By Patricia Mukhim
Images of teachers spending sleepless nights on the streets, next to the seat of power- the state secretariat – should make us all bow our heads in shame. The image will remain a perennial blot on Meghalaya on its 50th year. It is a grim reminder that since the state attained statehood, not much thought was given to developing long term educational goals. The political masters at the time were content in the knowledge that churches and other faith-based institutions were running educational institutions and were doing it quite well, so they should be assisted with ad-hoc grants or the schools could later be absorbed into the deficit system of grants-in-aid where teachers were paid by the Government but the schools were run by their own management or by a Managing Committee.
In 1981, the state enacted the Meghalaya School Education Act. The body of the Act is generic in nature, which as can be expected was a copy and paste job from the Assam Act. Meghalaya has never been known to be original in anything so far. Excerpts from the Act says: “There shall be an Advisory Board for School Education to be called the ‘Meghalaya School Education Advisory Board’ for the purpose of advising the Government on matters of policy relating to education in Meghalaya. (2) The Advisory Board shall be constituted by the Government and shall consist of a Chairman, Secretary and fifteen other members to be nominated by the Government, (3) The Advisory Board constituted under sub-section (2) shall include – (a) the Secretary to the Government in the Education Department as Chairman (b) the Director of Public Instruction as member-Secretary, and (c) fifteen other members to be nominated from amongst the following – heads of recognised Schools (ii) representatives of recognised organisations of teachers of recognised schools (iii) representatives of the Managing Committee of recognised schools (iv) representatives of parents or guardians of students of recognised schools and (v) eminent Educationists. (4) The Advisory Board shall regulate its own procedure. (5) The terms of office of every member of the Board and travelling and other allowances payable to a member of the Board shall be as may be prescribed.
Further down the Act says, “The State Government, may, subject to the condition of previous publication, make Rules to carry out the provisions of this Act. But guess what? I tried to see what the Rules say because without the rules this Act cannot be implemented by the executive. The Rules were never made hence the Act was never executed. If the Rules were in place the Meghalaya School Education Advisory Board would have been in place to advise the Government since it could have acted as a think tank.
The only politician who ever did any serious thinking for this state was PA Sangma. He realised that the State needed to raise internal resources for spending on Education and in 1988 when he came in as Chief Minister, PA Sangma saw to it that the State enacted the Meghalaya Minerals and Cess Act 1988, (Meghalaya Act No 7 of 1988). Primary Education at the time was going through turmoil with Primary School teachers not being paid salaries on time by the District Councils under whose jurisdiction they were. The intent of the above Act was to provide for the levy and collection of cess on some minerals of the State for the development of Primary education and for development and improvement of mining areas and for matters connected therewith.
One of the reasons for the state’s inability to pay salaries of SSA & primary school teachers is because there has been no revenue generation from coal which used to yield around Rs 600 crore annually. The fault is that of the politicians and the mining lobby in Meghalaya. Ever since the NGT banned coal mining in 2014 and insisted that Meghalaya come up with a mining Policy because it can restart mining, the State Government has been treading on eggshells. A Policy was brought out by the Congress-led MUA government led by Dr Mukul Sangma. But the mining lobby resisted it. The coal barons don’t want any regulations. They have come up with all kinds of alibis, one of which is that Meghalaya is a Sixth Schedule area where land is owned by Scheduled Tribes and they have the right to what they choose on that land including how they exploit the minerals under the land. This without a clear understanding that the Sixth Schedule cannot override the Constitution of India. In the interim coal was illegally mined and transported with the coal mafia and law enforcers making a quick buck especially under the MDA Government where the bribe money had gone up to Rs 90,000 per truck. So while revenue that should have accrued to the exchequer as coal cess and gone to fund education, the teachers have been left without salaries, ostensibly because the Government has no money. True the Government has no money but the wealth of those running the Government has gone up exponentially. And all of us citizens have allowed this to happen and made no noise about it. We only occasionally gripe on social media and then move on.
Till date there has been no brainstorming on how to generate internal revenue which is much needed to beef up the education and health sectors in Meghalaya. While the Union Government funds the SSA schools the funding pattern is on a 90:10 basis for the 8 north eastern states and 65:35 for the rest of the states. Moreover, this funding is not perennial. Beyond a point the State Government has to take complete ownership and financial responsibility for the SSA schools. Since 2015 the Union Government has further reduced the SSA funding to some states from 65:35 to 50:50. Only the 8 north-eastern states and two Himalayan states continue to avail the 90:10 pattern of funding but for how long, no one is sure, going by the manner in which the NDA Government operates.
A study by the Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research found that the Union Government had released only 38 percent of the SSA funds to states till October 2021. According to the analysis, only five out of the 20 largest states received more than half of the funds in the first seven months. Not only was the pace of fund release slow, the amounts released were also “considerably lower”. This was despite the Covid pandemic that had severely impacted the school systems and learning.
The SSA rechristened as Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan which incorporates two new elements to the old SSA is the largest school education scheme in the country. Yet in the 2021 Union Budget over Rs 8,000 crore was cut from SSA funds. The budget allocation for school education also saw a cut of close to Rs 5,000 crore. The union government, in August 2021, had announced a total budget of Rs 3 lakh crore for the scheme till 2026. But according to the analysis, the Union Government only released Rs 11,945 crore of the total Rs 31,050 crores allocated for the scheme. The survey says, “Pace of release of Government of India (GoI) share has been slow for most states in FY 2021-22. At the end of the first seven months of FY 2021-22, only 5 out of the 20 large states received more than half of their central allocations. Proportion of GoI share released to the rest of the 15 states ranged between 14 to 25 per cent,” the analysis said.
This is the reason perhaps why Meghalaya has hit a wall as far as payment of salaries to SSA teachers is concerned. It is here that the State needs to engage and brainstorm on how to generate internal revenue for financing primary education which is the building block of human capital.
Meghalaya has to end its profligacy in other areas such as purchase of SUVs and other needless expenditures on ministerial and bureaucratic trips to Delhi when so much can get done online. It is vulgar for government officials and political VIPs to drive around in swanky vehicles in front of the striking teachers. The State’s annual budget has to be reimagined by economists that understand the importance of education.