SHILLONG: Campaigning for the Lok Sabha elections in the state comes to a close on Tuesday, but political parties and their respective candidates have hardly focused on issues confronting the common man.
Be it the Congress, NPP or the BJP, all of them have spent most of their precious campaign time blaming each other over different long pending and vexed issues such as the controversial Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, Assam-Meghalaya boundary dispute and the ban on coal mining, virtually consigning issues of education, quality healthcare, increasing prices of LPG and other petroleum products and general price rise, growing unemployment and the perennial problem of traffic jams in the city to the back burner.
Former IGNOU, Shillong director, Ananya Guha while speaking to The Shillong Times said that political parties and politicians in Meghalaya are missing out on the important issues of education and quality health care besides unemployment in the state.
“They are basically repeating what is being done in other states and at the national level and important issues pertaining to the state are being missed out,” he said. For instance, he said, people would like to know the state of education in the state, particularly in rural areas.
He said that a lot was spoken about trained and untrained teachers in the state, but people would like to know what has been the aftermath. Besides, there is also talk of E-classes, but the big question is how many of the commoners have access to these.
Former Home Minister, RG Lyngdoh says that when elections come, emotions overtake intellect and appraisal of earlier manifestos of political parties to see how much of the promises have been fulfilled is not done.
According to Lyngdoh, political parties as well as candidates exploit emotional issues thus shutting out questions on unfulfilled promises.
Echoing similar views, environmentalist Naba Bhattacharjee said that issues involving everyday problems of the common man were not being taken up by the political parties in the state.
“Environment is our USP. It’s our strength but nobody is talking about organic farming, horticulture and agriculture,” he said adding though that even if manifestos mention these there is no road map on how these targets are to be achieved.
“Simply writing in manifestos will not do… they have to show the blueprint,” he said.
The Director of Bethany Society, Carmo Noronha, said that most of the campaigning by the political parties especially of national parties in the state are being controlled by national narratives.
Noronha believes that the government and the political parties must work on the important issues of education, health and livelihood, which touch the poorest of the poor, adding that the issue of persons with disabilities should also be addressed so as to bring them into the mainstream, but these are barely raised.
An active politician and UDP leader, Allan Dkhar, on the other hand blames Congress for keeping political parties busy blaming each other on different issues of the state.
He says that the main issues of the UDP are getting buried since the Congress has been hammering the party on non-issues and if it does not clarify, people will get a wrong picture.
He also said that the main issues of the party are rural economy, heath care system, quality education, agriculture and promotion of Meghalaya through tourism.
