A common platform where candidates for the Lok Sabha election can state their objectives before the public and explain their party’s stand is imperative. Such platforms cannot be one-sided lectures from the candidates. Instead they must have space for people to raise questions and for those questions to be answered to the satisfaction of the public. At such platforms there can be no personal attacks. The focus should be on the tasks that the winning candidate would undertake on entering the Lok Sabha. If a brand new candidate is elected from Shillong Lok Sabha constituency that person will take months to learn the ropes and to build solidarity with fellow MPs. That MP would, amongst other things, have to know Hindi or he will be at sea during the deliberations in Parliament. These issues can come up in public platforms and the candidates could be asked how they will negotiate their way around such situations.
The range of issues to be discussed at common platforms would be decided by the particular Dorbar Shnong and an office bearer of the Dorbar would moderate over the meeting. No wisecracks should be allowed which some people seem to be experts at. The people who come to listen to the candidates have not come to listen to humour but to real issues that the State of Meghalaya can benefit from.
The VPP’s recent walkout of the Assembly on the use of Hindi in the Assembly by the Governor is a petty ploy aimed at public display of jingoism. Hindi or its hackneyed version has been spoken by people in Meghalaya since time immemorial because they had to transact with non-tribal traders and negotiate their way around the businesses transacted on a daily basis. It was a mutual thing. The non-tribal traders also got around with their scanty knowledge of Khasi and that’s how business was transacted. In so many decades the people of this state could have learnt Hindi as much as they learnt English knowing fully well that once they step out of Meghalaya, they would have to know Hindi because not everyone outside this state speaks English. Students going out of the state for medical, engineering and other professional courses to North and Western India would be lost if they did not know Hindi. Hence Hindi has become a compulsory part of life. There was no need for the VPP to make a public display of love for the mother tongue and for English. Their action has only encouraged leaders of the NPP to make jokes about the VPP by saying that if their candidate is elected he will be sitting in protest for the next five years outside Parliament since Hindi is the accepted language of transaction there. This sort of verbal calisthenics would not have been allowed in a common platform where candidates are expected to observe decency. Hence the need for a common platform!
