By Patricia Mukhim
Shillong is a comfort zone and makes us look at the world around us through rose-tinted glasses. Unfortunately, too many don’t step beyond these comfort zones and believe all is right with the world. The MLAs we elect don’t know what poverty is because they have not walked even a mile in a poor man/woman’s feet (not shoes mind you, most cannot afford even a pair of slippers). Thankfully these days one can get a nice pair of chappals for Rs 199 from Vishal’s but even that amount is scarce if you live in a village and are growing cabbages that sell at Rs 2 a kilogram and you have 5, 6 or 7 mouths to feed. And then you are all the time debating whether to continue to send your kids to school or pull out the 10, 11 and 12 year olds so they can shepherd the sheep and cows and earn something for the family. Parents in the rural outback believe schooling is a leisure their children cannot afford. It takes money to put them through school but the returns are abysmal. As far as the parents are concerned education is simply a means to an end – the end being a job. The larger role of education is lost on them because poverty is a tough road to walk on.
In Meghalaya we have one tragedy after another. The tragedy of July 10 at Lapalang that killed 5 people was hardly mourned when 3 other young boys died because they accidentally stepped on a live wire. Then a young boy takes his own life after writing down the reasons why he did so. So yes, the tragedies have become part of our lives. We hear of them on YouTube, read about them in newspapers and move on because our collective consciences are dead. I sometimes wonder what is preached in the churches? Do priests and pastors speak about empathy (sngewlem meaning you feel the pain of those who suffer and wonder what you can do to help) not sympathy (sngewsynei meaning you feel sorry and move on)?
One negative impact of religion is to preach that every child born in this world is a gift from God. Sorry, but indiscriminate sex between a man and woman resulting in an unwanted pregnancy cannot be attributed to God. It’s time to get real and teach sexual and reproductive rights to children at Class 5-6 because girls menstruate by then.
One reason why I detest articles that regurgitate like a stomach afflicted by reflux and dwell on past glories of this ‘jaidbynriew’ and how everything then was hunky dory and also certain academics who have nothing better to do than wax eloquent about their tribe and sub-tribes as though such paeans add to our economy. The same academics skirt the ugly topics of poverty, school-drops, poor habitation that barely keeps out the rain and wind and the hand-to-mouth existences of too many in our villages. Well, these academics have had the best of education; they teach in elite institutions and are therefore rain-proofed, wind-proofed, and emotion-proofed from issues that afflict those very same folks that these writers romanticize about on their laptops sitting in a comfort zone. Some of these academics earn a UGC scale that pays them Rs 4.5 lakh per month. It provokes me to ask: What actually are you educating the young ones? Is it only to follow your footsteps, live in a cocoon and get into the groove of teaching a future bunch of kids who pass out with flying colours without ever understanding the meaning of empathy? Without empathy you can drive across Meghalaya’s rustic hills and valleys with the scenery broken by dilapidated homes with two rooms where a family of 5-6 people live and feel totally unmoved. So yes, people travel to Nongjrong, Syntung, Mawkynrew, or West Khasi Hills without taking in the utter deprivation of people in these areas that makes their lives a cycle of suffering.
Fifty years ago Meghalaya needed a development model that takes into account its natural resources and its fragile environment. The state should have also taken stock of the so-called “traditional institutions” and enquired into their ability to promote equity in terms of responsible management of community lands. Failure to take stock of these institutions and how they actually manage the so-called community resources is one reason why poverty has grown by leaps and bounds. Many farmers in Thangsning and elsewhere are farming on lease-held land. The question is: How did some families get to own so much land and others nothing? Where is that tribal norm of equitable sharing of land at least for a homestead? Why should a few clans, most of them residents of Shillong, hold ownership over so much land – far beyond what they can use while others who till that very soil are landless? Why did the Khasi-Jaintia society not design a land ceiling beyond which a single family or clan cannot own land? Why have these norms that guided our ancestors been trampled under our feet? That’s why it’s laughable when people assert that Khasi society is “egalitarian.” Egalitarian my foot!
And just take a hard look at who is exploiting the natural resources – forests, coal, limestone, boulders! Aren’t all these resources meant to be community-owned? So how did the community sign away its rights over these resources and allow only a few rich families to benefit from them? Are our village elders (Rangbah Shnong/Sordar Shnong) committed towards the welfare of their people or more interested in signing away their rights over community land especially in a situation where land is alienated for road construction, for coal and limestone mining and for extracting boulders and mining sand from our rivers?
The problem with the Khasi-Jaintia society today is that the “community” is just a word with no meaning because there is no single community. There is the community of the rich, land-owning elite and the very poor who also make up a community of their own. The gap between these two will never meet. So, when the Government conceives of schemes which it claims are community-led it has to explain which community it is representing – the rich and landed tribal elite or the poor, voiceless community that has no rights at all. That community has no access to health care, to basic nutrition and least of all education. Sadly, the Government seems to be taking the path of least resistance and empowering those already well-heeled members of the community who are close to politicians and know the language of patronage. After all what is practiced here as elsewhere is patronage democracy. If I know the MLA and was at the forefront in campaigning for him I get more rights than those who quietly voted without becoming volunteers shouting slogans and singing songs composed to brainwash simple folks.
In all of this melee enters the District Council whose brief is to protect and conserve not just the customary laws and practices but also to protect the natural resources because they don’t belong to any single entity but to the people. The District Councils have failed miserably by not even keeping track of the number of stone and sand quarries that have come up in the Khasi Hills alone. Look at the endless quarrying activity along the road to Mawrah and Kongthong or the road to Pashang and Syntung. Does construction in Meghalaya need so much boulder and sand extraction? How much is too much? When Climate Change hits, the Government will come up with standard phrases such as, “Climate Resilient Development” and all those high sounding phrases even while our environment is being bulldozed moment by moment. Yes, some people are getting rich and they already have alternative homes abroad but what about the “Community” that is destined to live and die here? How many families are benefitting from these extractions? Is wealth evenly distributed?
The task before this Government is to take poverty alleviation as an imperative for the next 5-10 years and get development specialists to articulate a road map for poverty alleviation and to get to work on this with the seriousness it deserves. People sitting in the Secretariat and District Offices should know what it feels like when someone is ill and health care is not accessible or too expensive to access. There has to be a special push for getting all children back to school no matter what it takes. Government has to wrack its brains on how to create millions of sustainable livelihoods that allow people to earn without destroying the natural resources on which Meghalaya depends? That would require a shift from a welfare-dependent economy to one based on productive agriculture, agro-processing, local enterprise, skills, better schools, health, connectivity, responsible tourism and accountable governance. Let’s remember that extraction of natural resources has only enriched a few families and not bow down to groups that demand reopening of coal mines without taking responsibility for reclaiming abandoned mines and cleaning up the Lukha and Lunar Rivers. Why should all of us suffer for the insatiable greed of a few? Yes coal, limestone, forests and other resources have generated wealth for a few “high level” among the community but what about the rest of us? Unless the Government thinks of alternative livelihoods, the resource extraction economy can become a poverty trap leaving behind more and more poor people who will one day take up arms against what they see as a predatory state.
