By H.H. Mohrmen
One must have all heard of the ‘quote’ which politicians use during election campaigns. It is also a saying which people involved in development activities use profusely when they try to emphasise on the need of empowering a person more than anything else. The saying, “If you want to feed a (wo) man for a day; give him/her a fish and if you want to feed him/her the whole life, teach him/her how to fish,” is a profoundly powerful statement which not only helps distinguish the kind of leaders we have, but also makes us realise the need to empower the communities at large. It is up to us, therefore to say if our political leaders fall in the category of those who only feed us for a day or the latter set of leaders who help empower us for life.
Generally, the political representatives we have seem to believe in robbing us of our self esteem by doling out money and/or goods and thereby crippling our ability to fend for ourselves. They actually want u to be dependent on them so that they can use us. So they provide us one-time monetary doles because it is easy and they feel good because they are at the giving end. They hate to see us empowered because then we would start asking questions. We see daily reports in the media, especially before elections of representatives distributing utensils and other knick-knacks. Utensils are no doubt important but since when have we become beggars and who has turned us into beggars?
The current style of political representation is easy. It makes the representatives feel like they are doing charity to the people. So they are not duty bound to see that people are provided their basic rights. During elections they came to the people to beg for votes, but once they are elected, they swap places from servants to masters. They behave like the real masters and whatever they do for the welfare of the people is considered as a big favour they are doing to their constituents. Empowerment is still not part of the vocabulary of the political leaders and in many cases even amongst the government officials of the state and this is obvious from the way we treat the villagers we come in contact with.
If there is change it should start from the top and it is the political representatives who should start changing their attitudes and their relationship with the electors. They should not consider political representation to be some kind of social activity or charity and that they are doing people a favour because the politician is not using his/her own money in whatever he/she is doing, and politicians are paid to carry out their jobs.
In the present scenario it should be the duty of the MPs, MLAs and MDCs to empower the community by capacitating them with information and knowledge on proper implementation of government schemes. Many government schemes are designed as bottoms-up schemes rather than top- down both in planning and implementation. It is no longer one size fits all schemes anymore.
The implementation of MNREGA is one such scheme which empowers communities and they are able to make a difference because it is designed as such. The implementation of the scheme would have been better if the communities were to have been capacitated with all the PRA tools, institutional mapping, seasonal mapping, wealth ranking, resource mapping, Pair-wise ranking, SWOT analysis etc., Of course the respective Block Development Officers through their gram sevaks and gram sevikas had trained the leaders of the communities on how to use the tools for better implementation of the scheme, but there are still some gaps that need to be addressed.
Capacity building for the villager is therefore the need of the hour. It could be simple book keeping, leadership training, for the leaders of the dorbar shnong or the VECs or building capacity of the community in using the various PRA tools for better implementation of various government schemes.
The politicians instead of sidelining the educated youth in the villages for fear of being outsmarted by them should instead engage them in the process of empowering the community for the overall development of the village and the state.
The reason they politicians do not encourage empowerment of the community is because once empowered, they will not depend on the politicians anymore. When people are empowered they would no longer need rich and not so resourceful politicians. Then politicians not only need to work hard but they must also be educated and keep themselves abreast of the latest issues and update themselves with what is happening around. Then the politicians themselves need to be capacitated.
Now villages which have been able to make the best use of the MNREGA scheme know that they do not need MP, MLA, MDC for construction of drains, footpath and now even for blacktopping road and livelihood activities. Why would they need the politicians anymore when they can do it on their own without any interference? They can have anything from footpaths to ponds for water harvesting to making sheds, livestock rearing to augment their livelihood activity only with proper implementation of MNREGA, so where is the need of an MP, MLA and MDC now? They make their own plans and their own designs and decide how they can best implement the project.
The other question is also with regards to the annual MP, MLA and MDC local area development scheme and what are they going to use the money for? We already have many schemes in place now. For schools we have SSA or RMSA; for toilets we have the Swacch Bharat campaign and toilets in the villages can also be constructed using MNREGA funds. Therefore an intelligent politician should ask himself what he is going to do with the annual local area development scheme that he has been allotted unless of course the politicians wants to use it for nefarious purposes.
Politicians should start using the local area development scheme to provide capacity building to the community because capacity building is not a one- time affair but a continuous process. A platform should also be created for communities within the constituency to share their success stories and best practices among themselves. But most importantly politicians should start using the funds for developing skills and creating jobs for educated youths in the villages. Heavy industries is not conducive for Meghalaya and there is also a limit on how much the service sector can provide jobs for lakhs of educated youth that we have in the state now. The best place to work is in the villages therefore politicians can also use the funds to help the youth start livelihood activities and link them with banks. If the idea is brand new, the youths can be introduced to stand-up and start-up India funds. Some even have access to mudra loans now. To begin with perhaps respective deputy commissioners should start voluntary disclosure of how the MP and MLA local area development funds are deployed because this is after all, public money.
There is a lot to be done to empower the community if the intention is to do so, but as of now politicians of every hue still seem to stick their hare-brained agenda of providing people their one time need than to empower them. But the day will not be too far when the community will be able to decide and differentiate a good and effective leader from a self-styled, unintelligent businessman. One day politicians who do have no education and lack awareness of development matters will become redundant because young educated members of the village will know more than them. Therefore empowering and capacity building is not only for the community but for the political representatives too. A day is soon coming when politicians will have to perform and educate themselves or perish.
