Meghalaya Chief Minister while hitting out at a former ministerial colleague who has joined the BJP recently alleged that he jumped parties to serve his own business interests. The same logic applies to all those who have left the Congress Party recently. They felt constricted under the Congress-led MUA regime to further their business interests and hope to do so by joining another conglomerate, hopefully. To believe that people are in politics to serve a public cause is the biggest lie. Every MLA is a member of the Assembly not to promote Meghalaya’s interests but self-interest. Many of them don’t even know what ails the state and what should be the developmental priorities because they have never spent time to delve into issues but have only concentrated on their constituencies. These are political pygmies with no mental or intellectual capital to engage on issues that affect the state because they don’t care to know and have never been challenged to think beyond their backyards. Going by the rhetoric we hear at election rallies where wisecracks rather than real issues feature, there is really no ray of hope on the horizon. The future is bleak for Meghalaya if these political pygmies are to adorn the VIP statuses and lord it over the Secretariat.
In terms of political awareness and understanding of how democracy works, the people of Meghalaya are at the bottom of the heap. This is borne out by the candidates they vote to the Assembly. But the fact is also that political parties don’t give the voters a choice. They impose on voters the candidates they believe can win elections. And that winnability factor is based on the money power of each candidate since winning elections today would require a few crores to be spent on personal gratification of the voters. It’s a vicious cycle. As a result voters are tutored to make the best of the elections and fleece all the candidates equally. This is not what democracy was meant to be. The Election Commission’s rules on political spending are flouted with impunity and there is nothing the Commission can do about this since money does not change hands under anyone’s gaze. It is done secretly and discreetly. The ECI cannot have CCTV cameras in a candidate’s home can it? And money will continue to decide the fate of Meghalaya this time too. There is no cause for optimism!