Editor,
Of late there have been attempts to malign the Shillong Club Ltd in the media. A certain member is running a disinformation campaign against the members of the Shillong Club Ltd of which I am a very senior member. Now who gives him the right to defame a prestigious family oriented club? He was not elected by the members to the Board in spite of incessant calls made by his mother (in broken Khasi) and by his friends (who do not belong to the Club), to all the members and inducing them to share the OTP from their phones during the recent concluded election by e-voting.
The e-voting was introduced in the club and passed in the AGM and the vendor was by this person’s close friend and aide, Rohit Arora and three elections have been conducted in this manner. Shakti Laitphlang never once complained in the last two elections because his friend Rohit was contesting then. Even in the recent elections he was in the AGM and waited for the results but never once showed that there was any manipulation. Now that he has lost the election he cannot accept defeat and is creating problems and even filed an FIR, thereby destroying the image of the Club and even stooping so low as to threaten the staff.
Shakti is creating communal disharmony and ethnocentrism in the Club where no such incidents have occurred in the past. But let us see how much of a Khasi he is ? His mother is half Khasi; his father is a full Punjabi. Now that makes Shakti 12.5 % Khasi. He is married to a Sindhi woman. So how does his son avail the Khasi clan name without a ‘tang jait’ ceremony being conducted to claim the tribal status? Is Shakti having an identity crises and hence forcefully wants to be a Khasi or is he misusing the Khasi title to evade taxes? One must conduct an investigation or even file an FIR against such opportunists in our society.
Yours etc.,
Eddie Nongrum (Shillong Club Member)
Shillong -8
Why a Rs 700 crore loan for Tourism?
Editor,
Last time I wrote briefly about the Rs 700 crore fund that the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) gave for promotion and development of the tourism sector in the state. JICA is a Japanese governmental agency that handles the bulk of official development assistance (ODA) for the government of Japan. JICA has a three-pronged strategy to aid in the development of developing countries. The first is through technical assistance, second through grants in aid and third is through concessional loans. The Chief Minister did not mention in his press briefing whether the fund was given as a grants-in-aid or a concessional loan. He just said that Japan has sanctioned Rs 700 crore for the promotion and development of the tourism sector in our State.
If the fund is a loan, then some lingering thoughts keep bugging me. Firstly, the money when converted to American dollars amounts to almost 100 million dollars. For a small state like ours with very little resources, it baffles me that our policy makers feel the need to take such a big loan to develop the tourism sector. The tourism sector in our State is almost entirely nature tourism based, so why the need to pump so much money into this sector? Was this a decision that the entire cabinet took or was this a decision taken by a few people only? Secondly did NITI AAYOG and the Finance Commission of India approve of this loan or are they even aware of it?
I just feel that the Meghalaya government needs to come out with a white paper on such important financial decisions since such decisions will have an impact for good or for bad for the future generations.
Recently Sri Lanka was in the news for all the wrong reasons. It is in a deep financial quagmire partly because of Covid and partly because of the financial burden of repaying the numerous loans it took from China. The whole African continent is also in the same predicament. You can’t blame these countries since most of them are short on resources and their infrastructure sector is highly under-developed. Most of the loans that African countries and Sri Lanka took from China were to develop the infrastructure sector: it’s either to build roads, airports, dams or railways. Most of these countries are now on the brink of financial collapse because the financial burden of the loans they took from China are too heavy to bear.
God forbid but just imagine our policy makers compounding the financial crisis that already exists in our State because of not being able to bear the financial burden of a humungous concessional loan that the State government took, to supposedly develop the tourism sector. What would this say about the wisdom of our policy makers?
For a small state like ours with mounting economic problems, financial prudence should always be the guiding force behind every economic decision. I just hope that financial prudence will be the guiding force in the utilisation of this fund.
Yours etc.,
Gary Marbaniang,
Via email
Flip side of Reservation Policy
Editor,
Philip Marwein’s letter to the editor, “Away with Reservations” (ST Feb 2, 2022) takes the discussion on reservations a notch higher and should be heard in the corridors of power (State Secretariat). Let us face facts. We have now arrived at 50 years of statehood and it is high time that experts on state policy matters (not politicians) carve out a road map on how to empower our young people in capitalizing their talents, skills, knowledge outside of the reservation system.
A time will come when this categorization of people based on reservation will end because as of now when any department comes out with a list of vacancies the number of applicants hugely exceed the number of vacancies. Yet when the results are declared the reservation mandate kicks in and deprives those with no influence to pull strings in their favour. The result is we have a system where categorization matters instead of quality and skill sets. The generation today is afflicted by a weariness coming out of despair knowing very well that they have no opportunities since those are taken over by a section of the tribal community coming from the ‘creamy layer,’ while the economically deprived but deserving lot are left out. This is why the reservation system of our state has created more problems than solutions. The time has come to find workable solutions to the ticking ‘ unemployment time-bomb’
Yours etc.,
Dominic Stadlin Wankhar,
Via email