That Meghalaya has too many tiers of governance. That some of them overlap is a no brainer. At the end of the day if an analysis is done it would boil down to one thing – control over finances. That in a particular District Council constituency such as Laban, some areas should fall under the Municipality and others under the District Council is something that should have been settled right at the beginning but since there were no contracts and tendering involved earlier, the matter did not gain traction. Now that the matter pertains to road construction and that is where money is to be made and has always been made by the State PWD, and in the case of urban roads – the Urban Affairs Department, a conflict of interest has arisen. Obviously, no authority wants to hand over a lucrative part of the governance system to another entity. But this is creating too many pitfalls and overlaps which are ultimately not good for the people residing in the areas who are the end beneficiaries of a road or a water project. Besides, a road cannot be restricted by the duality of control by the Shillong Municipal Board and the Khasi Hills District Council. That goes for the other two Councils as well.
Hence it is important for the State Government, the Members of the District Council as also the Executive Committee of the Council to sit and thrash out matters. In the first place the District Councils were never envisaged to be a development institution or to be involved in infrastructure creation since that would overlap with the authority and mandate of the state government. It also depends where the Sixth Schedule is applied. In the case of Assam where the Government is led by a non-tribal majority, the Sixth Schedule in the tribal-majority areas such as Karbi Anglong, Dima Hasao and Bodoland are vested with more powers, including that of running several institutions. These Councils are almost like a state within a state and they have large budgets for infrastructural development. In the case of Meghalaya, the District Councils exist in a state with a tribal dominated government. If strict constitutional guidelines were to have been followed the District Council should have been abolished after statehood was granted to Meghalaya. A long term vision would have informed the then set of leaders that the District Councils would have been a superfluous institution. But it is a parody of the times that an institution once created cannot be done away with purely because of the political fall-outs, although pragmatically this would have been the right thing to do.
As of now there is a constant conflict of interests over the jurisdictions of the District Councils and the State Government. There is also a clash of interests between the Syiemship and Councils and the Dorbar Shnong and the Councils since the Dorbar Shnong these days work very closely with the State Government in implementing a plethora of schemes.Also, the District Councils have some primary responsibilities which they have miserably failed to carry out as the custodians of rivers, forests and land. Why are the Councils then more interested in road making?
