SHILLONG, Aug 14: India marks its 79th Independence Day on Friday with the ‘Naya Bharat’ theme.
In Meghalaya, the celebration invites a hard question: what is true freedom, and how free are we today?
The question begins on the streets. If people are still begging to feed themselves or forced to beg, borrow, or steal, freedom remains unfinished. If some still answer the call of nature on the streets, we are not open defecation-free.
If government employees in the Garo Hills Autonomous District Council continue to fight for the release of 42 months of pending salaries, financial dignity and security are still out of reach.
Freedom is measured in livelihoods, too. If illegal coal mining continues because better alternatives have not been provided, then freedom from unsafe, unsustainable work has not arrived.
Safety and equality are part of freedom as well: if crimes againstwomen and children are on the rise, how secure are we? If drug use and HIV cases in the state are increasing, can we claim freedom from their grip?
Public life offers its mirror. On Thursday, a wedding cavalcade was escorted by an ML01-registered white Bolero at Laitumkhrah, a sight that raises the uncomfortable question of whether the VVIP culture still outweighs ordinary citizens’ rights on public roads.
Freedom should also flow through the environment: if rivers are dying and encroachment in forest land is increasing, we are not free from the loss of our natural commons. And if the fear of influx and illegal immigration persists, freedom from anxiety about identity and belonging remains unresolved.
Beyond these visible challenges lies a wound carried for decades, the unresolved Assam-Meghalaya border dispute. Villages caught in contested areas still live in uncertainty over which state truly governs them. Development is often stalled, and the people there, despite being citizens of independent India, remain trapped in a limbo where jurisdiction is debated and basic needs are neglected.
The cracks in basic infrastructure deepen the question further. Many villages remain cut off from electricity, roads, and healthcare facilities.
In the education sector, rural schools are in a shambles, with the recent exposé by The Shillong Times laying bare the pitiable conditions of schools in East Garo Hills. Such realities show that for many, access to the very foundations of a dignified life is still missing.
These concerns are not a dismissal of celebration but an insight into its meaning. ‘Naya Bharat’ must include meals that don’t depend on alms, workplaces that don’t endanger lives, salaries that arrive on time, streets that are safe for women and children, healthcare that can meet the rise in drugs and HIV, roads that treat every citizen equally, rivers that are alive, forests that are protected, borders where residents no longer live in uncertainty, villages with electricity and roads, and schools where children can actually learn.
The promise of independence is lived in the ordinary: a day’s wage paid, a child walking safely home, a family with a toilet, a river that can still be called a river, a village connected to the grid, and a classroom where children have books and benches, not just walls.
The work ahead is not abstract. It is a series of steps — salary cleared, an open drain covered, an illegal mine shut with a livelihood to replace it, a survivor protected, a public road kept public, a border dispute finally laid to rest, a village electrified, and a school restored.
This is not just a critique. It is a call to make a celebration and a course-correction move together, one step at a time.
