By HH Mohrmen
Soon after the Sohiong election is over, the various parties will start campaigning once more, but this time they will be doing so in order to support candidates for the state’s autonomous district councils. Members of the ADCs will be elected next winter; thus, the question is: how are the ADCs doing right now? Or what is the current status of the various ADCs in the state.
The ADCs were established as entities within the constitutional framework to safeguard the nation’s tribal population and are empowered by the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution. This is justified by the fact that the Scheduled Tribes are a minority in the nation and deserve protection for their distinctive cultures. However, the point that was being raised was whether or not the ADCs were able to successfully complete the intended task. Have the state’s ADCs achieved the goals for which they were founded? Have they been able to safeguard the local indigenous population and maintain the tribal peoples’ cultures in the various states of the nation?
Protecting our rivers
The state’s rivers are being polluted by human activity as a result of the ADCs’ inability to safeguard them, which is the one obvious instance where they have fallen short of their obligations. Coal, limestone, and even sand and stone quarrying have all contaminated the rivers. Not only are the rivers rapidly becoming polluted, but human activity has also encroached on them. Rivers are the subject of the autonomous district councils, and according to tradition, people worship or believe rivers to be sacred places. But there is still a lot that has to be done.
Land tenure system
The important aspect of culture in which the councils have failed is with regards to land tenures in the state. Land ownership has changed with time. What was once community land or clan land has changed to private land. Today, most of the villages no longer have community land. In short, land has become a private property. The most tragic thing that came out of this is that land is now owned by the rich and powerful, and the majority of the population has become landless.
Land is also the subject of the District Councils, but instead of protecting the age-old practice that holds that land is owned by the community or the clan, the ADCs have instead facilitated the change in land ownership in the tribal lands. Changes in land use and ownership patterns are also a glaring example of where the ADCs have failed. In the books of the JHADC, any land can not only change hands, but even land use can change at the whims and fancies of the individuals. There were cases where community forests were converted to individual ownership to facilitate mining in the area, and paddy fields (patta hali) on the banks of any river can be easily converted to land holding certificates. This is, in fact, the reason why houses came up on the banks of many rivers in the state. Agricultural land can be easily converted to land for the construction of houses, as there are no rules to prevent agricultural land from being converted to non-agriculture land. Even in places where the clans are the custodians of the land, the tradition has also changed to one where clans are behaving like owners and not mere custodians of an important resource.
ADCs and customary practices
Cultural practices are dynamic in nature; they evolve with time, and the ADCs are in a catch-22 situation as to whether or not to document the practice. In the last two or three decades, most of the families in the War Jañtia areas and even certain parts of Jowai were still practicing the joint family system. The joint family system is intricately linked with the lineage and the clan system, which are the foundations of the Hynñew Trep society. In fact, one cannot understand the matrilineal society among the Khasi and Jañtia if one does not understand how lineage, clan, the joint family system, and the role of the maternal uncle are intricately linked to one another. Today however, even the strong believers in the traditional religion live in a nuclear family, and the joint family system is gradually being relegated to the back burner. Even the role of the clan has changed with time, and these and other changes in the customary practices are changes that cannot be stopped. The society in the two regions of the state is dynamic like any other society in the world; hence, there are customary practices that evolve with time. The question is, in such a situation when practices change with time, can the customary practices of the people be codified? Codifying a custom prevents any change from occurring since it is like placing the tradition in a time capsule.
Mismanagement of the ADCs
The only autonomous district council in Meghalaya that operates properly and without administrative hindrance is the Khasi Hills Autonomous District Council; by contrast, the Garo Hills and the Jaintia Hills Autonomous District Councils are in administrative and financial trouble. This columnist asked why the JHADC’s financial report wasn’t delivered during the meeting in his position as a member of the Second Meghalaya State Audit Advisory Board (MSAAB) and was told that the JHADC had trouble keeping its book of accounts organised.
The two ADCs, the JHADC and the GHADC, are in the news quite regularly, but unfortunately for all the wrong reasons. The sad state of affairs is that the staffs of these two councils have not received their salaries for more than six months now. This has been a regular occurrence in at least the two ADCs, and the staff will have to wait for months together to get their salaries. Till today, the staff of the JHADC have not been paid the salary that is due to them for more than ten months, and both the state government and the JHADC are at their wits end to resolve the problem.
The share from resources
Royalties from major minerals, particularly coal, are shared between the state and the district councils, but the share of royalty collected from the extraction of major minerals has also changed. In the early days of coal mining in Jañtia Hills, the revenue from coal was shared between the JHADC and the state at a ratio of 80:20, and at that point in time, it was the Council that collected the royalty. Today, not only has the ratio tilted in favour of the state government, but royalty has also been collected by the state and shared with the ADCs at the government’s whims and fancies. The irregularity and lack of clarity in the way the government shares the royalty with the council is another reason why the ADCs are facing financial problems.
The future of the ADCs
Despite the fact that in the last five years the ADCs were in control of the Meghalaya Democratic Alliance, the NPP-led government has not made any move to resolve the issue. Neither the Executive Committees in the GHADC and the JHADC nor the state government had made any attempts to solve this chronic problem the two ADCs face. It is an open secret that the problem in both the ADCs is that the Councils are overstaffed, yet the state government, it seems, is oblivious to the issue and is not concerned with solving the problems that the two ADCs are facing.
The other problem that has become a point of conflict between the state government and the ADCs is that many bills passed by the ADCs are still pending with the state government. And the severest conflict between the state and the ADCs is Para 12 (A), which gives the state government an upper hand over the ADCs in case there is a conflicting issue and the state rules override the ADCs’. The future of the ADCs also largely depends on the outcome of the move to amend the Sixth Schedule through the Constitutional (One Hundred Twenty-Fifth Amendments) Bill, 2019.
It is therefore for the benefit of all the political parties in the state and the tribals of the three ADCs that before they decide to plunge into campaigning in the election to the ADCs, the parties should try to come up with solutions on how to solve some of the problems flagged here.