By Napoleon S Mawphniang
Nepotism—our insidious “uncle culture”—has entangled itself within Meghalaya’s executive, legislative, and recruitment channels, promising merit but delivering patronage. Nepal’s Gen Z revolt should reflect our hypocrisies and drive reform through action rather than rhetoric. The High Court’s phrase—”uncle culture”—resonated as a moral indictment, identifying feudal remnants in a constitutional state that guarantees equality while normalising favouritism in appointments.
In 2022, a division bench of the Meghalaya High Court imposed ₹3 lakh costs on the State after discovering that a recruitment panel had “hijacked” driver selections—where interview-room subjectivity overshadowed merit and constitutional sense. The Court’s directive to report to vigilance authorities and retrain interviewers reads like an unnecessary civics lesson in a mature democracy, yet remains essential as old machinery persists. The political class treats censure as weather rather than climate.
Consider the recurring allegations about public recruitment—followed by denials, as in August 2024 and 2025, when the Chief Minister declared “no nepotism” in MPSC preliminary results, insisting that SOPs had restored fairness. The reassurance is noted; anxiety remains because trust is cumulative and muddied by even one opaque process.
In July 2025, a CBI Anti-Corruption Branch complaint accused two North Garo Hills MLAs of appointing their sons to the district selection committee—amid rumors of bribery, with whispers of Rs “10 lakh for even a peon.” The complaint alleged that public works contracts were divided through proxy firms linked to political families, a conflict of interest disguised as governance. Even pending investigation, the optics damage when selection bodies revolve around dynastic influence.
In August 2025, the cabinet announced exams to regularise 1,500 ad-hoc positions, citing Supreme Court restrictions and promising transparent selection with SOPs. This shifts from expediency to rule-based recruitment, where public positions cease to be loyalty tokens. However, procedures without public scrutiny remain mere bureaucratic theatres. This issue extends beyond hiring. Allegations of misuse of tribal status in civil service appointments, such as the CoMSO challenge to a selection under the Garo ST quota, show how fragile identity and justice become when documentation and community norms are treated as afterthoughts. While distinct from nepotism, the socio-political implications are similar: when the gate-keeping of public resources becomes opaque, people sense inheritance where verification is needed. Indian judicial discourse emphasises the need for transparent selection systems that are free from nepotism.
Scholarship on judicial independence cautions that secrecy in appointments fosters biases that erode the legitimacy of the judiciary. In 2022, the High Court of Meghalaya advocated for procedural literacy among interviewers, a balance between tests and interviews, and merit-based assessment— judging a driver by their driving skills, not appearance. This principle should be inscribed in every recruiting office from Tura to the Secretariat.
India’s history warns against nepotism. From the Arthashastra’s cautions against patrimonial capture to the Constituent Assembly’s debate between patronage politics and equal opportunity, the fight against nepotism has been ongoing. Post-independence, courts developed anti-arbitrariness jurisprudence for procedural fairness, while the reservation policy addressed historical exclusion without becoming a gift of the powerful. However, “uncle culture” evolved into networks of favour, treating the state as spoils.
Across the border this September, Nepal’s youth achieved what theory could not: they made corruption and nepotism costly for the state. The ban on 26 social media platforms was seen as a gag on speech and a shield for elite impunity, especially amid the exposure of “nepo kids'” opulent lives. The streets responded. Prime Minister Oli resigned amid protests, the offices of political impunity were stormed, and the state relented.
Reports from Kathmandu depict the movement as leaderless yet remarkably unified: lift the ban, end “corrupt practices,” and stop stifling the future with dynastic entitlement. Analysts observe a broader pattern among Asian youth—in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia—where memes become mobilisation tools and hashtags translate into tangible power on the streets. This is the new grammar of accountability: digital natives intolerant of hypocrisy, and disdainful of inherited privileges.
Meghalaya can learn several lessons: first, build transparency into recruitment processes by publishing anonymized score matrices, weightages, and interview rubrics for every public selection; live-stream interviews where feasible; and require post-process audit reports by independent panels. Second, establish a firewall against conflicts of interest by codifying automatic recusal and disclosure for legislators and family linked entities in tenders, and implement e-procurement with public bid ledgers and independent randomness checks to prevent tender splitting.
Third, design citizen oversight by forming youth oversight councils from universities, civil society, and professional bodies to monitor recruitment and procurement, and empower them to initiate reviews when anomalies are detected. Fourth, protect free speech and invite scrutiny: unlike Nepal’s ill-fated social media ban, develop a policy framework that treats digital criticism as a form of free audit; the safest state is the one most closely watched. Fifth, enforce legal rather than moral accountability: implement High Court guidance with statutory penalties for process violations; automatically extend vigilance referrals when panels deviate from notified norms without written justification.
Autonomous District Councils are intended to serve as constitutional safeguards for identity and self-governance of the tribal people. However, allegations of opacity, fund misuse, and nepotism have undermined their credibility in Meghalaya. Decentralisation without transparency merely increases opportunities for exploitation; democratic federalism relies on integrity at every level, from the council desk to the assembly dais. The solution requires decisive action: enforcing proactive disclosure under right-to-information standards, implementing external audits, and maintaining conflict-of-interest registers accessible to the public without the need for an application.
“Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful”, Nietzsche warned. Perhaps our indignation turns into mere performance because we lack the courage to reform the structures that entice us. The concept of the “nepo baby” is not just about being a beneficiary; it is a social construct we all support when we normalize calling the panel “uncle,” the tender “set,” and the post “adjusted.” What Nepal’s Gen Z has imparted to the Himalayas is not anger but responsibility—an ethics of immanence, where institutions are only as legitimate as the scrutiny they withstand.
Our local manifesto begins with a commitment to transparency: publishing everything, including selection criteria, weightages, panel compositions, conflict declarations, and post-process analytics. Sunlight is non-negotiable. Second, establish a Youth Audit Corps by institutionalising and rotating student and early career professional observers for MPSC, DSCs, and major tenders, empowering them to file minority reports that trigger automatic reviews. Third, ensure tender integrity by implementing a code that prohibits relatives within the first or second degree of consanguinity from sitting on or advising any body adjudicating tenders or selections that could benefit them. Fourth, whistle-blower insurance should be introduced, offering protection and reward schemes for insider reports that lead to convictions or corrective actions in recruitment and procurement. Fifth, ensure a digital window, never a wall: enshrine a statutory bar against platform bans as a response to reputational crises; regulate for compliance, not silence.
Meghalaya’s political class may deny, as it often does, that nepotism pervades the state’s arteries; denials are easy because capture rarely leaves fingerprints, only patterns. Courts have already written the prologue to reform; reporters and citizens have sketched the plot; the youth must furnish the climax—peacefully, relentlessly, and with the discipline of a republic that refuses to be inherited.
If the future is to belong to merit rather than lineage, to transparency rather than whispers, then Meghalaya must become a laboratory of procedural courage—where the state is judged as Nietzsche judged men, by whether it can bear the truth of being seen or not. Let the system feel the glare; let the “uncle culture” feel the cold; let public office become what it was promised to be—a trust, not a dowry.
(The writer is Advocate, Trade Unionist & Ethicist)
