The budget session is done and dusted and legislators from the Opposition have been able to act their parts with all the bluster at their command to corner the MDA Government. After that there will be a lull until the monsoon session arrives and the same old queries are raised. This is the age of information and Opposition MLAs are supposed to use part of their MLA funds to employ researchers to follow through on the different schemes of the Government and how they are being implemented on the ground and to what effect. Only then will legislators be able to make sense in the next Assembly session and only then will the Executive not be able to explain away things and avoid accountability.
Those who have followed Assembly proceedings for the past two decades will recall how Conrad Sangma as an Opposition MLA would corner Mukul Sangma the Chief Minister on exactly the same lines. Several MOUs were signed with private power companies but not a single one materialised to date. Since legislators are prone to forgetting their past, even the Shillong Medical College was a project initiated by the Congress-led MUA Government of Dr Mukul Sangma where a person with dubious credentials was brought in as a private partner in the public-private- partnership mode. The Shillong Medical College never took off and even today not much is known of its status. Opposition MLAs are supposed to have done their homework and laid before the Assembly the present status of the Shillong Medical College; how much money has been invested and reasons for its delay, for public knowledge. But that did not happen. The public is still in the dark about what would have been the first state medical college. This has been the eternal predicament of Meghalaya. When people who used to be in the treasury benches find themselves in the Opposition, they ask the most searching questions that they prevaricate on while in the government.
The question about consultants was raised during the first tenure of the MDA Government and was repeated this time too. Instead of asking questions and waiting for answers from the Government would not an RTI have done a better job? Then the Opposition would have been better armed to take on the Government after it has done a cost-benefit analysis of hiring such consultants. Some of these consultants work on an NGO mode and are most connected to the people. One of the plagues affecting the Government is that its employees are divorced from the ground realities in the distant periphery. They are not concerned with the state of the environment and the massive deforestation happening in every part of Meghalaya due to timber logging, quarrying and charcoal burning. Opposition MLAs too are hesitant to bring these issues to the Assembly lest they step on the toes of their crucial supporters. Some institutions are at least working on these critical issues on soil, environment, better agricultural production etc. The Assembly therefore is meant to deceive. And people are suitably misled!
