The Hub News, on June 28th came out with a news item that has momentous consequences on all the people of Meghalaya. It titled the article, “Road blocks in Land Acquisition for Infra Projects Would Hurt Meghalaya: Conrad.” The article read, “Meghalaya might lose out on important centrally funded infra projects if there are roadblocks in land acquisition.”
This article caught my attention because anything that causes a loss to Meghalaya causes me immense sorrow – a sorrow accompanied by the recollection of the promise Conrad Sangma made while talking to the media after taking oath as Chief Minister of Meghalaya last year, “We will continue to work on the foundations we have laid in the last five years for the development of the State.” And many among the conscientious citizens, who had not forgotten the mischief that was done in the past five years, feared the likelihood that the same mischief was going to extend into the present Ministry as well. At least that was the ominous harbinger of that statement.
What is it that makes us regard politics mistrusting and mockingly is not that again and again we detect how politicians are capable of stating things in a very innocent unsuspecting manner, as is the case in this statement from the CM, but that if one scratches the surface a bit – question the comments offered – one detects that what is said actually displays an altogether insufficient honesty and that half-truths, even total lies, are used as soon as it is evident that a politician has landed himself in a setback. They cannot come to the people and openly declare their failure, a justification is needed, and what better than a justification that places the fault on the people.
The prejudice to defend failures is made with reasons sought after the event – all failed advocates who do not want to be regarded as such do the same, they find justification in their failures; I heard one declare with a great degree of confidence that, “the operation was successful but the patient died.” They justify their failures splitting hairs on some fundamental prevailing reality which they are more than adept at twisting and which they admit are beyond their control, and all in all they paint a challenging picture of the conditions prevailing in the State against themselves as leaders. Nothing could be further from the truth for their failures and I will enlighten.
It has gradually become evident to the people that what our politicians confess on the part of their failures is a conscious defence, that there is a moral justification for every time that they fail – usually something that is inherent in the people or place. This approach has grown like a firm tree planted by the waterside which has now become unmovable. To explain how a politician’s most remote assertions and justifications have actually been arrived at, it is always well and wise to ask oneself first, “what innocence is this aimed at?” People do not believe anymore that an honest cause is what is behind the failure expressed by a politician, because here as elsewhere, false justification is always the tool a politician depends on – every justification of a politician is.
Now with this clarification firmly implanted in everyone – even in the disconsolate politician, let me come to the crux behind the Chief Minister’s failure to convince the Centre to provide us with the much needed centrally sponsored funds for infrastructure development.
Mischief makers who have not been punished for their transgressions feel, like any innocent child, that, “here something has unexpectedly gone wrong,” and not, “I ought not to have done that.” Having done something wrong, and we know some very grave wrongs were done by some of those that were in power in the previous government, so much so that even the Home Minister of the country, Amit Shah, unguardedly asserted without fear of any legal consequence, that Meghalaya was the “Most corrupt State in the country,” and we, making no effort to understand him on this point, elected them again without subjecting those who brought this shame upon us to some sort of punishment…a loss at the hustling (as some were). There was an ominous warning in the manner in which Shah made that statement. A warning as if to say, “Mend your ways or face the consequences.”
And the consequences are upon us now, because the Centre will not release funds to the State knowing that the funds are most likely going to be corrupted by the politicians like they were in the previous years. What guarantee can the Chief Minister give the Centre to ensure that the stumbling blocks that corrupted funds under the previous regime will not do so this time? After all they are still in power in the departments to which these funds will be placed. I can only empathise with the embarrassment that the CM may have had to undergo when asking for the release of funds from the Centre. I think what he is trying to get hold of is a guarantee.
Those in power today who failed to realise the wrong that they did and instead were easily elected to power again, and who believe that nothing was wrong with the things they did, are the cause for the likely loss of the infrastructure development funds. We the people failed to reject them and therefore there has been no repentance on their part, despite the fact that their contemporaries were taught a lesson at the hustling but they, like some innocent child, permitted even the most disgraceful insult to enter in from one ear and exit through the other. And everything was forgotten and forgiven in one insidious sweep – so they would have us believe – when they were re-elected. Corruption engenders corruption, so that in a short, the entire system functions in a similar manner. The “sting of the guilty conscience” is lost on everyone and totally banished to the realm of imagination where everything that is done is done for a justifiable reason.
If there existed any criticism against the corruption the State had witnessed in those days, it was only a few who criticised it. The necessity that the wrong doers should be punished went unheeded by the majority of the people of the State and so the wrong doers, except for a very few, were spared the effect of a punishment at the hustling. The actual effect of a loss in the elections was a necessity against those that were excessively corrupt so that the reason for their loss would sink into their memory and future “wanna be” politicians. The lesson being that henceforth they should conduct themselves in the duties that they were entrusted with, more cautiously and more trustfully. For those that despite their corrupt ways, still managed to return, they should learn through the mistakes of their fellow partymen who lost and who walk around aimlessly. They have the benefit to learn from the punishment of others.
But let us seek for a solution to the loss in question, and put aside the brief preliminary on the connection between the losses of infrastructure development funds as a result of corruption. The capability of a leader is always tested when the person is pushed with his back to the wall and that is precisely what the Central government is doing to our Chief Minister at the moment. We may not be privy to what went on at the bargaining table when funds were being allotted to the states but there can be no doubt that political bargaining involves an attempt to reverse the direction of the situation or at least to bring it to an unresolved matter status. The aim now should be to prevent the prospect of a loss and to make it a duty on the part of the Central government to develop the State as provided for in the Constitution of India.
There can be no doubt that the Chief Ministers in the past were also confronted with similar situations from time to time and they utilised every possible means to ensure that the Centre developed a bad conscience if it refused to promote these remote tribal states of the North East, and Meghalaya in particular. Corruption may not have been an issue then. As it is, a bad conscience is already firmly rooted in the Central government in that road coverage in Meghalaya is way below the standard coverage in other states, that hospitals and educational institutions run by the Centre are totally lacking except for those that exist in Shillong and above all that being a Schedule Tribe State the safeguards to the minorities is in itself a requirement that the Centre must view in the light of every circumstance prevailing here with a deeper conscience that ensures that the people of the State have the opportunity to rise and become at par with the rest of the country.
And if all the above were not enough, the fact that the State has its entire southern boundary with another country is itself a justification for the construction of roads in these very rugged border terrains. Our CM is well aware that the ends crown the work. This essay, even if it is less than three pages of an ominous expression in a cheerful tone that corruption has its losses, there is no reality that is not expressed in it. If one wants a quick idea of what kind of real losses I’m referring to, take a look at what has become of Shillong today.
