By Napoleon S Mawphniang
They tell us the Secretariat is the heart of our state. But whose blood does it pump?
Walk through the corridors of power in Shillong, and you’ll notice something peculiar. The same faces. The same names on different doors. Men—and they are mostly men—who have already drunk deep from the well of government service, who have received their gold watches and farewell speeches, who have collected their retirement benefits, now sit again in air-conditioned offices. Contractual, they call it. Consultants, they say. As if new titles can disguise old hunger.
The government’s own order from October 2023 makes it clear that retired officers can be hired back and paid “equal to last pay drawn minus pension” or even more. They do work. They earn money. And here’s the beautiful math of privilege: their pensions are waiting for them, on hold but not given up, ready to be claimed as soon as they decide they’ve had enough of double-dipping. Please tell me if this is a policy or theft.
Numbers don’t lie, even when governments do.
Seventy thousand young people in Meghalaya become eligible for work every year. Every single year. The government—our government, the one we elect, the one that speaks of development and youth empowerment—provides 2,000 to 2,500 jobs. Do the mathematics. That leaves 67,500 young men and women staring at closed doors. Chief Minister Conrad Sangma admitted this in the Assembly in September 2025, his words clinical and careful, as if speaking about surplus crop production rather than surplus human beings.
Where do these 67,500 go? Into the informal economy, if they’re lucky. Into depression, if they’re not. Into the exodus—Bangalore, Delhi, Guwahati—anywhere but here. And while they pack their bags, a retired IAS officer somewhere in the Secretariat signs a fresh contract, his third or fourth extension approved without debate, without advertisement, without even the pretense of competition.
Is this governance or geriatric hoarding?
The government admitted in September 2023 that it had hired 124 consultants in different departments and paid them a total of Rs 22.56 crore in that financial year alone. Fifty-nine people work on projects that get help from outside sources. What else? The Chief Minister said that general projects were chosen through a “transparent tendering process.”Only 26 of them are local consultants.
Let that sink in like monsoon rain through a tin roof. In a state where unemployment bleeds the youth dry, where every household has at least one graduate without work, only 26 of 124 consultants are from Meghalaya. The others come bearing degrees from distant universities, experience from other states, expertise in everything except the one thing that matters: understanding the people they’re supposed to serve.
They don’t speak Khasi. They can’t understand Garo. Jaintia? Forget it. They arrive with PowerPoint presentations and best practices from Pune or Patna, and we’re supposed to be grateful. They draft policies for communities whose names they mispronounce, design programs for villages they’ll never visit, and collect fees that could employ ten local graduates.
The government defends this. “Technical experts,” the Chief Minister calls them. “Capacity building,” he assures us. But here’s a question nobody wants to answer: if our own youth aren’t competent enough, who made them incompetent? Who ran the education system for the past fifty years? Who promised quality schools and delivered crumbling buildings? Who sent teachers who never showed up, who created universities that produce degrees but not skills?
If our children aren’t ready, whose failure is that?
There’s another scandal hiding in plain sight, one that the Right to Information Act could illuminate if anyone cared to file the query.
Officers in Meghalaya routinely handle more than one department. Sometimes two. Sometimes three. A bureaucrat meant to focus on health also manages education. Someone responsible for tourism also oversees urban affairs. They sit in meetings for Department A in the morning, Department B in the afternoon, and by evening they’re too exhausted to deliver for either.
Go ahead. File an RTI. Ask how many officers are currently holding multiple portfolios. Ask how many departments are understaffed while retired officers occupy consultant chairs. The data exists. The truth is there, dusty and inconvenient, waiting for someone to demand it.
This isn’t efficiency; it’s administrative acrobatics performed by a government that would rather overburden the few than employ the many. And when these overburdened officers fail—when projects delay, when schemes collapse, when files gather dust—who pays? Not them. Us. The citizens. The youth are still waiting.
India’s relationship with post-retirement appointments isn’t new. After Independence, Jawaharlal Nehru’s government faced similar questions: should colonial-era officers be re-employed? Should the Raj’s bureaucrats be given new life in free India? The debate was fierce. Some argued for institutional knowledge. Others warned against recycling a system built to extract, not serve. We chose a middle path—sometimes wise, often weak. The Assam Government’s 1968 order (which Meghalaya inherited) set 55 as the limit for re-employment, with exceptional cases extending to 58. The spirit was clear: make room for new blood. The practice, as always, has been something else entirely.
In 2018, the central government clarified there’s no mandatory “cooling off period” for retired officers seeking re-employment. Translation: retire on Friday, return on Monday, if the connections are right. Pension? It waits. Power? It never left.
Eduardo Galeano wrote of Latin America’s veins being opened and drained by those who claimed to develop it. He wrote of systems designed not to distribute wealth but to concentrate it, not to empower the many but to enrich the few. Substitute geography with opportunity, and the metaphor fits Meghalaya perfectly.
Our veins, too, are open. But the blood flowing out is young. So let’s dispense with diplomacy. Let’s abandon the sugar-coated language of press releases and official statements. Why does a retired officer deserve a second salary more than a fresh graduate deserves a first? Why are we told there’s no money for permanent positions, but somehow there’s always money for contractual appointments of those who’ve already been paid?
Why do we celebrate “consultants bringing expertise” when they’re brought from outside to solve problems they don’t understand for people they’ll never meet?
If Meghalaya’s youth truly lack competence, why hasn’t the government declared an education emergency? Why aren’t we overhauling schools and colleges instead of overpaying outsiders?
When an officer handles three departments and fails at all three, why isn’t anyone held accountable?
And here’s the uncomfortable one: are we running a government or an old boys’ club? I’m not suggesting all retired officers are corrupt or all consultants are useless. Some bring genuine expertise. Some serve with integrity. But systems aren’t built on exceptions; they’re built on rules. And our rules increasingly favor those who’ve already fed over those still hungry.
The tragedy isn’t just in the 67,500 unemployed youth. It’s in what that number represents: a future postponed, talent wasted, hope bureaucratized into oblivion. It’s in the young woman with an engineering degree working at a call center. It’s in the young man with a master’s in economics driving a taxi. It’s in the parents who sold land to educate their children, only to watch them leave because staying means suffocating.
Meghalaya is not lacking in talent. Visit any college, any coaching center where aspirants prepare for UPSC or banking exams. The hunger for opportunity is palpable, almost physical. What we lack is a government willing to prioritize future over familiarity, potential over pedigree.
The doors of the Secretariat remain closed to most. But they swing wide—always, conveniently wide—for those who’ve already walked through. Until we change that, every speech about youth empowerment is just noise. Every promise of job creation is just air. And every retired officer who signs a new contract is another nail in the coffin of someone else’s dream.
Sixty-seven thousand, five hundred nails.Every year. Tell me that doesn’t keep you awake at night.
(The writer is Advocate , Trade Unionist Ethicist & The Humanist Architect)
