By Divesh Ranjan
In Meghalaya, mornings often begin not with calm or opportunity but with waiting. Waiting for water.
In several localities, including areas such as Mawlai constituency, water in the public supply system often begins flowing around 7:15 am. Schools and offices start at 9. Many places start even earlier at 8. To reach on time, most people need to leave home at least an hour before. Instead, people line up at community taps, rushing to fill containers before the supply stops, leaving almost no time for bathing, cooking, or household chores.
And sometimes it does run dry. Supply breaks down for days at a stretch, sometimes beyond a week. When that happens, buying water from private vendors becomes the only option, quietly bleeding already stretched household budgets. For families living on the margins, this is not a small disruption. It is a recurring crisis that arrives without notice and leaves without apology. This is not about comfort. It is about basic dignity.
Children rush with half-filled buckets because there is not enough time to wait longer. Some miss classes because collecting water takes too long. Parents juggle impossible choices between bathing, cooking, and reaching work on time.
And even when water is secured, the daily battle continues with heavy traffic delaying arrival at schools, colleges, and offices, wasting precious time no one can afford to lose.
The Overcrowded Taxis Nobody Regulates and the Strain They Leave Behind
Beyond congestion, there is a quieter and more uncomfortable problem that most people have simply stopped questioning. In shared taxis across Meghalaya, commuters are routinely packed beyond any reasonable limit, two people folded into the front seat alongside the driver and four more squeezed into the back. This has become so normalised that few speak against it, but normalization is not the same as acceptability.
Students heading to class, workers making their way to offices, and elderly passengers travelling for essential needs all share the same daily ordeal of cramped and draining journeys that should never have become routine. It is physically exhausting and quietly demoralising. The journey to earn a living or pursue an education should not feel like an endurance test before the day has even properly begun.
Permitted seating capacity is already clearly defined, one passenger alongside the driver and three in the rear, even indicated on several vehicles. Yet these norms are routinely ignored. Most metro cities and state capitals across India enforce strict monitoring of these standards. Meghalaya, as a growing tourism destination, can and should do the same. What is needed now is simple. Political will to make passenger safety non-negotiable.
Beyond Water and Transport
This is not a problem confined to water and transport alone. According to recent Meghalaya Budget Session, 154 villages in the state are yet to receive electricity. In health centers, doctors are often absent and infrastructure is limited. A particularly troubling incident occurred in February 2026 when a sitting Member of Parliament passed away after being rushed to a Community Health Centre that reportedly had no doctor on duty. The incident did not just make headlines. It made the public ask whether their nearest health facility would be ready when they needed it most. Meanwhile, educated youth continue scanning newspapers for jobs that rarely appear. These are not isolated gaps. Together they form the invisible ceiling that keeps Meghalaya’s economic story from reaching its own people.
A Booming Economy That Many Cannot Feel
According to the Meghalaya State Budget 2026-27, the state recorded a Real GSDP growth rate of 9.66%, ranking second highest among all Indian states. Yet millions of households still struggle daily for reliable water and safe transportation. True growth must be felt on the ground, not only in government reports.
When students reach school late or stay absent because they were filling water or struggling with daily transportation, they gradually lose interest and that lost interest quietly turns into a dropout. Meghalaya already ranks among the highest in the country for school dropouts at both secondary and higher secondary levels, and is among the lowest performing states in school education nationally. What follows is even more alarming. Disconnected youth become vulnerable to drug dependency and behavioural deterioration, and according to the India HIV Estimation 2025 Technical Report, Meghalaya already records placing it among the eight most affected states in the country. These are not separate crises. These are consequences of the same root failure in basic utilities.
Despite the Chief Minister’s Budget Speech 2026-27 reporting the creation of 3.6 lakh job opportunities through numerous schemes and initiatives over the last eight years, unemployment continues to grow. Schemes alone cannot substitute for a functioning foundation. Serving the approximately 18 lakh young people who make up more than 50 percent of the state’s population demands a holistic approach covering basic utilities, reliable infrastructure, regulated mining, and conditions that attract serious industrial and IT investment. No single sector solution will be enough.
The Patience That Power Must Not Exploit
The people of Meghalaya are remarkably patient and quietly resilient. Even in difficult circumstances, many choose to find the positive, adapting to hardship rather than raising their voices against it. This silence reflects their dignity and inner strength. But it has also, perhaps unintentionally, worked in favour of those in power. A population that endures without demanding rarely compels urgent action from its leaders. And while that patience keeps the peace today, it is silently eroding the state’s most valuable asset, its human capital, in a way no government scheme can easily recover.
Accountability Belongs to Everyone
The responsibility for fixing this does not rest with the government alone. Opposition parties must raise the basic problems that define ordinary lives. The media must carry the voice of common people to lawmakers and encourage citizens to assert their rights. If all these avenues fail, the judiciary must apply serious pressure on the executive, because a state more than half a century old simply cannot afford to keep sliding backward. Common people do not read GDP reports. They measure development in the language of their own lives. Did the tap run this morning? Did my child make it to school on time? Did the road hold after the monsoon?
Water, power, healthcare, and safe transportation are not luxuries. They are the building blocks of education, employment, and human dignity. The queue is still there. The question is how much longer people are expected to wait.
The author is an Independent Columnist and Policy Analyst.
