We all fear the truth and to make a confession, I feel instinctively certain that the assessment of the CAG, that Meghalaya is “heading into a debt trap” is the originator, the self-torturer of a most sinister omen on me and every right-thinking person in Meghalaya; what do I care about the reasons why and the amount involved that some blockheads have led us into? The ability of anyone to understand how and why we have landed into this situation – this reality – is not only authenticated by virtue of the reality that people have been expressing time and time again about the monstrous corruption that has overtaken the State, and the offensive dubbing of ‘the most corrupt State in the country’.
But the fact that the assessment of the CAG squarely blames it on the government, and if one digs a little deeper this debt trap started not more than 10-15 years back, not more. And government in this case doesn’t mean everyone, it means the government servants. And except for the fact that the report maintains a silence on the reason why we have landed in this debt, there is every reason that it presupposes corruption as the reason.
We do not know half about what the CAG report contains – the highest source of condemnation in the Executive wing of the Constitution of India. To be sure, everything expressed by the CAG – the only watchdog these days – is based on the records available with the government. Even the Opposition in the Assembly must be shocked at this damning observation and they know that as representatives in the Assembly there is very little that they can do to rectify the situation – the Opposition in the Assembly have been reduced to a necessity, and definitely not an Opposition that can cause a toppling.
As I sit and draft this letter concerning the state of affairs that our government has landed us into, I feel I must express a word or two of gratification for the way the government functioned when I was still in service; because whatever I have now (after retirement) has refreshed me by far the most heartily and the most profoundly. This without the slightest doubt was the discipline and dedication that was an integral part of government service in those olden days. My seniors had no hesitation in using the most stringent disciplinary rules to keep their juniors in check and suspensions and penalties were a common affair when anyone crossed the line, and so we were serious in conducting ourselves diligently to our duties and displaying respect for our seniors – all other relationships with our fellow men being treated, as one should, quite lightly and happily.
Those were the days of confidence, of cheerfulness, of sublime opportunities to learn, of character, and I would never have them blotted out from memory at any price. I may not know what my contemporaries may have felt for their seniors, but no cloud ever darkened my sky when I was in service. Towards the end of my career however I did discover that suspensions and penalties were reserved for those government employees that did not have political connections – the rot was setting in and now it seems to have cemented itself.
And this brings me back to the debt that the State has landed itself into. I have no arguments against the government employees of today, and anybody else among this category, who believe that they do honour to their political masters by believing that they are better equipped to depict the achievement of any programme on paper using technological applications and especially AI which can be manipulated to suit a specific purpose even when ground truthing totally dismisses their paper claims.
For such people there is a place, but certainly not in the days of yore when works were expected to be carried out exactly as described and estimated, and the end result exactly as anticipated in the project so that future projects could be built on them for the long-term goals of the State’s prosperity. Being from the old school, I still feel that achievements in the field alone are what bring about development, not the lengthy matrix of figures that create more confusion than common sense, but which at the bottom reveals only positives.
We, who entered service in the sixties and seventies, cannot be anything else than critics of what we see is going on around us now; a system which only entertains people who are willing to tilt from this end to that end with the sole intention to find a launching pad to quench their promotion and greed. These are the ones who get plumb postings and ensure themselves a quick ascent to the top, actual progress being relegated to a place on paper only.
The project for the Wah Umkhrah is one such project which caught my attention. I was amazed at what I saw was planned (on paper) for the river and the localities that surrounded it. It prompted me to say what a veteran political leader of Meghalaya once said, “if this is what can become of the Garo Hills, then I do not want to go to heaven. This is heaven.” The targeted goals for the Wah Umkhrah will make it a paradise on earth, and I’ve made a lot of people believe that it’s completely possible, but now I must convince myself.
Taking everything into consideration, the general tendency would be to blame the politicians for this distressing ‘debt trap,’ but I would hesitate to agree. The first principle in any doubtful matter is usually better than none, but we must not forget that whom we elect cannot be blamed entirely for any folly, if there is one, because at bottom it is only a question of wanting to get rid of the oppressing news that the State is in a ‘debt trap,’ that we seek to find whom to blame. Yes, the leader shoulders the responsibility of running the State, and providing an explanation to clarify the doubts that this news item has raised. And when he does explain the situation, which I am certain he will, we will once again experience that soothing, liberating, alleviating feeling knowing that it does make sense in the long run. But the fact remains things aren’t as good as they used to be.
Today, when we have started to move in the reverse direction, and appear to be trying with all our might to remove the concept of guilt, and the concept of punishment from malfunctioning government employees (including ministers) and to purge everyone of any guilt and instead to adopt the “moral order” of a forgiveness as done in our place of worship, or a sharing of the ‘loot’ that does away with the guilt and punishment altogether, there is no greater need than for the Anti-Corruption Branch of the State Police Department to kick start itself into action. Law enforcers must be proactive if the situation is to change and there are numerous opportunities for the ones who really mean to do something about it.
Having now discovered that our State is in ‘debt trap’ to the tune of Rs 15,000 crores and counting, what can we learn from this and what should our approach be for the future? What were these loans taken for? What was the collateral given against the loans? Loans are not taken without collateral – no loan exists in exclusion of the whole and so we are entitled to question as to how the loans have accumulated to such enormous amounts without anyone being made accountable for such extravagance?
We may be spending without building up the capital assets, or whatever else we sought to create. The demand of the people from the government and its employees is not about moral good and moral evils, it is about tangible, measurable results. This is the structure that was in place, that is in place, and will always be in place because government schemes and projects have measurables and deal with realities which exist, and not with phenomena that have to be interpreted – or more precisely misinterpreted. The newspaper report on the matter may not have enlightened us on everything we need to know, but it has raised our excitement.
But all is not sick, not only States with a high revenue can take loans, as many suppose. Back in the mid-90s when the Principal Secretary to the Government of Meghalaya Finance also held Forests, and when taking loans from financial institutions to meet important unforeseen projects was being conceptualised, I happened to be on tour to the Garo Hills with the Principal Secretary.
We visited the Dainadubi, the Darugiri and the Songsak Reserve forests on forestry matters, but the Principal Secretary, being a man from an economic background, saw the forests differently from how I did. He was amazed at the growing stock (trees) in these forests. The forests abound in teak and sal trees, the wood of which fetches very, very high prices in the open market…much more than the value indicated in the Royalty Rates prescribed by the State.
Earlier the State arrived at these royalty rates on the basis of stump value (point of origin), but, according to the then Principal Secretary, if the royalty rates could be prescribed based on market rates the value of the wood would in all likelihood increase tenfold. There was a catch however, and that was that the royalty rates would be based upon their proximity to a market and different forests would have different royalty rates. That, to him, was a buyer’s problem. His assessment of the capital stock contained in these three RFs was at an amazing Rs 50,000 crore then – and the State’s capital stock is the best surety against loans taken. That was his reasoning then, and it made sense to me because the interest against the loan would be written off by the increment the trees put on from year to year.
Yes, the State has collaterals to meet for loans taken if a genuine need is there, but that is beside the point at the moment, because what the people are interested in is what have the loans taken been used for? There are so many questions one can ask and there are an equal number of answers that can be given…the good for and of the people must never be lost sight off when taking a loan, one belongs to the whole, one is the whole.
But in such a wide interpretation of the so-called “debt trap,” we are left with nothing with which to judge, measure, compare, condemn the loan taken and if only a handful have the answers, is there any justification for the secrecy in the first place? questions are being asked because the disparity between the common man and the rich man are too obvious in our society which was not the case in the years gone by.
