By Patricia Mukhim
The hullabaloo; frustration; anger; desperation at Jorabat on Thursday morning was palpable. Visitors and citizens from Meghalaya who were bound for Guwahati airport or the railway station were left exasperated as they could not cross the Assam-Meghalaya border. Some bold ones got off the Meghalaya vehicles and took the Assam Uber to reach their destinations. But that’s hardly a solution. So what’s all this nonsense about? Are Assam and Meghalaya two countries at war with each other? Many who had morning flights missed their flights. Only those with medical certificates showing they were going for treatment to Guwahati could cross the border. Interestingly, even the former Education Minister, Rakkam Sangma who was travelling to Garo Hills was stopped and told to go back to Meghalaya or use Assam Police vehicles for escort. And why did all this happen? Because the All Khasi Meghalaya Tourist Taxi Association (AKMTTA) with its shortsighted, half-baked idea decided to impose its diktat on the Assam vehicles and not allow them to enter Meghalaya. The Assam Tourist Taxi Association expectedly made it difficult for passengers from Meghalaya to reach different destinations in Guwahati.
While it is agreed that the tourist taxis of Meghalaya have a right to earn by ferrying tourists to different destinations within the state and that is an employment opportunity for many young people, this could have been done through a series of discussions and reaching at mutually agreed terms. For a while now the tourist taxis from Meghalaya have been told to park several metres outside the Guwahati airport because the Assam tourist taxi drivers don’t want anyone else to ferry passengers to different states and destinations. Considering that Assam tourist taxis ferry passengers to Meghalaya, that embargo on Meghalaya taxis is unwarranted and I always felt it was very parochial and inequitable. The Meghalaya Government should have taken up the matter with the Airports Authority of India which is the deciding factor on which vehicles should park where.
The glaring fact before us Meghalayans is that we cannot bypass Assam. All our essential commodities come via Assam by trucks. If tomorrow Assam out of a caprice decides to stop trucks from coming to Meghalaya just as the Assam Tourist Taxi drivers prevented Meghalaya taxis from entering Guwahati on Thursday then what happens? This could have been prevented if Meghalaya had its railhead and goods and passengers both could come right up to Byrnihat and even beyond. I have been on trains in Switzerland that could travel up a steep mountain from Montreux to Caux. That was many years ago. I am sure that technology is now available in India too.
But the very talk of railways sends the pressure groups into a tailspin. Government after government has capitulated before these pressure groups who actually use FEAR as a weapon to make all of us citizens to shut up and recede to a corner. The pressure groups have not consulted us, the general public of Meghalaya numbering over 30 lakh on whether we want a railhead to come to the Khasi-Jaintia Hills. We have elected MLAs to represent us. But do they really speak on behalf of the people or do they become stooges of either the government or the pressure groups?
Fear has been so gainfully weaponised by these pressure groups that we in the Khasi-Jaintia Hills are the only idiots that resist the railway line from coming here to ease our travel and to make our goods cheaper than if they came by trucks. The train has come to Mizoram which is a difficult terrain but look at us! This tells us that Mizoram has a strong political will; that the Mizos know what will benefit them and that connectivity is integral to development. In Meghalaya on the other hand political will has always been subverted by the need to remain in power at all costs. Politicians think that any move to bring in railways would lead to violence that might spiral out of control. But is the role of the state not to keep all such anti-state activities under a leash?
For too long Meghalayans have lived in fear of the outsider; fear of being submerged by the other’s a la Tripura without reading history to understand why Tripura is what it is today. There are instruments in place to control illegal migrants. Those illegal migrants would not be in Meghalaya if there were no jobs for them. The fact that there are avenues for employment means that our own people are unwilling to do hard labour and to work more hours which is what the private sector demands everywhere. So, the locals want to control the job market, but, in a very competitive scenario would a contractor employ someone with lesser output per day or give work to someone who is a thorough professional and get the best work out of him for the money paid. It’s time that Meghalayans get out of the protective cocoon where they have been sheltered from all hardships. In fact, it is this protective mantle which when snatched away by adversity makes our young people feel they have been thrown into a cruel world and then take to drugs to deal with their fears.
Fear has been successfully used by politicians and pressure groups in equal measure. True that fear is a primordial emotion we are born with. But life is about overcoming such fears before they turn into phobias and degenerate into paranoia. Fear clouds our ability to face life. Many of us fear to disagree with pressure groups. Hence pressure groups create conspiracy theories that our jobs will be taken away if the railways come when instead they should be encouraging our youth to equip themselves with the necessary skills so that they are the best in the trade and no one can steal their jobs.
Sadly, fear has been used for decades as a tool of control; control of the mind, control of our thoughts and our reactions. As a tool for control, fear can be used to manipulate, to coerce, to bend people’s will. People and governments have been weaponizing fear for centuries, because they understand something most of us don’t – that sustained levels of fear do devastating things to us physiologically. We have all realised what fear does to us. It paralyses us and we stop breathing normally. Our breath becomes shallow and restricted and our brains register this as oxygen deprivation and respond with the fight or flight instinct. Most of us tend to take the flight mode which is to react to the fear by getting into a shell. Since we don’t want to come out of the shell we can’t face challenges. This in turn weakens our endeavour and makes us take the easy way out which is to want something without working for it. And if we don’t get that something we blame someone else who is ready to work hard to earn good money.
I watch our young people in the labour market. Many of them spend quality time with their mobile phones. If there is a supervisor then they work; once he turns his back they are up to mischief again. Why would anyone employ such a person who does not bring value for money? It’s time someone drills these facts into our youth. It’s also high time that the Khasi-Jaintia people start speaking for themselves instead of expecting the pressure groups to fight their battles for them. Remember, no one fights for us without a cost. There is a cost. The cost is that we are told railways are bad and should not come here and we bow our heads in deference to them. As a result we pay more per kilogram of rice than we would if trains were our mode of transport.
The advantages of railways coming to the Khasi-Jaintia Hills is that we would not have to depend on Assam for our essential goods. They would come straight into our state and at a cost that’s much lesser than road transportation.
It’s also a shame that while other states that were created after us have functioning airports, Meghalayans still have to rely on Guwahati airport for their onward journeys. Why does it take so long to create any infrastructure in Meghalaya? Why the time and cost overruns? And why are we the public not questioning all this? Our silence emboldens those who play games to delay all projects because they look for profits over public interest. Having seen Gen Z protesting and bringing down a government in Nepal one wonders when our youth are going to have the courage to call out corruption and nepotism in what is rightfully named as the land of clouds.
