By Gregory Shullai
Here in our land of the happy, what different matters we have to cope with, Sohra is witnessing a raging rush of tourists flocking to the waterfalls where tourists love to go out on short walking tours because the weather in the Khasi Hills is so glorious and there is no difficulty in doing anything. It is not a place one likes to leave and this is evident from the occupancy of the guest houses and homestays – the longer the guests stay the more personal and dearer these hills become to them even when it rains. They don’t mind the wet and damp outdoors, indoors everything is warm and dry and comfortable. Visiting the Khasi Hills in the summer is something many visitors have discovered is something they cannot forgo. I have come to notice this and it spurs the guest house and homestay owners to invent comforts of their own kind that accompany the visitors from one day to the next. To this praise of the domesticity that the guest houses and homestays provide I add the praise of the ingenuity of the villagers at the Kynrem and Ulong Falls: confident and decided they go about with their genius of building bamboo scaffolds that take the tourists to the very base of the water falls; these initiatives deserve to be emulated in other tourist destinations so as to not create an unmanageable situation in the limited confines of these two places…already the situation does appear to be going out of hand on Saturdays and Sundays. I offer this word of advice only in the hope that tourism does not suffer from the burgeoning industry it has become and that the essential welfare factors for the growth of this sector are not ignored. Can we trust that the Government will create these infrastructures? If we hope we can, if not, I imagine that in the coming years tourist seasons could turn to be seriously hampered, but I admit, I have little understanding of such matters. Mawlynnong is still attracting tourists who make the long route from the Jaintia Hills adding at least another 2 hours to get there and, in the process, adding new more stunningly beautiful places that the Khasi – Jaintia Hills jointly have to offer.
Given these pleasantries we find ourselves living in the interesting expectation that things will always remain as they are, and suddenly, we are rudely awakened to a blot on Facebook because another thing has waxed gigantic and really beyond our control. No one is speaking clearly about it – only murmuring. The thing has given us something which is the most disgusting account of our happy land – Byrnihat and the State Pollution Control Board (SPCB), and how the SPCB granted a license to the Ethanol Factory which has polluted the air and not only the air. If something like this happened back in the 90s, heads would’ve rolled. Now a comic fact which is coming more and more to my notice is that the head of the SPCB is a reemployed individual. Holding a responsible position in Government when it is sailing through still waters is not risky. Under still water circumstances, the individual enjoys a strange and almost mysterious respect among all radical parties – ruling party, opposition party, pressure parties, retirees and senior citizen parties as well. The extreme candour of the atmosphere in which the person is placed is seductive, he can be as outspoken as he desires and can lightly shake off any comment questioning his appointment if people are grieved by it; people at best can question but they cannot disturb him. The local people are smitten by this posting for the simple reason that it has been given to one of a questionable repute and therefore there is a special abnormal interpretation of it, which perhaps gives the appointee a good laugh – but he cannot escape everyone. In all this, not every reemployed person is like “our man” and so our dealings with this category of employees must remain polite but aloof and as infrequent as possible. Let them prosper in their extended employment, it happens; my own relatives too if there be any. Believe me, even if I do not show it in writing, hardly anyone can be following the pollution in Byrnihat with a more sympathetic interest than I do. But I lack knowledge and competence in those areas of where and how pollution clearances are granted. Above all fifteen years have passed without me schooling myself on the nuances of how and why environment clearances are given at all. The deterioration of our air quality in Shillong, of which I seem to catch a whiff every time I go to Bara Bazar or Police Bazar, seems to me that the SPCB is missing out on something. That is bad enough! Everything good has to be bought at rather too high a price.
The present trend of granting reemployment is a new concept and it’s terrible. New, for example, is the process by which Govt considers whether to reemploy an individual and whether it is for the benefit of the State and the Cabinet (to put it chastely). The post of the Chairman SPCB was, about 15 years ago, attached to the post of the Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (Territorial). It would appear things have changed for the worse. Could it be that this time the Department demanded for the reemployment of the incumbent? After what has happened in the SPCB and the Ethanol Factory clearance, I approach all our respected citizens with all urgency to try and examine and understand the need for granting reemployment in order to see if we can perhaps manage the monster together. The gist of the need to grant reemployment by an application of the current rules must be accompanied by local concerns as the process in vogue is being interpreted by many as a one-man show. Under these circumstances there are those in society who are requesting that the State Government plug the loopholes in the appointment of retirees. This request is not something new, as the present rule, whatever it may be, is terrible, it leaves too much room for manipulation. Either stop reemployment altogether or draft a proviso to the rule and see that this matter is managed in the interest of the citizens of the State. As it stands now, it is strange the way the ignorant, the dubious and the least performing individuals so often and so undeservedly succeed when the informed and the deserving fail to get reemployed. It appears as if one needs only to appear soft and compliant to be sure of getting reemployed: there can be no other reason, or if there is, it is a very one-to-one kind of affair.
Coming back to the matter of the pollution in Byrnihat, it is clear that the Government of Meghalaya is once more limping like a cripple to explain the establishment of the Ethanol Factory and the pollution that this factory has caused. Everyone on ship is having only the blackest thoughts of where the problem might be the deepest, and the Minister i/c Health has made his position clear…“I learnt about the Ethanol factory from social media,” so that his name is cleared of any misdoing. What he’s saying is that he wasn’t involved when the license was granted. Therefore, the question arises how and who will atone for granting the license to this factory? It places whoever granted it in the greatest embarrassment and is perhaps causing the person an unbearable tension and vulnerability. The Minister i/c is as blameless as any of us, but someone is to blame and that is what is still under wraps. The name will eventually appear before the situation subsides. I only hope the ship doesn’t sink before that. As a matter of fact, everyone including the Government of Meghalaya knows that Byrnihat is the most polluted town in the entire country because from the time pollution concerns appeared in the local and the national media it must have been tormenting the authorities like a violent stomach ache in league with a headache, because they knew what was behind it all. Surely the higher ups in the Secretariat and the SPCB must have been hoping that the people would attribute the problem of pollution to the industries on the Assam side of the National Highway but the nervousness remained, someone was bound to get to the bottom of the matter and now we have the culprit in front of us…The Ethanol Factory on the Meghalaya side of the highway which the SPCB cleared…cleared without taking into consideration the smells and the smog and the dust and the pollutants that the factory would cause. The pollution of the Umtru river is something infinitely nauseous and is a ticking time bomb. We are suffering enough from this factory and so we ask, has the factory been closed down? Has a case been filed against the factory owner? Who is the owner? I dare not ask anything more: that is the standpoint. I may be stepping on someone’s toes.
With the haunting memory of the recklessness with which the Ethanol factory was cleared, and the bad name it has brought to Meghalaya and the damage that people in mainland India are facing with ethanol in their cars, one undeniable fact emerges – no one here wants people in mainland India to connect ethanol with Meghalaya, and so all are remaining silent on it…even the Government. For too long the Government has not been getting much criticism for its failures and so time passes on and away. Yes, the State is showing quite an accomplishment in a number of sectors but the malaise of corruption deserves a transfusion of strong disciplinary action to reset the moral standards, which, till now remain unattainable.
