By Patricia Mukhim
First things first: There is a quantum jump from electoral promises to delivery. We have been victims of unfulfilled electoral promises for decades that we have now turned cynical. However, since hope springs eternal in the human breast we hope to see the promises made at every election campaign come to fruition.
Indeed, the Voice of Peoples’ Party (VPP) won the KHADC election solely on the promise of change. The issues raised by the VPP were hyperlocal except for flagging the non-issue of demanding Article 371 which was explained away to the people saying that it would reduce or even do away with the Acts of Parliament unless the State Government ratified such acts. Sometimes politicians contesting the elections to the ADCs in their eagerness to win votes seem to be sending a message to the voting public that the Constitution does not exist or that the Sixth Schedule is beyond the purview of the Constitution when in fact the 6th Schedule is born out of the Indian Constitution.
Environment the biggest casualty:
The most immediate issue of concern is the environmental degradation that could soon turn this state which once boasted of having the highest rainfall in the world into a desert. This is what a study by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) suggests. There are huge climatic changes experienced in Meghalaya and the North Eastern Region which is a biodiversity hotspot. Climate change is going to impact this region faster than it will other parts of India yet this issue did not figure at all during the run-up to the elections because our people don’t have the appetite to hear harsh truths. They prefer to listen to blandishments of rival politicians and boastful paeans of those they support. Such is the excitement (jingshongshit) that even after results were announced and respective candidates had won the elections their supporters got into slugfests and scuffles. One would have thought that with time people would have matured and voted with reason and some commonsense but that was not to be. With each election public frenzy seems to have got over the top.
That said, the parties that won the election must be congratulated and given a chance to prove themselves. Many have said that the elections to the ADCs are a forerunner of the 2028 State assembly elections. And that’s only to be expected because the overarching ambition of every political party is to rule the state. The aspiration of the VPP moreover is to cleanse the Augean stables which have been littered with corruption over time. But for now the VPP has to deliver on several fronts in the KHADC.
Garbage the biggest menace for the KHADC to tackle:
The KHADC has passed the Solid Waste Management Act in the last Executive Council. This is a huge responsibility which even the State Government seems to have failed to deal with. The quest for a landfill has been a misadventure with village after village refusing to cede with land for the purpose and no one can blame them if Marten is the example of a landfill gone horribly wrong. The fact that the State Government has till date not been able to find any competent waste manager to deal with the legacy waste at Marten itself suggests that things are not going to be easy. The new EC at the KHADC needs to sit and thrash out this matter first and find solutions because the issue of garbage needs to be resolved and fast before the Umiam Lake turns into a garbage dump. It already houses much of the solid waste that flows from the Umkhrah River. The ADC and the Dorbar Shnong need to sit and thrash out this issue taking on board concerned citizens too and come up with a viable road map.
Rivers under threat:
The state of our rivers both in Khasi and Jaintia Hills should make us weep. But most citizens don’t seem to care. There are those who have crafted poems and sang dirges to their favourite rivers but have not lifted a hand to help redeem these rivers from their present state. Rivers have become sewage receptacles and garbage dumps. This raises the question of culture. Does the Khasi-Jaintia culture not have any aphorisms on how to keep our rivers clean and pristine as we inherited them from our ancestors? Our foremothers in fact drank from rivers around them. Do we dare drink water from our rivers today? Yet when a group tries to clean the rivers not a single MLA or MDC would come and join in the cleaning drive. I guess they feel its beneath their dignity to wade into the rivers and pull out the garbage like the young people who are part of the cleaning drive have to do from time to time. Can we expect the VPP MDCs to join in such river cleaning drives and to also drive the agenda in their Council on how to work at (a) taking penal action against those Dorbar Shnong that cannot prevent cars from being washed in the rivers flowing through their shnong (b) those that build homes on the river and let their sewage pipes flow into the river. After all, Dorbar Shnong cannot enjoy only powers without responsibility. The practice of washing cars in the river is a crime that deserves severe punishment and the ADCs had better come up with stringent laws on this issue and also have the political spine to show that they mean business and will not allow the culture of “leh latba mon” (go as you please) under their watch.
Stone quarrying sand banking; coal & limestone mining: This is a very ticklish issue and people have learnt to argue that the above activities create livelihoods and therefore cannot be regulated. This is not acceptable. The Councils are custodians of forests and land and forests are what protect our top soil which is flowing down our deforested lands. Do we know that it takes 1000 years to create one inch of top soil? If we knew that would be have been so careless about allowing our top soil to flow downstream to Bangladesh because of our rapidly shrinking forest cover? And why should Meghalaya deplete its natural resources and sell its boulders and limestone to Bangladesh? Why this great rush to extract everything from this earth only for a few people to get rich quick? Can the KHADC come up with stricter laws and upscale its forest protection force? In the past those employed as forest guards in the ADCs made money by looting the forests. We hope the VPP will stop this murder of our most precious resources – our carbon sinks that also provide us with the gift of life – oxygen.
Need for convergence:
One of the downsides of having too many tiers of governance is that the institutions all work in silos. The ADCs don’t share data or sit with the State Government departments in a bid to address common issues such as forests and environment conservation, water conservation and garbage management. In fact, the ADCs, State Government departments and the Dorbar Shnong each have to craft out a definite roadmap in saving the environment. The time is now and we await to see the VPP taking the lead in this life-saving mission.