By Patricia Mukhim
Now that the elections to the three Autonomous District Councils is knocking at our doors, we will have sundry individuals throwing in their hats into the ring to contest the elections. We will now start hearing contests and boastful proclamations of who loves the ‘jaidbynriew’ (the Khasi people) more than the other contestant. The jaidbynriew politics has dominated Meghalaya’s scene since before the state was baptised. But we have not seen the fruits of that leadership because it is never allowed to bloom. The fight for power and leadership took centre-stage. Then we had PA Sangma who had a vision for Meghalaya but he was not allowed to survive because he stepped on the toes of crony capitalists who even then controlled the purse strings in Meghalaya. They are now dead and gone but their legacy lives on through their descendants. They held meetings and strategized on how to overthrow the PA Sangma-led government and they succeeded. Were those people who held those midnight meetings at the home of another wannabe leader, to overthrow a government that meant business, really our leaders or self-serving men suffering delusions of grandeur? Anyone who tries to right the wrongs of land acquisition by government for road construction which even in the late 1970s and 1980s had become a lucrative business for some, would not survive for long no matter how well-intentioned that politician is. If coal money is driving politics today then land acquisition was what funded politics then.
We now live in a Meghalaya where large sections of our own people are dehumanized. Readers may ask what is dehumanization. The essence of dehumanization is not to see suffering and to render the poor and the powerless almost invisible. When the so-called political leaders ride on their SUVs with tinted glasses and don’t feel the road bumps, they also fail to see that thousands upon thousands of the people in their constituencies have to ride on those roads daily and at great cost to their health. Think especially of pregnant women! Since all MLAs and MDCs only make flying visits to their constituencies they are least sensitised about the hardships that their people face day in and day out. Schools in the villages function in the breach and the number of school drop-outs are increasing by the day. What’s the point in hanging banners across Shillong about getting children back to school. School drop-out is not an urban phenomenon; it’s an affliction of rural Meghalaya and nothing much is happening to arrest this dysfunctionality. One wonders what the future of thousands of school drop-outs in Meghalaya is likely to be in a world driven by technology? Do our political “leaders” really care about this speedy descent to dystopia? I don’t think so! What they don’t see and feel does not hurt them. Period.
And yet election after election we see self-styled leaders taking centre-stage and paying lip service to the same jaidbynriew which unfortunately gets repeatedly conned by sweet talk and a few thousand rupees being thrown around the night before voting. It’s the money that seals the deal and politicians know they are only play-acting when they come to different areas of the constituency to campaign. We have seen for decades how progressive policies whether on education or land reforms all too often run into the wall of upper middle class opposition. Self interest takes over public interest. And who is the public anyway? An idiom loosely referred to by the word, “people?” Unless the people are organised to take on the growing capitalistic coterie that now control the government, the word “people” remains a mirage. It takes a brave politician to question the privileges enjoyed by the upper middle class. And we all thought the Voice of People Party (VPP) would be the Party to break the growing disequilibrium in Khasi society! Were we hallucinating? Or are we so depressed as an electorate that we pinned our hopes on politicians that were tried and tested and found wanting?
For Khasis to solve the problem of deepening class division, we will have to start by admitting their existence and our collective complicity in maintaining them. How flippantly we have been talking about the Khasi society being egalitarian. That’s the biggest lie we have all helped to spread. Beneath the veneer of classlessness, the Khasi class reproduction machine operates with ruthless efficiency. And there’s not a murmur of moral disquiet! We all are part of it! Religious preachers across faiths hardly speak about the moral collapse of society and what moral rubric they propose in order to arrest this hastening moral disintegration.
The District Councils elections are already preceded by a call to strengthen the clan system and all the other paraphernalia of customary practices which have all but become meaningless. The District Councils should actually be questioned on the CAG reports which repeatedly indicts them for their irreverent lack of accountability and which they continue to ignore as if the money they spend is from their own savings account. This time the public should have the courage to question all the sitting MDCs as to why they have not accounted for the funds they have taken to ostensibly make peoples’ lives better. What’s the use of all the heightened importance given to the clans and the so-called traditional institutions that are equally profligate and lack accountability in public spending? Enough of identity politics and the five-yearly injection of Khasi pride which is intended to deceive! People should tell the candidates to get real or get lost and not waste their time!
For too long we have tolerated all kinds of self-proclaimed leaders who have been found wanting when the going got tough. Such leaders become desensitised the day they are elected and are ensconced in a shell that is tough to break through. While campaigning these political leaders will tell us harrowing tales of under-development and speak of corruption as if it’s a sin of those who held power in the past. Once elected the same set of guys will turn the harrowing into the humdrum and numb us all. That’s how politics has played out in Meghalaya.
In Meghalaya we have politicians who have turned provocation into an art form. They are also tone deaf so they continue to repeat the same old histrionics and demagoguery. Such politicians will take the stage yet again come February-March 2025. They will mesmerise the gullible with their stemwinder speeches and we the people will be ready to vote them yet again, unquestioningly and without asking them to lay out their action plans! No wonder democracy requires constant questioning but that questioning can only come from a logical mind; one that is also empowered by education! That’s why politicians prefer to stay away from discussions that might expose their wily natures and their penchant for obfuscation.
And finally, even the Party that in 2023 promised to deliver us from our poverty-stricken predicament seems to have faltered in its internal mechanics of deciding who to set up as candidates to the ADCs. In any case people have patiently listened to platitudes and raised their hopes sky high but they now want to see action and delivery. For too long elections have been the platform for spreading paranoia about us disappearing; being overrun by so-called ‘outsiders;’ about our land being taken away and the rhetoric goes on. It takes a constant reality check to discover the truth – more land has gone into the hands of the affluent Khasi politician and the business class. That’s visible and tangible; so enough of misleading yarns! This time we should demand that the ADCs live up to their mandate of protecting our forests, rivers and our drinking water sources. With over 749 water sources in a critical condition, it’s time to get real and stop the slaughter of trees and the reckless quarrying and mining, all of which are the remit of the ADCs.
So, candidates stop misleading us. Get to the point and no faking! The social fabric has ruptured a long time ago. It’s time to mend not just the tear but the gaping holes in that fabric!