By Patricia Mukhim
An incumbent government usually carries the burden of failures of previous governments. People tend to forget their own lapses when they sit in the Opposition. The much-discussed medical colleges in the current assembly session are burdens of the past. The Crowborough Hotel now named Taj Vivanta will soon see the light of day after 36 years. That’s a hell of a long time. The MDA Government must take credit for this and for pursuing what was for a long time seen as an example of corruption, failure and the lack of a political will to tie up with hotel chains with a brand equity. The Taj Vivanta is that hotel chain that spells quality because of the Tata legacy. In the past there was a dilly-dallying and everything began and ended with politics. A reputed hotel chain from Meghalaya had bid to run Crowborough but that bid was by-passed in favour of an innocuous group that had no past experience of running hotels. That’s typically how Meghalaya is run.
Education:
The cumulative problems in the Education Department have, as pointed out by the Education Minister, been carried over from the past. Governments since 1972 onwards have refrained from tackling the problems of education head on. In the brief period that the Meghalaya Progressive Alliance (MPA) led by (L) Dr Donkupar Roy lasted (2008-2009) some attempts were made to streamline the Education Department and to even come up with an Education Policy. As soon as the MPA government was dislodged, all attempts at reform in the education sector received a quiet burial. In fact, it was during that regime that the white ink scam surfaced – a huge dishonour to the cause of education in the state. Education in Meghalaya is a political football driven by the politics of appeasement. Politicians don’t look at the larger picture because the immediate is more important to them. Why should they look beyond five years and be cursed by the voters for not addressing the immediate crises?
The other day the State Education Minister admitted that schools are opened up in every village without looking at the viability factor. Different faith-based organisations start their own schools in villages instead of coming together and pooling resources to establish one good school after ensuring that there are enough students and that the school is able to generate enough resources to pay the teachers. Now that most of the schools either don’t have enough students or teachers, when the Government tries to rationalize and bring a convergence of two or three schools that are adjacent to one another to create one viable institution, there is stiff resistance because those schools belong to different faiths and each one has a vested interest in keeping the institution alive even if it is half dead. And politicians don’t want to address such problems beyond a point. So the status quo continues and the biggest losers are the children who find no teachers when they go to school. Naturally their parents find it a useless venture to send their kids to school and find it more lucrative to make them graze sheep and cattle and earn a livelihood at ages as early as 10-12 years.
Looking at the situation in Garo Hills and how schools have been constructed but the Government has not been able to provide teaching staff one wonders if the Education Department actually looks at the revenue model of a school and how sustainable that model is before granting permission for starting one. If any organization starts a school, it cannot later pile on to the Government and expect it to underwrite the expenses. The Government should have done a careful survey before starting a school and should have done so only if there are enough students and there is a budget allocated for payment of teachers’ salaries and maintenance of the school infrastructure. Government should not be taking on the burden of schools already started by private parties and organisations without due diligence being given to the sustainability of those institutions. Unfortunately, what usually happens in Meghalaya is that an MLA/minister pulls strings to start a school in his/her constituency merely so that he/she can add that to the list of achievements. Later that school becomes a burden on the exchequer. Schools have rarely been opened on a need-based basis. They have come up on the basis of cheap populism.
Health:
The biggest challenge to the health sector in Meghalaya is inherent corruption in the Health Department. That the Government spent 816. 22 crores for Covid expenses is simply outrageous. Of the above amount, the money spent on infrastructure is Rs 49.98 crore and Rs 739.66 crores on non-infra meaning medicines, PPEs, gloves, masks sanitisers, oximeters and the other paraphernalia which might also include payments to hotels and caterers that supplied food to those under quarantine. But even so an RTI application might inform us better how nearly a thousand crores was spent on Covid. No wonder it is said that some people make money even out of a disaster. Hence no credit to the MDA Government here. The Health Department was held by BJP, MLA, AL Hek until September 17, 2021 after which James Sangma of the NPP took over as Health Minister. There is a lot of answering to be done on the Covid expenditure. The ruling MDA is fortunate that it escapes scrutiny on most fronts since Opposition MLAs don’t really do their homework. Otherwise there should have been fireworks in the House on the humongous Covid expenditure.
Covid was a health emergency. There are other challenges in the Health Sector which too are legacy issues. It is a fact that the PHCs and CHCs are not inspected and that doctors are not available in most of these health centres on a daily basis. If a few conscientious doctors are available, then medicines are not available and other facilities such as X-rays and other diagnostic tools too are not there. In PHCs where diagnostic tools are available there are no technicians. At every level there are lacunae. This writer has visited quite a few PHCs and found that they are still disabled-unfriendly. There are no facilities for ramps for instance. In 50 years we expect better health facilities in the rural outback so that people from villages don’t need to make the arduous journey to the district headquarters or to the capital city. Since the Health Department fortunately has a few senior bureaucrats with a mission a health consultant has been engaged to tell them exactly where the lacunae lie and how to mend these and ensure that people get the health care they deserve, although rectifying a long-standing problem is like scaling Everest without any equipment.
Doctors are wary about staying in quarters away from their homes in the city or district headquarters because these are decrepit and many have leaking roofs. Power supply is uncertain. It makes it very difficult especially for those with families to live in these quarters. No wonder doctors make their appearances once or twice as if people fall sick only on those days. Whichever Government returns in 2023 should make Health and Education their priorities.
Roads:
Roads in large parts of Meghalaya are a disaster. Look at how back-breaking the roads in Mawlai are. You would think Mawlai is one of the most neglected constituencies. Why is the MDA Government so cruel to the people of Mawlai? Not that other areas of Shillong are better but Mawlai is just pathetic. I was listening to the MLA PT Sawkmie and hoping that like Saleng Sangma the MLA from Gambegre, he too would complain about the horribly pot-holed roads and let out a few expletives but that was expecting too much. Personally, I could not decipher what PT Sawkmie was speaking about.
The roads on the Jowai bypass towards Khliehriat and beyond are torturous. In the Assembly when MLAs pointed at the road conditions the PWD (Buildings ) Minister Dasakhiat Lamare assured his colleagues that he would ‘aggressively’ pursue the matter. Am not sure though why he replied on behalf of the Minister PWD (Roads). Roads are the lifeline of a state and people are known to have lost elections because of bad roads. Lets see how people judge the MDA on roads.
Bureaucracy:
Government includes an entire bureaucratic machinery that has to be well oiled. It must be said that most officers are appreciative of Conrad Sangma’s style of functioning. Quite a few are his school and college mates and the bonhomie therefore is natural. But some senior officers have confided that Conrad supports a good initiative especially when he finds it pro-people. In the past, officers say that proposals were not only shot down but they were even side-lined for pointing out anomalies or pursuing goals that would have benefited rural communities. It is true that the lower rung in the bureaucracy needs to be motivated and more field oriented and better monitoring of projects would help the State achieve its goals better and faster.
Conclusion:
Meghalaya features very poorly on human development indicators such as nutrition, maternal and infant mortality and malnutrition among children. The MDA Government has failed to aggressively address this issue.
This article cannot conclude without pointing to the wealth ranking of ruling party politicians, one of whom is constructing a palatial building that has a carpet area of 27,000 square feet in a posh locality of Shillong. The question is: where did the money come from? We can conclude therefore that people enter politics to serve their interests. If the state gains something along the way that is just happenstance. Period.