By Avner Pariat
The past two weeks have been a complete pig’s breakfast as far as the reputation of the Administration is concerned. The accusations made by the TMC (and to a lesser extent the BJP and UDP) against Vijay Kumar IAS has made for scintillating public drama. If I am being frank though, I find it surprising that the NPP government has not dug up anything on Mukul Sangma and his glory days as Chief Minister. After all, it is not like his rule was roses and rainbows either. Instead, they have been drawn into the trap and have gone after Gokhale – a strategically placed troll. I think their consultants are not very good. They should be fired for such basic mistakes or told to re-read their Art of War or Arthashastra.
In this never-ending back-and-forth, the Administration came out with a counter clarification of its own. Which attempted to clear up what happened to the 632 crore and why Vijay Kumar IAS was not to be blamed for/implicated in any wrongdoing. To be honest, the clarification was not very clear. It did not really do what it was intended to do. As someone had correctly pointed out – let the facts and figures come out into the public domain and let an audit be undertaken. This would have been the best clarification. But this is the Government of Meghalaya we are talking about. They cannot and will never be transparent. Why should they be? Transparency will mean the people might want a share of power and privilege and that is not good for those ruling this state. Really, all this mess could have been avoided if they had simply been open and transparent. But this dream for transparency is a long pending one and it has been kept away by a few professional obstructionists. For to control people is not very easy and requires a lot of usage of complicated language and verbal ‘sleight-of-hand’. Long and unnecessary trails of paperwork buffet this grand illusion. And hiding behind agencies and extra-governmental bodies serves no real purpose but to make secret that which need not be secret.
However, the political turmoil which Saket has created is a bit of a distraction from the real issue at hand. We are now obsessed with a single IAS officer but we have not talked about the system which he is a part of. To do that would be anathema and not a single soul has so far offered a solution to the problem of “obstruction through abstraction” which is what modern bureaucracy seems to be all about. In spite of the tremendous strides we have made in technology, and the latent democratic potential of digital communication, in Meghalaya it would seem, these wonderful tools are of no use. Many bureaucrats talk about “open economy,” and “opening up Meghalaya” but in reality, people are left in the dark and nothing of any real importance is ever shared with the common person. Proclamations are made from the highest level and we – lowly grovellers and slime eaters – must simply obey and never question why something needs to be done in the first place. Officials in the government enjoy clarifying things but can they JUSTIFY their actions. Can we JUSTIFY for instance the following baffling moves which they have initiated?
· Why drop medicines via expensive drones when we could and should be connecting the farthest villages of Meghalaya via proper roads?
· Why should we go for video-consultations with doctors when we could and should be promoting their physical services at CHC and PHC level?
· What is MyMeG and how is it financed? Why has it taken over responsibility as a propaganda unit of the ruling NPP party by plastering Conrad Sangma’s face over every single thing done by any and all departments?
· Why is The Meghalayan Age now calling for tenders to create a master plan for an administrative city in the New Shillong Township (NST) when it should be the job of the PWD, Urban Affairs or Municipal departments?
· Why is the State Sports Council calling for tenders to create Centres for Excellence for horticultural/floricultural products when it should be carried out by the Directorate of Agriculture?
Can our doubts be clarified away with a single proclamation? And even if they do so, can our masters JUSTIFY that these are all essential expenditures and/or actions? Some within the higher sections of the government do not want us to ever know how they use OUR MONEY. For to give up that financial power would be to give up that control which extends itself over our very lives. At the risk of sounding like a Friedmanite, I have to admit that releasing Meghalaya from this excessive Bureaucratic Control must be an immediate non-partisan election issue. As politically conscious citizens, we must continue to strive in this dark, to remove the obstructions before us.
Anyone who follows The Shillong Times closely will see that I have been writing about the issue of transparency for a while now and that is because I am very concerned about it. This is why in my own election campaign I have made one big promise and that is to always hold regular public meetings every 3 months within the constituency. Our team has christened them Constituency Clinics – because just as we need clinics to check-up on the health of the people, we also need “clinics” to check up on the constituency as well. During these meetings, we will present report cards to the public about what we have been doing for them and their families. They will be simple and uncomplicated because we don’t want to hide anything from anyone.
We – the public – must confront the grim reality that Administration has always been a redoubt of a few power-brokers who will fight – tooth and nail – to maintain the status quo. But like the old Bastille, we must storm it eventually if we are to realise our cherished dream for a democratic, free and just society.