or five from across the political spectrum, who are qualified, engage in an intellectual debate? An intellectual discourse is not some meaningless drivel; it means something that triggers a new thought, new ideas and makes people think. Has anyone ever had a discussion with any of our legislators and come out wiser? Not since the time of Martin Narayan Majaw, PA Sangma, BB Lyngdoh, SL Marbaniang, PG Marbaniang have we heard words of wisdom from the Assembly. It has become a space for sparring matches where we don’t even learn a single new word to add to our vocabulary, except four-lettered abuse! That’s how low we have sunk. Paul Lyngdoh used to be a witty soul both with the written and spoken words. Now he too has gone silent. The intellectual capital has been given a quiet rest.
Leaders are never insecure about training and mentoring other younger leaders. In fact, real leaders build the next generation of human capital which is a scarce commodity in this state. Leaders seek out young talent and engage with them so that they can take the baton forward. It is tiring to hear banal speeches that the youth are our future. Other than those meaningless speeches how have we empowered our youth to stand out and speak up what they believe in? Have we had sessions on building integrity and trust? Who will take such sessions since ‘integrity’ and ‘trust’ are words that don’t define our present set of legislators?
We have several political parties here. Has anyone of them had a special political training for their youth wings? If any political party has had such trainings, I would be happy to be educated as to what sort of transformation they have undergone? Have they been trained to not become blind followers of their leaders? Have they been trained to be accountable for every penny they spend? Is it not true that the youth wings of most political parties also include youth that want to get into politics because of the power and pelf it promises? Where is that one youth who stands out from any political party today? Does anyone dare not follow the Master at the top of the pyramid? Or call out his acts of omission and commission? Why must the youth wing of a political party defend corruption or remain silent in the face of blatant venality? Is the corruption happening today not eating into the future resources of the state? Are they not part of the same state? Or do they live in a different universe?
Can you call any person a leader when he remains silent on seeing so many coke plants being set up in his constituency which poison the air and cause health problems to people living there? Does a leader own a company that has no qualms about dumping sand and debris into a river system? Yet this is the leadership we have in Meghalaya’s Assembly. And why is it so? Because political parties dump their candidates on us. We The People cannot choose who we want as our legislators. They are foisted on us? Is this Democracy? In the next election do we dare tell political parties to take a chill pill if they force a candidate on us that we know has no vision, no strategy on job creation, no inclination to build second rung leadership and above all who is there to do business through politics? Already we have quite a few business families sharpening their knives for 2023 where they want to bring in their brothers, sisters, wives, cousins so that together they can create a Private Ltd Company out of Meghalaya. Should We The People of Meghalaya allow this to happen with our eyes wide open? Was this why Meghalaya was created? Ask ourselves this question and also answer them.