I am rather afraid of the coming days, especially the 21st February 2025 because like so many others I have developed the all too familiar habit of believing what I hear – believing empty promises; this habit must change. A person of my age and strength has only a very little time every day for the affairs of others, and so I spend my time and strength on duties which others can do but won’t – reminding us of our innate moral code. Writing is the best way to go about this task but not everyone can write something coherent and so I spend a lot of my time doing just that – writing- with the belief that what I write will come as a pleasant reminder to those individuals whose views conduce with mine, and provide a guidance to those who seek to distinguish between good and bad and so put an end to their wandering nomadic moral code. Morally speaking, things may be bad now (in Meghalaya) but they will not remain the same. Meanwhile, may the happiness of my friends contesting the hustling grow and blossom – it always does my heart good to think of my friends who are contesting the coming election even though I know they are experts at misleading one and all. This is the time when they tell me what they intend to do for the State and the people. The part that interests me most is the fact that they know they are ‘pulling my leg’ when they speak about what it is they intend to do and yet they manifest themselves, in the manner in which they create their speeches when they address the people, that they mean what they’re saying. They appear totally convinced that they will convert their words into deeds. Theirs is an enviable capability…the capability to create themselves into the perfect gentleman interested only in the development of the State and the people; knowing that when the polls are over and they are sublimely ensconced in their chairs their true motives will begin to manifest, and these motives have nothing to do with their promises.
If the opinion of the majority of the people is to be believed, the only time when our elections brought out good politicians who fulfilled their promises was when the first Meghalaya Legislative Assembly election was held. That was a long time ago, and most of today’s politicians may not have been born then. It was held on 9th March 1972, following the creation of the State of Meghalaya on the 21st January 1972. 59 men and one woman, Percylina Marak, were elected. Those were some of the best politicians I can remember that ever came to power in Meghalaya. It was the most meaningful election and if there’s much that I have forgotten about those days, there is one thing I still remember clearly – I remember how we believed that everything we had demanded for was won and that our woes had come to an end…that ‘they’ were over. But here’s what a lot of us didn’t know, and which we’ve only come to know in the past 2-3 decades – actually, that was just the beginning, because tomorrow and the day after tomorrow and beyond was going to bring in others who would be a contradiction of the men and women of those days.
We still hear of the statesmen we elected at that point in time, we still hear that those who stood up to contest the elections considered themselves to be worthy of the title of being an elected representative of a constituency, but time has educated us and it is very evident that we were not able to see what was to come if we were to continue to rely on elected representatives in the honest process that was experienced then. We didn’t know that it was required that a politician be educated in being a man of tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, who has to always understand the signs that manifest in a society when it was beginning to be fit to be designated with that terrible word…“corrupt,” because with corruption comes cronyism. Corruption and cronyism, is in a manner of speaking, the moving away from an honest moral code to a dishonest one. It seems to me more and more that our extraordinary men who are our politicians today have seldom felt themselves to be friends of knowledge, but rather disagreeable fools – the bad conscience of the age. They have moved away from honesty in public life, and ruined a second, a third, a fourth, a fifth virtue – it is useless to enumerate everything that has been ruined – the list would never cease; and it is not the objective of this essay to bring to light what this newly formed political type has ruined; but to try and understand what it indicates, and what lies hidden ahead, beneath, and below it, and the numerous question marks overlaid with misunderstandings that are inherent in it. And it is only in the pursuit of this end that I have attempted to analyze the monstrous and calamitous effects that lurk in today’s’ politics; hinting, wherever I can, at what ultimately will be the future of posterity. In the present context, our politics has freed itself from common sense, freed itself from the traditions that were once our foothold, and, viewed in this light, it has become more personal and more demanding so that everything noble is fading away and we are flowing with the tide of increased wages, fancier lifestyles and the means by which to promote the two. That in a nutshell is our politics and the kernel of what motivates our politicians.
Naturally, if the driving force is money and fancier lifestyles one needs more than just a few crores of rupees to start a political career that will propel one into power. This is the only precondition of anyone desiring to contest the elections. And when money is not available the demand is that one creates another value. When money is sparse and even when it is plentiful, a newly discovered value works, at least it worked in the recently concluded Parliamentary elections…compose a song and identify its lyrics with the people’s culture or religion and distract the people from everything that politics is essentially about. Now compose a sprightly tune to go with the meaningless lyrics and you’ve got a winner. It’s happening even in the Hindu heartland.
These days one can never be a good leader without the ‘gift of the gab,’ because it is the gift of the gab that is the next best thing that can sway the people. Why have we allowed song and money to flourish to this extent in our elections? Why did we not rather resist all this madness? Money and song have thrived in the process of our elections and the two have forcefully expressed themselves upon us. Where is the opposing force that can express something different, something more meaningful, something that has an eye for the good of posterity? Money and song have a goal, a goal to distract us from reality– and this distraction is so attractive that all other interests of our culture – of what makes us who we really are – seem, when compared with it, wasteful and purposeless. Money and song have drawn us ever deeper into the belief that they alone are what every individual must engage in. Have we ever seen any other social magnet that attracts men and women more powerfully than money and song? And the more these two forces are utilized the more they prevent the use of sensible means. Serious men and women have no place in this melee.
How remarkable this all is! Because there once was a time when the intelligentsia in society played an important role in politics, even if they didn’t contest. That was the ideal political situation in a society that is so naturally gullible to corruption. Now it’s the age when people greet visitors who come to bribe them with a “hello”, and an opening of hearth and home and hands because the visitor is powerful and rich and ready to pour coins and notes into the outstretched palm. There is hardly any secure future left as some see it; one lives for today, and this state of living for today makes the game easy for the seducers because living for today is basically sounding the call that one is ready and willing to be bribed “for today” while guardedly disconnecting their heart and soul from the hypocrisy of it all. This is not how politics was meant to be played out! However, in the coming election, thankfully there are two genuine political issues that may play a decisive role in determining who wins – the enactment of the Khasi Social Custom of Lineage Amendment Act 2023 – an empowerment through a renaissance of our customs and the revival of coal mining in the State – an economic boost to the lives of the people; and that means a head start for the NPP. If the NPP comes to power in the KHADC it will be entirely because of these two factors stated above; if they don’t, it’s entirely because my negative assumptions are solidly established.
We all know that the foundation of one’s political philosophy is based on the individual’s nature, and it is sad to have to admit that it is this nature of the Khasis, the Jaintias and the Garos that politicians exploit in their bid to gain power. The fact that comes insidiously into the mind of anyone (K, J, or G) intending to contest the hustling is “how much cash will I have to dole out to individuals and groups” to get their votes. One would have to make a real effort to misunderstand the fact that now a pile of money is the first necessity in becoming a politician. Basically, our politicians are normally not capable of winning without it, whereas politics ideally was and is meant to prevent chaos, murder, anarchy, bribery, etc., in short to ensure security in a society.
Indeed, security of a society – social and economic – was and is the fundamental political value but that fundamental value has now been redefined – all that has been lost sight off these days. The fundamental goal of our present politics is apparently to advance one’s personal financial security – nothing else.
For those of us who were around in 1972, we clearly understood the demand to be in charge of our own welfare, or at least to depend on our own people to lookafter our welfare. Only the capable ones contested, while others were satisfied with what they were inherently capable of achieving. Indeed, we can boldly claim that the leaders who opted for politics at that time were in a state of innocence, something like what we only read about in story books these days, characters that were unblemished by a bad conscience and characters who did everything in their power to prevent a guilty one. Politicians with a bad conscience were yet to be invented.
No longer does the conscience get stung by the open criticisms against it, even the criticism that we are the most corrupt State in the country has fallen on deaf ears and gleeful smiles. What politics is, is hard to learn, because it cannot be taught: one has to know it from one’s prudence, or one should be sufficiently proud not to know it at all.
