Who should win our vote – only those who, especially those who give us eyes to see what we are truly like, what we truly experience, what we truly deserve, what we truly need, who give us a chance to experience what we are, and who make us desire nothing more than to be who we can become, because they are the ones who help us to esteem ourselves and to see the true hero that we are and the height to which we deserve to rise which is hidden in everyday characters that we are and that we come across. We need men and women who are embodied with this attitude who relate the story of their election in a spirit of gratitude and who go out of their way to pay their respects to the men and women who elected them, even with those with whom they had fallen out. We have had too much immorality and corruption among those we elected to be our leaders: we need those who make us aware that we are worthy of recognition and dignity deserving of a far better treatment than the treatment we have seen in the last ten years. Let us not bring religion into the picture at the moment: there are no priests in the fray. With good governance religion will find a peaceful environment to grow in.
Good politicians are few and hard to come by but they are there, and we the electorate have a duty to screen each candidate through a moral lens before stamping our seal of approval on the candidate: then and only then should we decide the ones who should win our vote. We have seen the base morality and the misuse of authority for personal gains by our leaders which is so glaringly visible in the standard of living that suddenly becomes of our leaders, not through the sweat of the brow but through dubious idiosyncratic means, by those who have made politics into a personal business because they just aren’t able to sweat it out. Without this opportunity to corrupt they would be nowhere except in the background, as those who sit in the opposition benches, broken and bent. The leaders in the past ten years have lived entirely under the spell of that perspective which makes what is at hand – the elections – so very important. The only reality in the democratic system of governance is the time we cast our vote thereafter it is all a sham, a denial of the rule by the people for the people and of the people. Perhaps we can concede a demerit to democracy which has made those who depend on it see, as if through a magnifying glass, that it can be twisted to make them rich…immortally rich.
Now, with the likelihood that ending February 2023 shall be the date when the State shall go to the polls the time has come for the politicians to search us out and bring us their gold and frankincense and myrrh as an offering to us who are the only ones who can save them in the current circumstance. Their gold is in the form of “WE” cards and “MyE” cards, their frankincense is in the claims of 2.2kms of rural roads a day and cash deposits of Rs.9000, and their myrrh is in the hint that an embalming awaits us, a hint that if reelected, the State, i.e. we, are dead and gone. From this moment forward all they will try to do is hang baits on hooks and hope to get our votes much like the fishermen that the State abounds in, and well if they catch no fish they wouldn’t blame themselves…”these fish were clever this time round” they would say. Politics this time has evolved into a show of money and promises and except for one Party – the BJP – development is all but dead and buried in the slogans we see on their posters. Looking back on the year that has gone, there were those who in their poverty huddled together with their many cares and without any way to conceal them: each was willing and ready to make a living out of anything that came their way, because even the little they had was being snatched from them with the spiraling prices of the bare essentials – and at that time no one came with the gift or a donation, but now because of the elections gifts and donations and more are being made as if it was always there for the taking. Among the vegetable vendors of the Laitumkhrah market today there is no lack of those who are entitled to call themselves the unfortunate in a distinctive and honourable sense. Their fate was hard, their hopes were uncertain; it was quite a feat for them to devise some comfort for themselves after their shops were gutted in November. The politicians of today who promise everything in the future, can they go to the Laitumkhrah market today? Among the vendors there is a disfavour of the worst kind towards politicians because when they were in that fragile state, when their hopes were broken, when they needed support to transit from their jobless state to where they are now very few appeared on the scene. Yes, Ampareen turned up to provide for the vendors of her constituency only, and the Government came out with a ridiculously small token depending on the scale of business losses suffered. Listen closely or read attentively to what follows because there are very few who would dare to speak truthfully, it was the Government that constructed the temporary market in Laitumkhrah and the work was as shoddy as ever, so shoddy that the wiring burnt out on its own even before a year of its installation, and there was no guilty conscience, no voice of God in the hearts of the men chosen to lead the State, instead there was more of the instinct of, “let them be” a cruelty that cannot be imagined away. There are many questions the vendors ask, which they immediately follow with an “answer not” because the answer would only be something for lack of something better. The vendors have now understood like many of the people throughout the State who understand that the only promise they want is the promise of development and a corrupt-free State because in it alone is there any hope for themselves and for their children. The people are aware that our current politicians do not know what is the right way to govern and develop the State because in the darkness of their aspirations the good men and women of the State, those who knew the right way were sidelined in the current dispensation – had to be kept away so that consultants could come into the picture, consultants who had no experience, practical or bookish of the people and the place, while the locals who knew the people and the place and the direction the State should follow were denied any opportunity to work and this is what will continue to be the way that the next government will follow if the people will not bring to power a Party that has proven its credentials in the States where it has come to power in the North East. Yes, I have the right to voice my suspicion and why should I not voice it? Because I see the potential that the State possesses and the tremendous destiny that can be brought to it if the right Party is brought to power. The current leader of the TMC in Meghalaya had his chance from 2013 to 2018 and the people decided enough was enough, they voted him and his party out because of the numerous failures and the rising debts that the State had accumulated during his tenure. Embarrassed by what he had done he remained silent for the past five years. The current Government came in 2018 with every regional Party in its fold and it sunk the State to abominable debts and a complete halt in progress in every sector…in fact attaining the lowest position in every development sector in the country. There is only one Party left that has yet to be tried…the Bharatiya Janata Party, which has proven itself in the North Eastern States of Assam, Manipur and Arunachal and at the National level as well, so I say give it a try, otherwise instead of the tremendous destiny that I can see for the State we will get nothing more than rats and rubbish.
(The writer is the State Spokesperson of BJP Meghalaya)
