Elections come and go but electoral promises remain unfulfilled. Meghalaya is bracing itself for the next election to the autonomous district councils. Political parties are in an upbeat mode. Each party is trying to woo members from rival parties as if that in itself is an election agenda. No political party is looking at enrolment of new members. Parties that are able to fish from the Voice of Peoples’ Party (VPP) flock feel as if they have already won the battle. Instead of looking at fresh faces political parties seem inclined to put up as candidates the tried and tested faces even though the voting public would prefer to give new candidates a chance to prove themselves.
Apart from the choice of candidates, political parties are not even exercising their minds on the key agenda for the forthcoming elections. What is each party’s agenda this time that it had not brought up five years ago? Were all the promises made then fulfilled? The state of our forests actually bear testimony to the failure of the ADCs to discharge their major responsibilities. The second most important point is the blatant encroachment into rivers by builders who flout the ADC building rules and the Meghalaya High Court orders and get away with it. The question is whether the ADCs have the wherewithal, namely – the manpower and the political will to ensure compliance to the building laws that they have enacted or whether this important legislation that is now the brief of the Councils is merely another means of resource generation without the corresponding responsibility that comes along with it.
The recent encroachments into the Umkhrah River which had to be stopped by the State Pollution Control Board through strict legal action is a case in point. Environment conservation appears to be the last priority of the Councils, which however make claims that conserving rivers and forests are within their mandate. This is a troubling aspect about exercising powers without responsibility and without adequate means to enforce the rule of law. The Councils moreover are not part of the State’s agenda for addressing climate change which is the new threat especially to rural communities dependent on agriculture and who are the first victims of climate change. In fact climate change has never been a point of discussion during the Council’s internal deliberations. On a similar note, the issue of climate change will be brushed over even while culture and conservation will be the hot topics as if culture is separate from the environment. This tendency to raise the emotional pulse and make elections another round of noise without a definite set of goals being set for the next five years is being repeated over and over and people get caught in this continued web of deceit. The fact that ADCs have flouted the rules of financial accountability will all be forgotten while superficial issues such as the ‘jaidbynriew’ politics and which party will be most able to deliver that amorphous claim will be the talking points. Meanwhile there is no civil society to call this repeated bluff of the Councils.
