Former civil servant Toki Blah has said that corruption is the root cause of all the deprivation the citizens of Meghalaya are facing.
“Corruption takes place because we are ignorant and because we tolerate corruption. We choose people as our representatives who can distribute money and we consider those who can distribute more money as good,” he told Highland Post recently. “In the entire country, we were once known for our educational institutions but now from the top slot we have come to the bottom-most rung of the ladder. Who is responsible for this? I suspect that our politicians are the ones who want the education system in our state to fail or remain stagnant so that people are left illiterate and do not ask questions.”
The former IAS officer was sharply critical of the performance of the legislators in the Meghalaya Assembly and criticised how little time is nowadays devoted to the budget session.
“In our state, how many days in the entire year do we have a budget session? Our legislators, except a few, don’t have time to debate and most of the time they are silent in the house on various important issues and some don’t even have a clue what to say.”
He also said that an MLA is a representative of his or her whole constituency and not just to supporters. “Now an MLA gets more than Rs 2 crore a year and more than Rs 11 crore in his five years tenure as MLA funds but no one asks how the funds are being implemented,” Blah said, adding that the MLA scheme should be done away with and channeled through government departments with a strict monitoring committee to see that it being implemented in letter and spirit.
