By Patricia Mukhim
The continued resistance to railways on the plea of influx is a no- brainer since there is no clarity on whether influx has really taken place and if so where are those illegal settlers residing. The word influx makes one feel as if there is a wave of migration either from Bangladesh or from other parts of India. Whatever statistics are available show that the non-tribal population of Meghalaya is dwindling on account of many reasons, chief among which is the drying up of employment and business opportunities. Hence even non-tribals with a long history of having lived in this state since the time it was part of Assam have felt the need to move out in search of better opportunities. There is no state in this country where other Indians cannot work. There are hundreds of people from Assam, Manipur, Nagaland, Mizoram working in Goa, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Kerala etc. Their services are needed there and even while the youth from Tamil Nadu, Kerala or Karnataka might be working in the north eastern states in banks and other institutions. This is the nature of life. It is futile to expect that Meghalaya alone can provide employment to every Khasi, Jaintia and Garo. The youth from here too must develop wings strong enough to fly and then land a job and work without being considered the other in his/her country.
These are the current realities and change is creating major disruptions. If our youth are not prepared for such disruptions and instead create “enemies” on whom they blame their inability to cope with competition then we are in for a long haul that would worsen the scene. Since 1979 the politicians in this state have created the “other” the external enemy who is out to take away their rightful space in the sun. This despite all the protective mechanisms. A student body then hijacked this agenda and the violence of 1979 happened. This was followed successively with violence against other minority groups until about 1992 when the embers of militancy were lighted up. After the militant outfits caved in and began talking peace, (although at what stage that peace talk is at is anyone’s guess) now several pressure groups based in different districts have sprung up like mushrooms with fancy acronyms.
All pressure groups thrive by creating a fear psychosis – fear of being marginalised – fear of losing jobs, losing land, losing women to the imagined “other.” The fear creation drama is one that calls for a detailed analysis. To the average Khasi, fear is like a wall that cannot be scaled; its something that blocks progress. What they don’t see is that a wall can be climbed if they put in the required effort. What makes us think that we are inferior to the “other” in terms of intelligence, ability to compete and ability to excel? Who has engraved that belief in our psyche. And why is it that our education system has not been able to erase that deep-seated assumption from our minds and that of the younger generation of Khasis? Its time for schools, colleges and universities to make the tribal students face their fears head-on instead of feeding their anxieties through populist ideologies that teach our youth to treat the ‘other’ as the enemy. There is a strong case for reframing and redefining fear and where it originates from.
Politics and political parties that exacerbate fear and push us to see everyone who is ‘not like us’ as enemies should be exposed. The current trend of politics that looks at the state of Meghalaya not as a part of the homeland of every Indian who was settled here much before 1972 but as an ethnic homeland of only the three tribes is a dangerous trajectory that defies the idea of India. We cannot for a moment forget that we are an integral part of India and its constitutional values. If we were to travel to Jharkhand – a tribal majority state and speak to non-tribals there, they don’t feel the sense of alienation that non-tribals face in Meghalaya. They feel “Jharkhandi” and every bit a part of that state and contribute their mite to that state. But ask a permanent resident non-tribal here whether he/she feels part of Meghalaya and the answer is a studied silence which can be interpreted as the inability to even speak their minds.
How long can pressure groups who are not elected and who do not represent the mandate of the entire Khasi-Jaintia populace hijack for instance the coming of railways? The only bogey of fear is “influx” and their answer to that is the Inner Line Permit (ILP). Have they done a comparative study of whether the ILP run states are more progressive than Meghalaya? Does Nagaland, Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh or even disturbed Manipur get as many tourists as Meghalaya does? Do these ILP states have as many institutions of national importance like the IIM, NIFT, IHM, NEIGRIHMS amongst others? The reason that Shillong was chosen as the location for these institutions is because it has no ILP. Take the case of Mizoram which has a branch of the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC) there. The Institute is running with only 31 students. Is it viable in the long term? True the ILP mechanism has been largely eased with people arriving at the Aizawl airport filling up a form and paying Rs 350 for a permit. But that still is a deterrent to most Indians.
Instead of instilling a perpetual fear psychosis there have to be counter-forces to encourage our youth to act in spite of their fears. The youth need to identify the cause of the fear and take a step forward to face it. A small step like writing the first sentence for those that fear to write; speaking in public even if they tremble in the process; in fact anything that can shift the mindset from paralysis to momentum is a great step forward. Fear is created by those that seek to control our minds and our behaviour. It was a group of frightened individuals who attacked non-tribals with such violence in 1979 and 1982, 1987 etc. Those perpetrators were egged on by mind-control agents who did not appear in the forefront but gained from the anti-nontribal politics of that time.
As a society we need to ask a few questions. Why have so many pressure groups with unaccounted money that supports a lifestyle to be envied, sprung up? Their existence is proportionate to the number of youngsters who have been told they cannot get jobs because those are being taken away from them? By whom? No answer. The fear that they cannot do anything on their own and that they need pressure groups to ride on is what has given rise to so many of these groups. None of these groups are registered which means they operate in a system of opacity. No one really knows how they sustain their activities and how they find the time to keep harping on what is failing in Meghalaya but have failed to tell us one thing that they have managed to get through their pressure tactics.
Its time to remind our youth that the most successful people in any field have one thing in common: they move toward fear, not away from it. They understand that discomfort is the price of progress. The entrepreneur who risks failure, the athlete who pushes through the pain, the artist who exposes their soul to the world – all of them feared if they could accomplish their mission. But they used fear to propel them against all odds.
The resistance to the railways is one of the most illogical things because a cost-benefit analysis will tell us that there are more advantages than disadvantages. At least the cost of living for many would be brought down due to a reduction in transportation costs. Let the public of Meghalaya decide for themselves and convey to the Government whether they are in favour of the railways. Give the public a platform to voice their feelings and concerns.
If we have elected a Government we ought to have some faith in it. True that sometimes governments could push through policies that are detrimental to us. In that case too let the public and not a few self-styled pressure groups make their voices heard. After all, we live in a democracy and have not surrendered our rights to third parties other than the government to run our lives.
Lincoln believed that you succeed in a democracy when you treat others as friends and not as enemies: “If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey that catches his heart, which, say what he will, is the great high road to his reason.” Instead of perpetually treating the Meghalayan non-tribal as the ‘other:’ as the ‘enemy:’ as the ‘exploiter’ take him as an ally in propelling this state to its natural trajectory where everyone wins and there are no losers.