By Patricia Mukhim
The Khasi people’s favourite pastime is to go into a reverie of the past. Our songs glorify that distant past which most of us are unsure was indeed ‘glorious.’ We never tire of singing praises about ourselves as the “jaitbynriew tip briew tip briew” meaning we are pious souls that know our duties towards fellow humans and towards God. But we have a perpetual debate as to whether the God of the distant land who the Christian missionaries made us believe in, is the true God or is it the native God worshipped by the Niam Khasi, Niam Tre people who have not converted to Christianity. I wonder if God is listening to this eternal debate and whether He whispers in the ears of both sides and reveals His true self.
The Niam Khasi, Niam Tre attribute the present confusion, corruption and everything wrong with society and governance today to the fact that the Khasis have turned away from their faith and are worshipping a foreign God hence they are a confused lot. They believe that Christians in government and politics have actually queered up the pitch and that they would be better custodians of the economy. But those levelling such allegations forget that when it comes to stealing and corruption religion/faith does not matter at all. God is separate; corruption, extortion are separate compartments of the same conscience. All religions/faiths have failed to arrest corruption that comes in all shades. The brokenness between religion and personal conduct is complete and real!
The rural-urban brokenness: healthcare vacuum
For the average urbanite life begins and ends in Shillong, Jowai, Tura, Nongstoin or Mairang. Shillongites are the most privileged. Barring the ubiquitous traffic jams and the lack of pedestrianised spaces, life is liveable for the Shillongite. There are hospitals both private and government run within a 10 kilometre radius. The best schools, colleges and universities are located in Shillong. The head offices of banks and other central government institutions are in Shillong. But travel beyond Shillong to the rural hamlets and that’s where you see a Meghalaya that’s at the same status it was fifty years ago. Sure, there are roads leading to several villages but these are in such a decrepit state that pregnant women face grave dangers of miscarriage when the vehicle they travel in either sinks into a water-filled pothole during the monsoons or jumps over an undeclared, near invisible speed breaker.
It is a common sight to see ambulances from somewhere in Jaintia Hills or the other districts bringing patients to NEIGRIHMS because there are no multi-specialty/super specialty hospitals there. How much can a Primary Health Centre (PHC) or a Community Health Centre (CHC) do other than giving first aid to accident victims or prescribing basic medicines for common ailments. And to think that Jaintia Hills has produced several billionaires who have made their billions from the worst kind of extractive mining, following no environmental norms; no eco-restoration plans and not even the responsibility to reclaim abandoned mines that are like open graves. Think of one outstanding school or college beyond Shillong other than those privately run ones and missionary managed schools. The poor cannot pay for education! That’s a broken deal!
Land – Who owns it?
In Meghalaya we really don’t know the exact measurement of the land within the boundaries of the state. Across all borders with Assam there are contestations. But even with the land that is supposedly owned by communities, clans and individuals, how can it be established as to who owns how much land and whether it is time to enact a land ceiling act, since land sharks with the money to spare because they control the purse strings of the state, are buying off kilometres of land and selling it back to the Government. The so-called community land that Khasis proudly proclaim is a heritage derived from their ancestors is a huge grey area today. These are under the custodianship of the Syiems, the Sordars, Dollois and Rangbah Shnongs. Community is an ambiguous term. Who or what is the community? How is land distributed to this community? Who witnesses this act? The Syiems (chieftains) who are at the top of the traditional institution hierarchy are a law unto themselves. Even the District Councils can hardly control them. They collect taxes from markets and from transportation of forest products. This tax is public money meant to improve the markets and other public spaces. But since the money is not audited by the Comptroller and Auditor General, we the general public don’t get to know of the financial transactions at the Syiem’s office. The money generated is partly paid to the District Councils but in what ratio and what is the amount paid is a smoky grey area. How is it possible to have such public institutions functioning like private fiefdoms in this day and age? And they get away by citing tradition! Tradition is the fig leaf behind which hides huge money transactions that become the personal wealth of the people in charge of community assets.
The District Councils should have enunciated the powers and responsibilities of the traditional heads beginning from the Syiems, the Myntris, down to the Sordars and Rangbah Shnong. If this is not put down in black and white and if misuse of public funds is not checked we will soon have a society whose assets are gobbled up by the super-rich even while ordinary mortals don’t even have a roof over their heads.
I asked the Sordar of a particular elaka how the forests are let out for quarrying by violating all the environmental laws. I also asked him if the District Council has any control over the community forests. His answer was vague. Some sordars clandestinely transact land sale without anyone being any the wiser. This is possible because Meghalaya does not insist on compulsory land registration. So the Government has no idea who owns how much land. This is the evil of land ownership and control in the tribal areas of the North East. A time will come when the few landed gentry will control all the land and forests in Meghalaya without the District Councils being able to do anything. The Councils seem to have either lost control or are in league with the traditional institutions in land acquisition pursuits. At least one Syiem owns a palatial building when the word Syiem was never meant to refer to a high office. The British equated this chieftain under whose control the villages and elakas functioned to a ‘King’ because for them anyone who controlled and administered over people was a king. It’s amazing how quickly the Khasis who claim to be traditionalists have used the word Syiem to mean King and also behave like real kings today. This is the height of hypocrisy!
So we are a broken society in every aspect– broken into those owning hectares and hectares of land and those 76% who are landless. Today this number would have grown considering that the latest NITI Aayog report says Meghalaya is the poorest state after Bihar. Does the rich, tribal Khasi elite care about the poor Khasi in the rural hamlets? No, not at all. In fact, the elite Khasi are eyeing even the dwindling farmland that they own and wanting to lay their hands on such land. Go to any of the districts in the Khasi-Jaintia Hills and check out how much land in those districts is now the new investment destination of the tribal elite from Shillong. So we are broken down the middle. The rich are getting richer by the day; the poor are only producing too many children they cannot look after and least of all educate. So we are not just broken because we have a new social class – the landed gentry but we are also broken into those that can afford education and those that are destined to remain cowherds, daily labourers and whose lives are imperilled by uncertainty.
Women broken by unplanned childbirth
Our young women in the villages are enslaved by their child-bearing and child rearing duties. It’s almost as if the only responsibility they have is to produce children. A good number of women still give birth to seven, eight or ten kids without any plans for their future and how those kids can face a future that is so challenging. Planned motherhood is still a taboo; forget about the use of contraceptives for spacing childbirth. At this rate Meghalaya is destined to remain far behind other states that have reduced the total fertility rate considerably thanks to Government initiatives. In Meghalaya religion is the big bottleneck to birth control but religion will not provide free education to these kids who will ultimately end up in a cycle of poverty.
Our brokenness in all respects is complete and we don’t even have a roadmap to repair it.