Clearly there are forces out there that seek to destabilize law and order in the city of Shillong. Hurling of petrol bombs at different places is meant to create panic and a climate of insecurity which in its turn has a snowballing effect on the economy particularly on tourism which has become a significant economic driver in Meghalaya. There is undoubtedly a huge constituency of youth out there that feels cheated by the system because they are unable to find gainful employment but there is also the shadow of a well-knit group of radicals possibly acting as mercenaries. Their aim could be to show the MDA Government in a bad light and to find weak links in the political chain to destabilise the present government. These are speculations since there does not seem to be any hot-potato issue other than the demand to rewrite the Reservation Policy on the basis of the population structure. This issue is now in a sort of limbo and those who have analysed the subject and don’t rely on populism, understand that it is inalterable without some upheavals that could lead instead to the loss of even the current reservation ratio.
The problem with politics is that promises are made to impressionable minds without considering the consequences of such actions. Its inherently a kite-flying exercise and a sort of push by political leaders sitting in the opposition benches to see how far they can go. This inherently has been the bane of politics. The Reservation Policy is something that leaders from across the political divide had agreed to in the past. To open a war between the past and the present is to lose the future. A call to rewrite the Reservation Policy may have been a crackerjack idea for some political parties to win the last elections and they may perhaps win the next elections too but the fall-out when in the final analysis, the case goes to the courts of law, which will have to determine the outcome, may turn out unpleasant but de jure.
In the shabby world of politics attempts to dice and slice the polity pays more dividends than promoting the ideals of democratic tenets of unity amidst diversity, more so in a country marked by racial multiplicities. Creating a fear psychosis on unfounded hearsay that what belongs to the indigene is being appropriated by the non-indigenous, while it can win political brownie points is also bound to create cycles of violence. This has been witnessed in the past with no lessons learnt. Meghalaya keeps repeating the dark shades of a historical past – a past based on non-acceptance of pluralism – the sine qua non of democracy. Lessons from the democratic process inform that successful politicians are inherently insecure and they advance politically only as they placate, appease, bribe, seduce, bamboozle or otherwise manage to manipulate the demanding and threatening elements in their constituencies. This is what Meghalaya continues to bear witness to.
