By Patricia Mukhim
This article comes after a short hiatus as I had to sacrifice this space for what was considered to be more important issues at stake. As India celebrates its 78th birthday, it is important for us to introspect rather than just act out our parts as robots flying the tricolour everywhere. After I-day many of these flags will be found on the streets of Shillong with no one to pick them up. As a people we have not reached that level of civilisation where we would honour the national flag to a point where we would not allow a single one to land up at landfills and rivers which is where we see them unfortunately. So the “Har Ghar Tiranga” (every home should hoist a tri-colour) slogan should be followed by “Tiranga ko samaal kar rakho” (look after the tricolur).
In these troubled times when the slogan “vote chori” has rent the air and the Supreme Court has ordered that the 65 lakh names that were offloaded from the electoral rolls in Bihar should be uploaded on to the Election Commission of India (ECI) website with reasons for those names being aborted from the rolls, Independence Day seems like a banal ritual. For the ECI doing what the apex court has said is going to be quite a task but it will hopefully bring clarity and clear the name of the Commission which in recent times has been dragged through the mud. The systemic issues of double entry or of one person’s name appearing at more than one state need to be rectified. In fact, the ECI should return to the era of TN Seshan and JM Lyngdoh when it could not be dictated to by the government of the day.
Indeed, we are at a juncture when press freedom is at its lowest and the fourth pillar of democracy faces its most challenging time in the country’s history barring the Emergency days. Most media houses are today taking the path of least resistance and prefer to double down rather than take on the establishment. We have a Prime Minister who has not done a single impromptu press conference and we allowed that integral aspect of a democratic set-up to be passed over without as much as demur. How can a Prime Minister who is the head of the government and is answerable for how his government performs or does not perform its intrinsic duties, escape media scrutiny. How can we have a media that sings praises for the Prime Minister and his closest aide, the Home Minister and refuses to ask searching questions from the duo? But that’s what large sections of the media today labelled the godi-media are doing. It is left to Ravish Kumar and news portals like The Wire or to stand-up comedians like Kunal Kamra to tell us some bitter truths about the present government – truths that the mainstream media will not dare say. So in such an abysmal climate of media repression how can we even celebrate Independence Day with honesty and with full-throated pride?
However, lets not be too pessimistic and see what can be done at the level of our own state and how we can do it. A discussion in a local media channel looked at the reasons why we vote the way we do and whether public awareness about the purpose of an election is optimal after so many years of using our voting rights. The panellists were of the opinion that democracy is barely alive and certainly not kicking. A vibrant democracy is one where public protests happen regularly and people don’t push everything to the MLA but also take responsibility by asking pertinent questions on government failures by taking the route of the Right to Information (RTI). How many people in Meghalaya actually use this route to question the government? Very few, and those few take a long time to get answers to their queries. Hence this means that even the State Information Commissioners are not delivering on their mandate. But have we ever taken on the SIC by approaching the higher level? Some who have used this space to air their views on the failure of the RTI have stated that this important constitutional body has failed us by giving circuitous answers, many of which have to be re-interpreted or be done so by people with knowledge of the law.
On Thursday evening, Chief Minister Conrad Sangma actually walked to Police Bazar where he attended a function because the traffic was so unruly that vehicles were moving a few inches each time. One can easily be caught in a traffic jam for two hours before one reaches home every single day from one’s place of work. It’s a wretched situation that does not seem to have a solution because the Government has not been able to take a definite call on this. Hard decisions are what a government that enjoys a majority should be taking. The NPP now has 33 MLAs and is well-placed to take tough decisions in the larger interests of the people of Shillong. One of these decisions is to enforce school buses on all schools within Shillong city and those in the peri-urban areas too. No school should be allowed to have its students flaunt their flashy vehicles that crowd up the roads twice a day. An order is an order and no school should be allowed to wriggle out of this order considering the STEM buses are doing very well on all parameters.
One hopes that the Chief Minister is aware that his state of Meghalaya is one of the poorest in the country. When this state started out its poverty levels were not stark; nor were the nutritional levels of its children. We never heard of a “High Level” group of stinking rich individuals some of whom are part of the present government and others who are business persons and enjoy the patronage of this government. This “High Level” category are gobbling up all the land and selling that land back to the Government at a premium. Why is the MDA-02 Government allowing this to happen? Why is it so heartless and why does the heart of the Chief Minister not beat for the poorest of the state? In Meghalaya, we actually need a Department for Poverty Alleviation. The Community and Rural Development Department is too convoluted to be expected to address the growing poverty in Meghalaya.
In the past then the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) implemented its poverty alleviation project under the banner of the “North East Region Community Resources Management Project (NERCRMP) in West Khasi Hills and West Garo Hills which were then found to be the poorest districts in Meghalaya, many who had mortgaged their land or sold it under duress were able to buy them back. Unfortunately when that Project was over the government never followed that same trajectory and the line departments never came on board.
If Meghalaya does not get its act together and address especially rural poverty which is exacerbated by a high population growth with women producing 7-8 children or more, no amount of resources will be adequate to service this population boom. Teenage pregnancies are at the root of Meghalaya’s poverty; it’s very high school drop-out rates; it’s child malnutrition and above all its poor health indices. We need to get real and here the government alone will not be able to tackle the problem. Society needs to pitch in and engage with families and speak frankly and openly about protected sex. Pretending that we are holier than thou and cannot discuss ‘sex; which the young are experimenting it and which burdens the young teenager who gets pregnant will not get us anywhere. Enough of being hush bush about sex when it is the bane of our society and reducing families to destitution.
The government has its role but we as a society too must play our respective roles and stop the blame game and the finger-pointing which is the easiest thing to do to escape responsibility.
On that note, I wish all readers an introspective Independence Day.