Dr Asangba Tzudir
Policy making especially on matters of governance has remained a contentious issue. The latest on RIIN testifies such a predicament. The manner in which the state government came up with the proposal to prepare a master list of all indigenous inhabitants of the State with the main objective to prevent people from acquiring fake indigenous inhabitants’ certificates. This was aptly supplemented by the new Indigenous Inhabitants certificate to be bar-coded.
However, such a surprise policy, rather than strengthening the Inner Line Permit System, have caused serious objections from various sections of people. The objections led the government to put a pause and engaged the civil society organisations for further ‘closed door’ deliberations away from the ‘eyes’ and ‘ears’ of the media especially the press. Further, leaving out certain section of people from the call to meeting by the government caused further despondency.
A policy that will have serious repercussion for the future demands the coming together of the ‘wills’ of the people and not just to be decided behind closed doors. An air of transparency should have been in place from the very beginning rather than giving surprise jolts to the public. When policy making adopts such a process and processing without the ‘voice’ and ‘wills’ of the people, then it will only create unnecessary suspicion as it has now.
The experience of the state on policy making over the years is such that it has irked the consciousness of the public on many counts, not to mention the creation of violence. It is a cliché but, in matters of policy making that concerns the rights, justice and for the well-being of the people, it should be of utmost importance for the government to seek ‘expert’ opinions, ideas and suggestions on issues and policies that calls for due dialogue and deliberation before formulating policies.
Policy making cannot and should not be left to the bureaucrats because bureaucrats are not policy makers but they are implementers. And this calls for the need to have professional ‘experts,’ and who have the ‘will’ and ‘intellect’ to engage with the ground realities while framing and formulate policies for further deliberation on both representative as well as individual levels according to the nature of the policies. This will also recreate the idea of representation and a spirit of democratic governance among the general masses. And what comes out of this process may be put forward to the bureaucrats for further deliberation and implementation.
Along with the engagement of professional experts, until such a culture of democratic process is set in place while framing policies, it will only create chaos, confusion, suspicion, and even to the extent of violence. At the end bureaucrats are not policy makers but implementers. They are actually not supposed to be doing both.
(Dr Asangba Tzudir writes a weekly guest editorial for The Morung Express. Comments can be mailed to asangtz@gmail.com)
