By Patricia Mukhim
At the outset let me wish all readers a better year ahead. Let’s hope Covid does not spoil the party, nay, the election extravaganza for that would be such a shame. We need a government that is short on promises and tall on delivery; a more mature cabinet with people who are intellectually competent, able to read the budget and understand balance sheets; the courage to question the bureaucracy and not take their word as distilled truth. Do we have in the present tribe of politicians people of such caliber? Yes, we do! And I am sure that many in the bureaucracy would not want such cerebral people to win elections. They would prefer ministers who they can softly prompt to take certain decisions. Whether those decision are ultimately pro or anti-people time has revealed that it’s the latter. Meghalaya has managed to place itself at the bottom of the pit in all human development indices. So there’s nothing to crow about!
And it does not take India Today’s – State of the State’s annual ranking to tell us how poorly we are faring. Sadly very few top bureaucrats travel within Meghalaya. Their beat is Delhi and foreign countries as if all that matters happens in Delhi even while the periphery in the state they serve is in a shambles. Now how do I know this? It’s the duty of a journalist to travel and talk to people not just before the elections but through the five years. And what one sees is utter dismay and hopelessness. Poverty is growing by leaps and bounds even as women give birth to more children than they can provide and care for. Let’s not even talk of education. Most kids at age 12 are helping their parents in the fields or have turned cowherds. I wish the school kids from the city are taken on an excursion of their own state so they can relate to what poverty actually is. They will see peers of their age already earning a livelihood because school is a leisure their parents cannot afford. A ten year old girl the other day was seen carrying a baby sister on her back. Her childhood is lost in such domestic chores. Where’s the time to play?
And yes, it’s also a journalistic brief to feel the pre-election pulse of the voters three months ahead. The tempo changes as the election date draws near. Soon elections will be announced and the inauguration jamboree will come to an abrupt halt. But what will decide the votes this time is also what people see on their smart phones. There’s so much conversation, so many interviews with aspiring and sitting MLAs. Anywhere one goes, one sees a group of young and not so young people glued to their mobile phones. God knows what they imbibe from the internet but they have certainly become digital natives who need their fix of news, views and reviews. The online life has just got faster, quicker, harsher and louder and we are unsure of the impact of this new media on our brains and ultimately on our democracy and how far it decides election outcomes.
As it is we are now living in the era of unusual political competitiveness. Every single day MLAs are resigning and joining some other party. Such political party shopping has never happened in the past. The churning is such that it confuses and confounds the voter so much so when you ask which party their MLA is on today, constituents retort with, “How does it matter? How can we remember which party he is in now? Maybe we will remember only when the campaign begins. We voted for him as a person and we will do the same this time around.” Please note that I am using the male gender because everywhere I have been no one discusses women candidates. So much for gender equity in Meghalaya!
Speaking about the influence of the internet during elections, I recently read Nicholas Carr’s book, “The Shallows: What the Internet is doing to our brains,” published way back in 2011.Carr says, “The very way my brain worked seemed to be changing. It was then that I began worrying about my inability to pay attention to one thing for more than a couple of minutes. At first I’d figured that the problem was a symptom of middle-age mind rot. But my brain, I realized, wasn’t just drifting. It was hungry. It was demanding to be fed the way the Net fed it — and the more it was fed, the hungrier it became. Even when I was away from my computer, I yearned to check email, click links, do some Googling. I wanted to be connected.”
If that was what Carr experienced in 2011 think of the impact of the internet today and on those that have not developed the capacity to reason and judge between fake and real news and the plethora of views that bombard their brains! It’s actually frightening. There are those who argue that us adults too had our own demons to fight in our time but we got through without much scalding. I am not so sure if the challenges posed by the internet today, which actually gives us an adrenalin rush and whets out appetite for admiration, appreciation, being liked and constantly applauded are easily resolved. And mind you, as society we have hardly had any conversation on this issue almost as if it’s a holy grail of our times!
But I am digressing. Let me come back to the politics of Meghalaya. Politicians who have shifted from one party to the other expect us voters to be so muddled in our beliefs on party ideologies that we are expected to shift regularly with the politicians. And if we had faith in one Party in 2018, what has changed so drastically in that Party that we voters are asked to shift stances and tune ourselves to the newest ideology? The very idea of voting this time is bizarre. So caught up will we be in the blame game between political parties and politicians that we might forget some key issues.
So it’s time for us voters to take a pause and consider everything that happened between 2018 and 2023. Among the negatives are the scams – the power scam, the rice scam, the police vehicle scam and the fake encounter where Cheristefield Thangkhiew was eliminated. Where are we insofar as these scams are concerned? The government tells us and the legislators in the opposition that there was no scam and we shut up. No one actually took the government to task. And now no one talks about these scams. So Satnam Global of smart meter fame walks away with a clean chit and so do all the other scamsters.
And frankly speaking I see no path-breaking positives in the 5-year rule of the MDA Government, other than the commissioning of the long-pending Crowborough hotel now turned Taj Vivanta.
What does this tell us about democracy in Meghalaya? Does it even exist. We are through and through an oligarchy. Each constituency will choose an MLA (not necessarily a leader) based on how much he did for the constituency – roads, water, and sometimes electricity and the personal patronage he extends. The political party he represents be damned!
In any case the voters are totally confused. They have stopped thinking parties. Ask me! I have been touring the length and breadth of Khasi-Jaintia hills and I hear what people say. Except for Jowai where many are not just whispering but proclaiming loudly that they will vote NOTA, others are unconcerned. All they want at this happy time of merrymaking are picnics, football matches, donations to sports and youth clubs, doles ranging from blankets to cooking materials. This patronage continues because it pays dividends.
But as far as performance of individual MLAs is concerned it leaves so much to be desired. Look at the case of Pynthorumkhrah where a small little culvert of barely ten feet in length, opposite the BDW international (?) school has taken nearly one year and is still incomplete! And we see Conrad Sangma’s hoardings telling us that his Government constructs 22kms of roads per day! Look at the road from Mawlai Mawroh to the Mawiong bypass. How many kilometers is that road? Hardly 5 kms! Yet it has taken several years to complete. Anyone passing through that road will testify that the work is progressing at snail’s pace. Let us not even speak about roads in rural Meghalaya where the poor farmers are left to their elements when it comes to carting their produce to the nearest traffic point. They have to trudge uphill with their bundles of broomsticks, their ginger, their oranges and what have you. Does the Chief Minister or the PWD Minister ever see this daily grind? Do their hearts pain at the sight of such struggles 50 years after statehood?
So much has ‘not’ happened between 2018 and 2023 yet the NPP and UDP both claim to return with majorities. Please tell us HOW? As for the BJP the less said the better! In Meghalaya the BJP is just the onion needed to cook up a spicy curry in 2023! Period.